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Obama and the X-Factor of Race

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EXCERPT #1

In a wide-ranging interview with Newsweek in July 2007, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama was piqued at the very suggestion that he was the transcendent racial candidate. This implied that he was racially neutered and was a living and breathing repudiation of the politics of racial polarization that supposedly characterized Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Obama took even greater umbrage at the notion he deliberately stoked thoughts among whites that he was the prototypical post civil rights African-American who no longer saw the world in black and white hues and whose mantra was racial conciliation, compromise and outreach.

Obama had good reason to be miffed at such talk. There was absolutely no evidence that he had ever experienced an identity crisis about his blackness. He spoke candidly about his bi-racial lineage, his early childhood years in Hawaii and Indonesia, his half-Indonesian sister, his campaign for editor of the Harvard Law Review, and his Illinois campaigns for the state house and senate. He never shied away from proudly embracing his blackness. He didn’t have too---back then.

Now that he was in the race for the biggest prize of all, the White House, things had changed. The slightest hint, let alone perception, that Obama was the “black candidate” would be the political kiss of death for him. The label of the “black candidate” was tattooed all over Jackson when he made his White House bids in 1984 and 1988 and on Sharpton when he made his bid in 2004. Both men didn’t do much to scrub the tattoo off of them. In fact, they wrapped themselves tightly in the race mantle. They made no secret that in the primaries in states such as Michigan and especially South Carolina with its huge black voting numbers they would make a big, naked and unabashed pitch for blacks to back them.

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EXCERPT #2

Despite Obama’s brash talk about not running from his racial heritage, that history loomed as the X factor in his campaign. It had to be overcome for him to have any real shot at the big prize. One small but troubling sign that race wouldn’t magically disappear was the personal death threats that flooded in to his campaign. Obama had the dubious distinction of being the earliest presidential contender to be assigned secret service protection on the campaign trail. Still, there were hopeful signs that public attitudes might be changing. In an early cover story on him months before he declared his candidacy, Time Magazine in October 2006 anointed him as the new face of the Democrats. It was a good label. Obama was telegenic, articulate, and a good campaigner who could easily raise millions of dollars.

Yet, the near unanimous backing that whites gave to the notion of voting for a black candidate for president also deserved to be put to a political polygraph test to see how much truth there was to it. There were outsized doubts about it.

Start with the question: “Would you vote for a black candidate for president?” It’s a direct question, and to flatly say no to it makes one sound like a bigot, and in the era of verbal racial correctness (ask Don Imus), it’s simply not fashionable to come off to pollsters sounding like one. That’s hardly the only measure of a respondent’s veracity. In a 2006 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, a Yale political economist found that white Republicans are 25 percentage points more likely to cross over and vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate against a black Republican foe. The study also found that in the near twenty year stretch from 1982 to 2000, when the GOP candidate was black, the greater majority of white independent voters backed the white candidate.

Republicans and independents weren’t the only ones guilty of dubious Election Day color-blindness. Many Democrats were too. In House races, the study found that Democrats were nearly 40 percent less likely to back a black Democratic candidate than a white Democrat.

EXCERPT #3

The ambiguity or maybe duplicity of some white voters is not the only racial X factor for Obama.  In a January 1996 survey in the Los Angeles Times blacks ranked the so-called “black president” Bill Clinton much higher than Jesse Jackson or Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in popularity. Eight years later, when Sharpton made his presidential foray in the South Carolina Democratic primary he barely nudged out eventual Democratic presidential contender John Kerry among black voters.

Blacks were enraptured with Clinton and supported white Democrats for good reason. They were seasoned Democrats that did, or blacks believed, would deliver on their promise to fight for jobs, education, and health care. They either held office or were good bets to win. Political interests and their candidate’s electability trumped color.

The same rules of race and political engagement apply to Obama. Blacks puffed their chests at the prospect of him breaking racial barriers by being in the presidential race, but in the end they’d still judge him on these two crucial questions. Could he deliver on the bread and butter issues and could he win? The win issue is critically important. Many blacks were leery that he was a media created flash in the pan, and would wilt under the intense presidential glare.

Even more, blacks are rock solid Democrats. They have publicly expressed deep opposition to Bush domestic policies. Privately many say they loathe Bush personally. They desperately want to end Republican White House rule. That means getting a Democrat back in the White House. It doesn’t mean just any Democrat. It’s got to be a Democrat they feel comfortable with, and who can win.

Obama represents a fresh face on the political scene. He has lots of room to grow and become adept on the issues. And that’s the problem. In the stretch run of the presidential race in the fall 2008 there would be no time for on the job candidate training. The X factor of race with Obama is there not only with many whites but some blacks too.

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Obama and the X-Factor of Race

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