A post-racial election? Not really.

[eridani]

http://www.truthout.org/112508R

For all of the talk of a newly tolerant white electorate, the majority of white people in America voted for John McCain. In contrast, 96 percent of African-Americans who voted cast their ballots for Senator Obama. Why did so many older black people support a candidate whom many in the mainstream media categorized as "post racial"? In Florida, black voters helped Obama become the first northern Democrat to carry Florida since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is especially poignant as Florida was one of the toughest of all Jim Crow states and African-Americans have had their votes stolen in the Sunshine State more times than any historian can count. Black Floridians endured massacres at long-forgotten places like Rosewood, Ocoee and Wildwood. Florida boasted the highest lynching rate in the nation, and the state's vicious penal system earned it the moniker of "American Siberia." African-American, Jewish and Italian immigrants frequently found themselves trapped in a system of debt peonage designed to bolster the profits of white business supremacy.<12>

<snip>

Was Sen. Barack Obama's victory an example of post-racial politics? Not according to the exit polls, which demonstrate the crucial role of race and class in this election.<15> Black and Latino support was crucial in Obama's victory in key states including Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida. Nationally, 55 percent of white Americans voted for Sen. John McCain, with the white college graduate vote split nearly evenly for the two major contenders.<16> In sharp contrast, 67 percent of Latinos and 63 percent of Asian-Americans voted for Obama. In Florida, Obama won a remarkably high percentage of the Hispanic vote - currently estimated at 57 percent - even though some conservative Cubanos in South Florida featured car bumper stickers that read: "Cuba Voted for Change in 1959."<17> On the day after the election, the Miami Herald observed that Senator Obama was the "First Democrat candidate to Win Florida's Hispanic Vote."<18>

<snip>

Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy is reaching a point of diminishing returns for the GOP. The strategy of winning elections by taking white votes from the Democrats by playing on white racial fears failed for a variety of reasons. First of all, "non-white" voters are increasing in significance all across the country. In addition, many so-called white Reagan Democrats have been driven out of the Republican Party by the GOP's embrace of deregulation, privatization and religious fundamentalism. The youth vote generally trended towards Obama, but, lacking organizational affiliations, the future voting habits of these voters is unclear. Most hopefully, white union members voted 67 percent in favor of the Illinois senator. In These Times rightly notes that "If more voters belonged to a union, Obama would have won more decisively, even among white voters." Students of community organizing, take note please.<24>

[BlooInBloo]

1. (shrug) It's only white folks who say that, and we all know our record on...

telling the truth about racism. Something like 0-fer-2,342,36,547,436,432

truthout's record is better than ours, in fact.

[Jennicut]

2. The Southern strategy won't work anymore because of the coalition

of whites, AA's, hispanics, and younger people.