As he does distance himself.
I doubt he heard these polarizing assertions - about himself- before he was running for office. The fact that he is black and Hillary is white is going to bring this out in the black community, just as a certain segment of the white community says it won't vote for Obama because he is black. If racism weren't a problem in this country, Obama's campaign wouldn't be nearly as important as it is. I know it's a big shock to some people (I'm not implying it is to you) that the inner cities contain some pretty virulent racism, but there's no way to avoid that. The disenfranchised can go many ways- and one way is to get angry and blame a perceived oppressor. I'm sure on the South Side of Chicago there are 100's of civic leaders who would say this, and if you are going to work on the South Side you are going to shake hands with them. The key thing (for me) is that Obama could work there without picking up and believing that destructive meme. That, imo, is what is special about him. If he gets elected those folks on the South Side won't be able to say, with such certitude, that America keeps the black man down. That's a bit harder to say when there is a black man in the white house. People can shake down the entire South Side of Chicago and I won't be surprised if more folks like this emerge- no surprise there. There are plenty of them in Oakland too. They do good works, but they say the danrdest things. Any big highly urban black area is going to have people saying stuff like this. Welcome to the great racial divide. I'm just glad it's now more out in the open. Without a "black" candidate of any substance there was no reason to pay attention to this stuff. When Jesse and Sharpton ran- no one cared about their associations (which would curl your hair).
It's as if the democratic party (and the republicans as well) never really cared what the "monolithic" blacks thought- the dems just cared they voted democratic, and the reps just wrote them off for voting that way. At least it's a step up in the world that people are listening to the black community, with all its warts, now- that's a better thing. It will be even better when the warts have time to heal- but that takes inclusion, and inclusion begins with not being ignored. The very fact that so many whites were completely ignorant of what was going on in the black community shows just how completely the ignoring was, imo. |
