TRANSITION | Forming the next government
18 January 2008
Barack Obama’s U.S. Presidential Bid Bridges Racial Divisions
But “Obamamania” may not put first black person in White House
Washington -- The candidacy of Barack Obama for U.S. president is galvanizing the American people, several students of the U.S. political scene tell America.gov.
With his stirring oratory sparking “Obamamania,” the Illinois Democratic senator connects to people of all different racial and ethnic backgrounds, said William Jelani Cobb, associate professor of history at Spelman College in Georgia.
Americans are attracted to Obama’s message of bringing people together and the fact that he is African American is “icing on the top,” said Cobb, also an author who specializes in 20th-century American politics. Cobb said Obama’s candidacy is “not driven by race.”
Cobb said endorsements by several prominent African Americans for Obama’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, will not entice a majority of the U.S. black community to vote for the New York senator and former first lady.
Clinton may get a “substantial number of black votes, but it will not be because of the endorsements,” said Cobb. He said early endorsements by the black leaders for Clinton were prompted by the fact that she seemed “low-risk” and a “safe bet” as a strong Democratic candidate for the White House. But no one foresaw that Obama would enjoy such large voter backing in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, Cobb said.
Black leaders who endorsed Clinton “are on the defensive now and having to explain to the people they purportedly lead why they are so far out of step,” said Cobb.
The professor said the chances of Obama capturing the White House, if he wins the Democratic nomination, depend on which Republican candidate opposes him in the general election. Obama’s strongest Republican rival would be Arizona Senator John McCain, said Cobb.
Support for another Republican candidate, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, is “pretty narrow,” while the “personality” of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, “does not draw people to him,” Cobb said.
VIEWS OF ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
Arizona State University history professor Thomas Davis says: “I am not sure blacks in the United States collectively see Senator Obama any differently than whites collectively see him. The range of views is probably the same across race.”
Davis, the author of Race Relations in America, among other books, said that “for almost every perspective some white person has of Senator Obama, there is some black person who probably has an almost indistinguishable perspective.”
Davis said the difference between the views of blacks and whites of Obama “arises primarily in where the views cluster.” A greater percentage of blacks, said Davis, see Obama as a “sign and symbol of their hopes for improved race relations, which more pointedly in their views means improved circumstances and conditions in their lives.” In that regard, added Davis, more blacks appear likely to “invest unreasonable expectations” in Obama.
“The more influence he appears to have, the more blacks will want from him,” said Davis.
Meanwhile, whites on the whole are less demanding of Obama, the professor said, and “tend to see him more simply as a signal of a new moment in U.S. history and life.”
Any concerns by voters that Obama, because of his relative youth (he was born in 1961), was not involved in America’s civil rights struggle of the mid-20th century are unfounded, Davis said.
“The civil rights struggle is ongoing. It is not something past ... it is something present. And it is something in which Senator Obama is actively engaged,” said Davis.
Davis said that despite all of Obama’s cross-racial appeal, he does not see the senator winning the White House.
“I am not yet convinced that this is the right time for a black candidate to have a realistic chance to become president,” Davis said.
He explained that “in the closed confines of the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans, to say nothing of the privacy of voting booths, Senator Obama will be an attractive candidate, but he will be too few voters’ actual choice for president.”
OBAMA THE GREAT WHITE HOPE?
David Greenberg, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said in a January 13 Washington Post article that Obama’s “allure” stems from his “near-perfect pitch in talking about race to white America.”
Greenberg quoted from social commentators that a President Obama would be a “ringing symbol” that racism no longer rules in the United States. That, said Greenberg, makes Obama the “great white hope.”
Greenberg said many voters and political pundits “remain intoxicated ... with the hope” that Obama can “deliver ... a categorically different kind of change” from Hillary Clinton or the Republican presidential candidates.
