Another Note on the Election

by Latoya Peterson

One of the most annoying memes I hear keep popping up in the media and on various threads and boards is that “blacks are voting for Obama – why is it racist to say whites vote for Clinton? It’s a fact that black people are voting for Obama because he’s black, just admit it.”

Here’s why that assumption pisses me off – because that is an oversimplification of what actually happened. Clinton and Obama started out more or less equal in the eyes of the black community. Yes, some people were determined to vote black, no matter what. And some people preferred to go with Clinton as we have seen her work. And some people had the idiotic mentality that a vote for Hill is another vote for Bill, so vote for her. So at the beginning of this race, Hillary was the assumed nominee. Many of us were intrigued by Barack Obama, but not sold. After all, who was he? Even after winning Oprah’s backing, people were still skeptical of Obama.

As I have said many times before, when this race started, I was happy with either candidate getting the nod. Both showed dedication and leadership, and while their tactics differed, they had grand plans for improvement. With Edwards in the mix, the conversation about poverty and class actually became a mainstay of the election stump speech which was a welcome addition. Things were tense, but cool. We were going to see who was the better contender and that person would become our nominee.

This was supposed to be a battle of ideals – not a rehashing of race and gender relations in the United States.

And yet, here we are.

A month or so ago, I was talking with one of my friends who happens to be white, female, and Jewish. She staunchly and proudly voted for HRC and campaigns for her to be president. Sipping on a beer, she turned to me and said, “See, you’re lucky. Black people stick together. Women, we don’t do that. Women suck. We can’t unite around our candidate the way black people can.”

I appraised her with some amusement. “Black people spend a lot of time talking about how we can’t come together to get things done. Even now, there are black people who are die-hard HRC supporters, a lot who aren’t voting anyway, and some Obama supporters. You generally only see the united black front after some high offense has happened.”

Like I said, that was over a month ago. We haven’t spoken since. But it is obvious that things changed. The fact that a split black populace suddenly decided to rally around a black candidate with numbers into 90% are telling.

So, when you read the headlines that we read, think about it from a black perspective. dnA reports:

Apparently not satisfied with her plummeting approval ratings among black voters, Hillary Clinton decided to remind us again that our votes don’t actually count:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” “There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Hard-working Americans = white Americans. Right. The rest of us sit on our porches eating watermelon and plucking banjos.

For some reason, despite this “broader base” Clinton still seems to be having trouble raising money, and you know, getting more votes than her opponent. But at this point any abstract metric besides votes or delegates that Clinton can use as a rationale for her candidacy becomes the only appropriate one to use.

This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it’s meant to give white voters the impression that they would be “disenfranchised” by an Obama win. It’s a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama’s success.

Now, I can understand the perspective of an HRC supporter. She’s worked hard. She’s come back from adversity time and time again. She has good policy. She is composed in the face of direct and blatant attacks on her womanhood, character, and appearance since 1992.

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