Risa, you either didn’t read the entirety of my post (which, admittedly, was much longer than I usually have time for) or you didn’t understand it. There’s more than enough racism enough to go around. There are a lot of racist black people out there—there are no perfect societies, classes, races, cultures, political parties, ethnic groups or tribes out there devoid of racism, conquest, greed etc.—but the immediate problem in this particular campaign is white racism.

As a woman, I’d have loved to see Hillary Clinton get the nod, especially since she was the only candidate with a MANDATORY universal health plan, the one favored by progressive economics columnist Paul Krugman. I worked hard for Hillary, but when Obama’s charisma carried the day I began and continue to support him—not wholeheartedly at first because he was so inexperienced in foreign policy, but obviously he knew that and logically picked a vice presidential candidate who had the experience he lacked, and also appealed to some of the constituencies Hillary carried in critical states. Now all he and Biden have to do is win, and it’s time to focus on the people who might have voted for Hillary but seem to be leaning toward the Republicans.

To Sepharad-

I’m black and I would not vote for Obama solely because he’s black. I personally don’t know one black person that would vote for Condi Rice because she was black either. Every black person I know started out as a Clinton supporter and switched sides after it was clear that Obama was winning. Why? Because their policies are virtually identical and we were voting in our own best interests which is just common sense NOT racism. While I’m there are SOME black people out there who may have made Obama their first pick because of his skin color, I’m sure there are a lot of white people out there who were willing to the reverse for the same reason. I also think it’s pretty clear that Obama didn’t win the primaries with the black vote alone. If that was the case, Jesse Jackson would be president. So quit pointing fingers at us.

I just skimmed it too, KDelphi! Only read it in full after launching my last comment because I wanted to astonish my husband by telling him that someone found enough self-identified bigots to poll. 

Blackspeare, you were right about jests sometimes being precursors of truth. A few minutes ago my (also Shakespeare-loving)husband breezed through with his coffee, I told him about the amazing survey of certified bigots, and he said he’d heard some union organizer in Ohio or Pennsylvania saying, somewhat abashedly, that there were lots of people in the unions out of work or underemployed who were not going to vote for Obama because he’s black. The unions are about as Democratic as it can get but even so, different is still apparently different.

Re why people vote against their own best interests, to steal John Fante’s line, “Ask the dust.” One contributing factor, for sure, is that bicoastal liberals do tend to look down from on high at rednecks/blue collars/cowboys etc., and condescension never got anyone elected. It’s partly an upscale-urban v. rural/urban poor thing. A writer friend of ours is a former oil roughneck, went to school on the G.I. bill, became a great voice in both fiction and fact for California’s Great Central Valley. He continues to define himself as a redneck, and the late Cary McWilliams, writing for The Nation, described this guy’s writing as “country music set to prose.” The old lefties, the Wobblies and Woody Guthrie would be appalled at the way their supposed political descendants run down people whose lives and values are too different from themselves today. This post-‘60s arrogance is pretty hard to take if you are the target of that cool, hip disdain. 

Nobozos, it doesn’t matter to racists of either color whether Obama is 100% black or not. He’s just different, and that is enough.

Not sure what antebellum percentages were to establish black ancestry—one drop of blood? Nazis had it worked out to something like 1/64th Jewish ancestry that qualified you for the cyclonB. In Darfur, the Arab janjaweed just look for darker Africans without horses. In Rwanda it was tribe rather than race. White Protestants and White Catholics massacred each other in Europe.

All you have to be is, well, different in some on-the-spot defined way, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is it the right place at the right time?

Anyone who does not think blacks are as capable of racism as whites hasn’t read enough history or been outside of their political playpen. Our sprawling family is truly multi-ethnic, from Algerian Arabs and Portugese Jews to French/Apache/Cherokee/Dutchmen and women. I’ve been a civil rights activist, mainstream journalist, Freedom of Information Act advocate, historian, and remain a secular Zionist; my husband is a writer and scientist; and we’ve seen all kinds of racism from all kinds of people. Our oldest son turned down a minority-slanted scholarship to Princeton because he knew whites would assume he got it because of his mixed-race status. (He applied instead for   merit-based scholarships and got one, same school, same major.) Our gorgeous, brilliant daughter was dissed by purer darker blacks throughout high school in San Francisco, that bastion of tolerance-as-long-as-you-agree-with-them, because she was too light. Many people—except for my Moslem friends here and in Israel, who know better—tell me any Israeli Zionist is a racist who believes in apartheid. Our son-in-law, an admirer of General Shinseki, chose to fly an Apache in Iraq’s Anbar province in ‘05, admired the courage of the Iraqis who tried to help them at great personal risk, made his men learn Arabic before they went over there ... yet would be written off as a dumb soldier by most of the people on the TD threads. (He’s a scientist in civvy life, with an Algerian grandmother.) Our youngest son is a musically-gifted dj and entrepreneur, but is not taken seriously in some quarters because he’s not black enough, others because he didn’t go to the right conservatory. So what? He shrugs his shoulders and does his thing where it’s appreciated. Very healthy attitude. The only people who do not know I’m a secularist are my Catholic cousins once removed. Some years ago they secretly prayed for my soul until they told me, to their relief, that some pope decided that Jews had their own covenenant with God.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I was one of those non-religious Jews, like Amos Oz and many more, especially among the 19th-century Zionists and their children.

