With Election Day exactly one week away, we may have lost track of the historic magnitude of Sen. Barack Obama’s eminent position in this race.
Though we’ve had black Congress members since the end of the Civil War, one could make the argument that minority representatives are primarily elected in districts with significant minority populations. The election of the president, on the other hand, requires a coalition of all races. In fact, in a joint Gallup Poll released just a few days ago, it is projected that Obama will win 44 percent of the white vote next week — more than any Democratic candidate for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976. For a nation whose relationship with blacks has been characterized by chain gangs, fire hoses and gunned-down civil rights leaders, this is nothing short of profound.
The vast majority of people who will be voting for Obama next week will have made their decision irrelevant of the senator’s race — or, as the candidate himself quipped, his parents’ lack of foresight when deciding on a middle name — they are voting for him simply because he is the best candidate for the job. As the pundits have become fond of saying: you don’t see what color the hand is when it’s trying to help you up.
That’s not to say race hasn’t been a factor. Sarah Palin and other McCain surrogates are fond of talking about the “real” America: small towns, good values, pro-American and, oh, yeah, overwhelmingly white. I guess small towns are sort of like the real America except that they reflect neither its geography nor its demographics. The 2000 census showed that 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas (this number will only have gone up), which are a much better representation of the reality that one in every three Americans is a minority. In fact, the Census Bureau released a report in August estimating that the United States will be majority non-white by the year 2042. It’s only logical that the most powerful office in the land would come to reflect this fact.
That being said, this is not to be interpreted as a case for Sen. Obama’s election based on his race. One shouldn’t vote for any candidate because of — or in spite of — his or her race. You should vote for Sen. Obama because he is the superior candidate.
I’m also not so na√É.√Ü.√É.√Øve to think that the election of Barack Obama would make inconsequential the issue of race in the Unites States. I think we’ve seen enough latent racism in this campaign — “small-town values,” the mocking of Obama’s work as a community organizer, whether he is Muslim, etc. — to know its pervasiveness, even today. But those who aren’t going to vote for Obama based solely on his race are never going to be convinced — they can continue to live in their fairyland if they so choose. Meanwhile, the rest of us will reject the “real America” fallacy and embrace our 21st century nation.