Reply #124: This is one of the best posts about 'race' I've ever seen at DU [View All]

[Terran]

Thank you Effie.

I had one thing, anecdotal, to add. I was talking to my closest co-worker yesterday, who is a black man about my age (I'm 48). I asked him, for the first time, who he was supporting for President. He tends to like Republicans sometimes as much as he likes Democrats, and for him, likability is very important. He really liked Huckabee because he's from the south himself, though he acknowledged that Huckabee was essentially a nut.

Anyway, your points about people learning to understand candidates when they aren't familiar with them may apply *somewhat* between Obama and US blacks as a whole; my co-worker said that for a lot of people he knew (and I assume this meant other blacks), Obama at first wasn't "black enough" because of his unusual background--growing up in Hawaii, and not having the long US ancestry (on the black side of the family) that nearly all black Americans have (i.e., he's only second-generation 'black'). Some people may have wondered if he'd had the same kind of life experiences with *being* black that they had had. And yet I think it's clear from what you've written that people have gotten past that, after hearing him.

He told me something else that I had never heard: that Obama's being a member of Pastor Wright's church was essentially a requirement for political success in Chicago. He said it's one of two big congregations in Chicago that basically provide black politicians (and other famous people, such as Oprah Winfrey) a kind of community base that is an absolute requirement as a launching pad for a public or political career. What this signifies, if anything, I don't know, but I found it interesting--not something that's ever been said in the MSM.