All prejudice and racism is stupid. Most people have some form of it or other. My prejudice is against religious fundamentalists of all kinds, and no doubt some of them are fine people but by my lights they cause too much trouble, too many wars.

To anaveragejoe: you are right, there are good people in both parties. One of the best of them, an old friend of mine who raises Spanish horses in northcentral Florida, is driving me nuts this election year. A feminist and definitely not a racist, she liked Hillary but was going to vote for McCain anyway. I’m hoping Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience might be enough to make her change her mind. But I’ve so far been unable to persuade an acquaintance here in good old Northern California to vote for Obama because she liked Edwards best, was willing to vote for Hillary despite her continuing attachment to her straying husband, but will now only vote for McCain (the-wife-deserter) because, she told me, Obama is black. I could keep trying to change her mind but she doesn’t consider Jews particularly “white” either. There are other Hillary supporters not wanting to vote for Obama and I need to spend the little time there’s left to try to change their minds, if possible, because there are a lot of important differences between McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden. No matter how many good people are in the former category I can’t vote in good conscience for any ticket but the latter.

Life is getting too complicated, people are growing increasingly intolerant of anyone not in lock-step with them. This is probably why my husband and I are happiest in thinly-populated areas with our horses.

The good news is this miserable ham fisted handful of gun-loving, xenophobic, flea marketing, flag draped, flaming-cross cultists is hardly representative of ALL the citizens currently registered to vote. This is merely one demographic Karl Rove is praying is registered to vote. Beyond that, all we really have here is a pretty good bead on the feelings a few local Klan members have for Obama, whose support I doubt seriously Obama and Biden are courting that viciously anyway, as nice as it would be to have.

C’mon. Just to ensure Blacks, Browns, Yellows, Olives, and any hues in between are NasCar-style denied any opportunity to advance thier bastard fortunes over those of good white christ’ns, this collective of self-defeating ignorance is content to remain willfully oblivious to the reality that the same deceitful godless hypocrites pretending to be good fellow rednecks, who don’t know how to put gas into their foreign cars, have never once drew themselves a mug of QuikieMart cappicino over at the Shell station, and whose kids are in private education academies in Switzerland, ARE THE VERY REASON their jobs left the country and their kids are doing three and four tours of active in Anbar Province. So, that these fine Americans are not Obama - Biden supporters is neither a shock nor news. Although, I am stunned that 1% reportedly didn’t fall into lockstep with the rest of their white supremist brethren. Ford Motor Credit must have collected somebody’s F-150 with their best hunting hound Beauregarde still in the flatbed from right in front of that triple mortgaged doublewide about to be foreclosed. Damn it, with his best three Winchesters still in that gunrack in the back winder, too!!!

The only thing this statisically challenged encitement to riot shamefully confirms and vulgarly exploits is there still are people in America who irrationally hate others for no greater offense to them than differences of our ethnicities. America still boasts willfully igorant hateful people who don’t mind voting detrimentally against their own best interests, so long as it hurts others. And, that is very sad. Right now, what’s really eating away at these bigots is that people who are not white like them have money, property, possessions, education, and jobs, good opportunities out of which they feel whites are now being systematically cut. Now, there’s some uppity black Muslim from Chicago who wants to be President. Well, sweet cheese on a Ritz, coloreds are taking over everything! They don’t want to see what electing a black man to a traditionally white Presidency is going to do for poor whites already coming up shorter than they feel they should be. And, that’s sad. McCain and Palin don’t care about them. McCain and Palin no more identify with these poor white bigots than they want to identify with Barack Obama. Fortunately, there aren’t as many of these bitter numbskulls as Nostrodamus Rove would have the world believe.

Face it, the only poll that really counts is the one Karl Rove and his minions are feindishly using this sort of ridiculous tripe to subvert - the VOTE! That patriotic input into the machinations of this great democratic republic by all registered American Voters! Yes, that blessed first Tuesday in November 2008 when American history is made, when WE THE PEOPLE REGISTERED TO VOTE gather to elect one Barack Hussein Obama and the ladykiller Joseph Biden to the 44th Presidency and Vice Presidency of the United States of America.

I am African American, and whereas I don’t speak for all of us, I am comfortable saying that Obama supporters will vote for him not because he is black, but because he is the better leader for this country.  Firstly, he is extremely smart, has fresh and innovative ideas for change, and is passionate about creating a better country for us all. I believe Obama will win mainly because Americans are fed up with this senseless war and lost lives, exorbitant gas and food prices, poor health care and failing public school systems.  It is time for change, and McCain hasn’t a clue about the issues or how to affect positive change.  Only racist whites will vote solely on race, blacks will vote for change and a better life.

Racism cuts both ways. Black bloc-voting won the primary for Obama and may win the Presidential election for him, as it’s a very close race. How is it racist for people to not vote for Obama because he’s black, and not racist for black people to vote for Obama because he’s black, despite the civil rights activism of both Clintons throughout their career? When he signed the Voting Rights Act, LBJ muttered something like “There goes the Southern states.” As a former civil rights voter registration activist, I like to think that voting would enable previously defranchised people to vote for whoever they wanted, never foreseeing that the vote would be reduced to a race-based vote.

PS—I was a firm Hillary supporter, doubt that Barack will do as good a job she she could with one hand tied behind her back. Nevertheless, I’m voting for the Obama /Biden ticket—and so should every one who loves this country and cares about its future.