Race and Perception in the Presidential Race
by Racialicious Special Correspondent Latoya Peterson
More politics - can I retire now?
This morning, I surfed over to the NYT website to skim the headlines before heading into the office. Here’s what I found:
In Obama’s Pursuit of Latinos, Race Plays Role
Brace yourselves.
LAS VEGAS — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has eaten beef tacos in East Los Angeles and sat on the living room couch of a working-class family in a largely Hispanic neighborhood here for 30 televised minutes. At a rally of the culinary workers’ union in the shadows of the Strip here one night, Senator Barack Obama pumped his fist and chanted with the crowd, “¡Sí, se puede; sí, se puede; sí, se puede!” or, “Yes, we can!”
[…]
Although the two candidates aggressively court those voters, who could be vital for Democrats this year and for years to come, the challenge is especially complex for Mr. Obama. It arises as Mrs. Clinton sought to tamp down reaction from Obama supporters to remarks she had made about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Obama confronts a history of often uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Hispanics, particularly as they have jockeyed for influence in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.
“Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color,” Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said. “I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama. There’s always been tension in the black and Latino communities. There’s still that strong ethnic division. I helped organize citizenship drives, and those who I’ve talked to support Clinton.”
A couple notes here.
1. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a new news article every week discussing exactly which races/ethnic groups are NOT going to vote for Obama because he’s black? White people weren’t going to do it because “they weren’t ready for a black president.” Black people aren’t going to do it, because he’s either “not black enough” or “because they’ll kill him” or any other reason that can be parroted into a camera. And now, Latinos won’t vote for Obama because of inter-ethnic tensions.
2. The article goes on to mention:
“Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who just dropped his own campaign to become the first Latino president, said that the rivalry between the two groups had eased and that Mr. Obama could transcend many of the differences as he approached Feb. 5, “what I call the Hispanic primary day.”
Wow. In all the media drumming, I missed that a Latino threw his hat into the ring for president. We’re inching closer to representation! Maybe…
3. Al Sharpton provided yet another quote that made me raise an eyebrow at the computer:
The Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who has been on the front line of many of the black-Latino battles in New York politics, said the tension would be a problem for Mr. Obama across the country and in New York, which also votes on Feb. 5. He said Mr. Obama would be at a disadvantage because of his choice to be a “race-neutral candidate.”
“It’s going to be a challenge that he has got to deal with,” Mr. Sharpton said. “There’s a natural history, and we’ve made some progress. But he has not been part of those efforts to make progress.”
Why did that seem vaguely threatening? He should have just came out with it - “lock the ranks Barry, or else!”
4. California State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero cuts to the heart of the matter:
She said the solution to overcoming the tensions was discussing economic problems of middle- and lower-class blacks and Hispanics like the mortgage crisis, an issue that first Mrs. Clinton and now Mr. Obama have been raising more frequency.
“I don’t think eating tacos,” is effective, she said with a flick at Mrs. Clinton. “We need to address what unites us. The key is not to raise the wedge issue.”
Interesting…
I shot an email off to Wendi, asking her what she thought. Wendi agreed with my initial assessment but added a few thoughts of her own:
I have seen a ton of this thing, but more explicitly just saying race
vs. gender as if they are exclusive categories that never overlap.
Seriously. But the whole race and gender thing needs a post in itself. We’ll touch on that later.
Wendi also points out:
Obama has the immigrant father/american dream narrative
that hillary lacks and they don’t consider that in the piece. I think
it depends on the subgroup too. I’m sure [Puerto Rican] and [Dominican] populations in
major cities may have entirely different voting patterns than say
Argentines, Cubans, Brazilians, or Mexicans. Yet somehow they still
mash them up into one monolithic category, failing to analyze or even
consider the vast differences between the groups.
What do you think, dear readers? Am I reading too much into a handful of articles? Is the MSM going to take this farther and ask about the Asian-American vote, or continue to pretend that Asian voters don’t exist? And why is the media so invested in the idea that PoC groups will not support each other? Are they merely reporting on the state of society? Or is there a different agenda they are pushing?
(You can also see the J & J Politics take on this article here.)
Update: This is mainly for those of you who read this through some kind of RSS reader and don’t see the comments. Kai pointed out that I misinterpreted Sharpton’s comments. Kai says:
Just wanted to note one thing: I’m not sure you correctly interpreted Sharpton’s comment. He’s done good work when it comes to coalition-building with Latin@s in NYC; in particular, he won major respect when he went to jail for 90 days in 2001 for engaging in a bold act of civil disobedience to protest the US Navy’s ongoing bombing of Vieques in Puerto Rico, an action which was ultimately successful (they stopped bombing). So I think his criticism is that Obama has not been on the forefront of those kinds of Black-Latin@ coalition-building struggles and will have to deal with that.
Thanks for the background info, Kai. That does put the comments in perspective and a better light. The way it was presented…well, hell, y’all can read.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
deb wrote:
I listened to Race and Gender in Presidential Politics: A Debate Between Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Democracy Now yesterday. I think Princeton Prof. Harris-Lacewell really held it down.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 4:25 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
I think Latino voting patterns used to be very diverse, but are starting to get a lot less diverse.
1) Younger Cuban-Americans tend not to have the same level of anti-communist fervor as older generations, and are trending less Republican.
