Hillary and "white Americans"

Hillary Clinton gave an interview to USA Today which is published today. In it she says: "Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again." It seems like she is equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." I don't think that Hillary believes that blacks aren't hard working. I don't think she intends to communicate to racist supporters (or would be supporters) that she shares their view that African Americans are lazy. I think she is tired and in this case, actually, misspoke. But as in an earlier entry I made, I believe this comment is an example of how insensitive the Clinton campaign is to how their language--and blunders--resonate in the black community. If Hillary got it, she would have already issued an apology.

In any event, whatever she meant, it seems like Obama doesn't measure up any worse among white voters than John Kerry did in 2004. The Republican Party has made a practice of seeking white votes with divisive politics (and by positioning itself as the party that parties for the wealthy). So it is not a surprise that the Republican candidate can be expected to grab up a lot of white votes. In the end, with some distance between the Jeremiah Wright story cycle and the general election, Obama might be imagined to do better than Kerry among whites, given the overwhelming rejection of Bush (and, by party and policy affiliations, McCain) by white Americans, black Americans, and Americans of every color. And as the campaign continues, with the promise of something new and more hopeful, and a real opportunity to move forward toward an America where parents, both white and black, can guarantee their children a better life, through improved schools and an economy that spawns innovation and produces jobs, Obama can siphon away white votes that McCain assumes he has locked up. Obama will drink the Republican Party's milkshake in November.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not giddy and delusional. I know that there is a lot of racism out there, and there are millions of racist Americans who don't like to think of themselves as racists, but, nevertheless, will never, ever vote for Obama because he is black. And these voters will grasp at any defect of Obama's, or any slip, or any story however improbable and untrue, and hold it up as evidence that Obama can't be trusted and doesn't deserve their vote. But these will only be ad hoc justifications, ways to write off Obama without acknowledging, to themselves or to the wider world, that they are twisted by bigotry. Still, Obama's message will reach enough voters who will stare down their racial biases and vote for him if only because their love for their children will liberate them, if only for a few moments alone in a voting booth, from a lifetime of prejudice. And this is the important thing to recall: Obama's candidacy (and his eventual election) doesn't signify that we have reached the promised land, and have left our hatreds and intolerances and prejudices behind, instead, it is merely the next step along a long path.