Pigmentation itself, ethnicity itself, is not a factor that is going to sway people
Quotes from Dahleen Glanton's Chicago Tribune article "Obama's Southern support not a cinch"[...] "In my district, people are going with Hillary," said state Sen. Robert Ford, a Democrat from Charleston. "I am sure there will be some young blacks who will be behind Obama, but elderly blacks are going with Hillary because they love Bill and they love Hillary for standing behind him for eight years." [...]
[...] "People down here don't know him, and South Carolinians in many ways are a difficult lot," said Cole Blease Graham, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina. "They like to see their politicians up close in the flesh, shake their hand and look them in the eye. "Blacks will determine the winner in South Carolina, and if it came down to it right now, it would be Clinton because of the lack of exposure Obama has here," said Graham. "If Obama can win some attraction from whites and overwhelming support from black voters, he can beat Clinton." [...]
[...] "South Carolina is one of the most racially polarized places in the country, and black people in South Carolina have never elected a black candidate statewide," said David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. "There are places in the South where people don't think anybody black can be elected to anything. So when they think about the presidential election, they don't think of Obama as someone with very good prospects." [...]
[...] "He has to campaign. Like any other candidate, he will have to prove a viability, prove that he’s going to articulate the issues and do so in a way that proves that he is an authentic Democrat and not a closet Republican." [...]
Rev. Joe Darby,
pastor of Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston, one of the largest
black churches in the state, quoted in Aaron Gould Sheinin's The State article "Obama campaigning in S.C. today"
Ron Walters, the director of the African American Leadership Institute and an expert on black presidential politics, in Gary Younge's Guardian UK (via Sydney Morning Herald) column "The real deal"[...] "There are some things you can't run away from. He's going to have to raise between $US50 million ($64 million) and $US100 million, and that money's not coming from black people. So black people are going to have to engage with that reality. He gives the impression that he dances on both sides, but when he gets into the goldfish bowl of an election campaign, he will be forced to define himself more concretely." [...]
Quotes from Georgetown law professor Patricia King and her husband, civil rights activist Roger Wilkins, in Ken Bode's Indianapolis Star op-ed "Who will get blacks' votes?""If you're a black man in America today, you're treated like a black man, every day. [...] Toni Morrison called Bill Clinton our first black president. He was very comfortable around black people, played the saxophone, went to black churches. I don't see where Hillary inherits that. She's a whole different deal."
"If blackness is not consecrated by slavery and childhood poverty, you're not black enough? That idea is nonsense. Nothing in Obama's background justifies seeing him as a white guy's black guy. He has addressed black concerns as a community organizer in Chicago and a state senator in Springfield. [...] Bill went out of his way to make black appointments, court black voters, and she was at his side when he did it. And blacks are loyal to people who they think have produced for them."
Comments
Karen, I'm working on more.
Michelle, do you mean Edward McClelland's "How Obama became a natural?" It felt less like a hit piece or a smear to me and more like a look back from someone who could say "I knew him when." It seemed plausible to me that Obama didn't start out as a natural. (I haven't read "Dreams From My Father" yet, but it's on the shelf somewhere at home; I haven't read "The Audacity of Hope" either.) I felt reassured by the idea that Obama has had to struggle to reconcile ability and ambition with environment and opportunity -- and that the reason he connects with so many people now is that he's learned how to tell the story of who he is, what he believes and how he can effect change.
I have heard before that he has been experienced as cocky, arrogant or impatient by some folks, and that his "ivy-league democrat" credentials had to be benched in an effort to get in the trenches (a skill eventually cultivated by Obama to earn his stripes in a working class community?).
I am fascinated by all of this frankly, so many different takes, so many different theories...
I would suggest that Obama's evolution was one that any individual will experience as they begin to sort out how to best drive results in a very bureacratic society. I'm not sure that has a thing to do with his being black as it does his simply learning the ways to drive change.
See I didn't get the "Hey I knew him when" vibe from that. If I'd gotten that vibe it would have been a whole different ballgame. If all the same information had been written but conveyed a bit differently it would have seemed more "he lost, he learned from his mistakes and has grown because of it" instead the way it read to me was "he was a know-it-all who got his ass whooped and so developed a very intentional, deliberate (even manipulative?) plan to not lose again." Same info, same back story, far different tone. Of course perhaps I'm just bringing my baggage to the piece and picking up vibes, tones and cues the author never intended.
I am fascinated both with Obama himself but also how he's being portrayed in the media.