2) Latinos in general getting sick of being demonized as illegal immigrants and having the Spanish language constantly insulted. If you lump everyone into the same group long enough, they’ll get mad and will want to get even at the people doing the lumping.
I don’t think these trends affect the Democratic primary much, however… it’s more of a Republican vs. Democratic thing.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 5:05 pm ¶
Neil wrote:
There was a really great debate on Democracy Now between Gloria Steinem and Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, on the article by Steinem talking about how Obama as a black MAN has more power than Hillary as a white WOMAN.
Professor Harris-Lacewell really called her out on that, and really drove home the Steinem’s failure to consider the people who are caught in between such a ridiculously oversimplified comparison, i.e. women of color.
here’s the link:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6539804678b3d1/
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 5:28 pm ¶
Lloyd Webber wrote:
Prof Harris-Lacewell did not just hold it down, she absolutely owned Gloria Steinem. Quite Hilarious to listen to the non points Steinem was making in the face of such fierce truth
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 5:32 pm ¶
Church of ShiskaBob wrote:
It’s embarrassing to listen to Steinem backtrack and skirt around her own editorial piece when confronted by Harris-Lacewell. More than anything, it seems to me that Steinem’s misconceived article was the product of emotion more than consideration, and was printed in the NYT based on her reputation over any substantive value. When forced by a serious intellectual to analyze what she has written , Steinem clearly is befuddled and her ideas revealed as shallow. I don’t think the Clinton camp will be referring people to Steinem’s piece anytime soon.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 6:19 pm ¶
David wrote:
Media pieces pitting races against each other… whoa, we haven’t seen that before…
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 6:54 pm ¶
diablaazul wrote:
It’s not the idea that PoC groups won’t support each other that I find disturbing. After all there are very real tensions between PoC communities. It’s the unspoken assumption that seems to prevail with a few exceptions that identity politics only matter to PoC groups, and that white (male, middle-class or higher) voters are generally able to vote in an “unbiased” manner, without taking such “irrational” factors into consideration. The media seems very eager to report on infighting between PoC groups and other marginalized groups (women, poor whites) - invested in the idea that we don’t support each other, as Latoya puts it. But (unsurprisingly) there doesn’t seem to be the same eagerness to explore the ways in which race, gender, and class shape the ways in which certain segments of white society vote. Hmm.
Oh, Steinem. That really was a poor showing on her part.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 7:16 pm ¶
Kai wrote:
Latoya, I’m enjoying your political obsession! though I’m gathering that you’re getting kinda sick of it yourself, hehe…
Just wanted to note one thing: I’m not sure you correctly interpreted Sharpton’s comment. He’s done good work when it comes to coalition-building with Latin@s in NYC; in particular, he won major respect when he went to jail for 90 days in 2001 for engaging in a bold act of civil disobedience to protest the US Navy’s ongoing bombing of Vieques in Puerto Rico, an action which was ultimately successful (they stopped bombing). So I think his criticism is that Obama has not been on the forefront of those kinds of Black-Latin@ coalition-building struggles and will have to deal with that.
Aside from that…yup, spot on. And thanks for the skewering of Bob Johnson too, that was just beyond ridiculous. No wonder BET has become what it’s become, ya know?
Peace.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 9:38 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
diablaazul - good points.
Kai - I am sick of politics. I prefer dealing with social issues and those just so happen to intersect with politics. Other than that…well, let’s just say I know how sausage is made and I want no parts of it.
Neil - Thanks for that link. I haven’t listened to a podcast since I switched from Ipod to Zen, so I would have missed this one. Debating devoting an entire post to it…
but I AM SICK OF POLITICS! ACK! I’m going to watch something asinine…maybe I’ll feel better after letting the Style network soothe me.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 9:56 pm ¶
Colin wrote:
I LOVE politics. I may just be corrupt at heart, or a naive fool, but I love politics, I honestly get energized and excited about seeing who will win, and doing what I can to serve my country in the hopes that it will make the underserved people better off just a bit if I do.
Latoya, if you want, once I complete my move, I may get a chance to help you drudge through this. I am not good at picking up links about things I have no idea about, but POLITICS is something I have some idea about, so the offer’s out there. Whatever you need help with, email me.
Other than that, I gotta say I’m saddened but not surprised that oh-so-many otherwise “progressive” Dems are now rank-and-file behind the Clintonian campaign of anti-black dog-whistling, and oppose Senator Obama for merely calling her out on the carpet for it. I had always thought that there were at least ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans, but now, maybe not so much.
Posted 16 Jan 2008 at 1:03 am ¶
dnA wrote:
Latoya,
That “eating tacos” doesn’t help thing was probably a response to this:
My response was: Get ready to hear about how much Clinton loves Chicken and Waffles in South Carolina!
Posted 16 Jan 2008 at 1:56 am ¶
RakuMon wrote:
“Is the MSM going to take this farther and ask about the Asian-American vote, or continue to pretend that Asian voters don’t exist?”
If last night’s Democratic “black-brown” debate in Nevada is any indication, I vote the latter.
Jenn at Reappropriate has more: http://www.reappropriate.com/?p=970
Posted 16 Jan 2008 at 7:51 am ¶