Obama and the 'Hidden Trouble' of Racism
As the volunteers and staffers packed boxes and broke apart furniture last week at Sen. Barack Obama's campaign office in Wilkes-Barre, some began to acknowledge the "hidden trouble" of racism and bigotry they encountered in six weeks of courting Luzerne County voters.
The Obama campaign has a policy prohibiting campaign workers and volunteers from speaking publicly about encounters with racism — a rule designed to keep the focus on the issues.
But one local campaign coordinator, who asked not to be identified, said the hostilities he and other Obama volunteers faced are endemic of a deep racial divide within the electorate and are harmful to the Democratic Party.
"We need to address this diversity issue," he said.
The campaign coordinator, a black veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, said he encountered flares of racism while campaigning for Obama in neighborhoods across the region — from Nanticoke and Wyoming, to Avoca and parts of Wilkes-Barre.
At one door, the campaign coordinator said, a resident told him, "I'll never vote for that black bastard."
The volunteers said biases clouded their door-to-door campaign visits and telephone calls to prospective voters.
"I wouldn't be saying it if it were one or two," the campaign coordinator said.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Obama in the Pennsylvania Primary on April 22 by 214,224 votes, or 9.2 percent.
She won Luzerne County by a 3-to-1 margin.
According to certified election returns, Clinton received 48,122 votes, or 74.71 percent of the Democratic ballots cast in the county. Obama won 16,022 votes, or 24.88 percent. Write-in candidates received 264 votes.
Clinton's dominance in Luzerne County appeared to be fueled by her family ties to nearby Scranton, frequent campaign trips to the area, and the strong support for her from county Democratic leaders.
Racism played a role too, the volunteers said.
"In this area there is too much bigotry," the campaign coordinator said. "We had some out-of-state people come in and the things they were subjected to, they had to go to church after and pray."
Another volunteer, who drove voters to polling places during the primary in a car marked with Obama signs, said he was subjected to a barrage of racial epithets.
"It's 2008, not 1908, but you have that attitude here," campaign volunteer Eric Graff of Fairview Township, said. "It's just a part of this area, but realistically it's a part of any area."
Obama and Clinton will continue their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination with primaries Tuesday in North Carolina and Indiana, which has similar demographics to Pennsylvania.
Obama volunteers in Luzerne County began feeling the sting of racism in the winter, as they solicited signatures to secure the candidate's place on the primary ballot, Ron Felton, president of the Wilkes-Barre branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said.
"They were running into a lot of negative comments, racial slurs and the sort," Felton said. "I was not surprised."
"This area has problems, it has racial problems. There's racism in this area."
Dr. David Sosar, a political science professor at King's College, said race and gender biases continue to be an issue, acknowledged or unacknowledged, in nearly every part of the country.
"In any area you go, you're going to find some people, a small number like this," Sosar said. "Just as many people could be anti-woman."
Both Obama and Clinton have the potential for history as the first black or first woman Democratic nominee and — pending a victory over presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in November — the first in either of those classifications to become president.
Clinton, the former first lady and current junior senator from New York, has been a nationally known political entity since she campaigned with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in 1992.
Obama served as a state senator in Illinois from 1997 to 2004 and won election to the United State Senate in 2004.
He had been described by newspaper columnists and radio commentators as the first "post-racism" presidential candidate — the first to break into the mainstream by simultaneously averting and transcending the traditional barriers of race that have undermined the seriousness of White House runs by previous black candidates such as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Obama proffered his message of trans-partisan, trans-racial unity in the speech that seared his name and visage into the national consciousness — the keynote at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July 27, 2004.
"Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us," Obama said. "Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America. There's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America."
Four years later, the racial divide still exists in the Pennsylvania and Luzerne County parts of the United States of America.
According to statewide exit polls conducted for the major television networks and the Associated Press, Clinton received nearly two-thirds of the white vote in the state, while Obama took 92 percent of the black vote.
The exit polls included results from surveys conducted at three polling places in Luzerne County, which is overwhelmingly white, but breakout figures were not released.
Of the 313,000 people living in Luzerne County, approximately 296,600, or 94.3 percent, are white and about 7,500, or 2.4 percent, are black, according to the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the Census Bureau.
Gov. Ed Rendell, Clinton's chief supporter in the state, sparked controversy in February when he raised the possibility of racism and a racial divide affecting the voting in the primary.
"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," Rendell said during a meeting with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking — but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so," Rendell said, referring to his
Republican opponent in the 2006 gubernatorial election, the former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Rendell's prophecy held in Luzerne County.
He defeated Swann among all voters in the county by a 35-percent margin and Clinton trounced Obama among county Democrats by nearly 50 points.
There are no black elected officials currently serving in Luzerne County, or in any of its 76 municipalities or 13 school districts. No black has ever represented Luzerne County in Congress or the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
Obama, whose mother was white and father black, acknowledged the continuing burden of racism and race relations in a March 18 speech in Philadelphia, delivered in response to a series of controversial sermons by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," Obama said.
Obama reiterated that sentiment in an interview on Fox News last Sunday, but said racism would not have an impact on his election.
"Is race still a factor in our society?" Obama said. "Yes. I don't think anybody would deny that."
"Is that going to be the determining factor in a general election? No, because I'm absolutely confident that the American people — what they're looking for is somebody who can solve their problems."
He added later, "If I lose, it won't be because of race. It will be because I made mistakes on the campaign trail, I wasn't communicating effectively my plans in terms of helping them in their everyday lives."
The campaign workers and volunteers in Luzerne County would disagree, Felton said.
"What these people are encountering when they're going door-to-door or however these comments are coming to them, it shows you how deeply rooted racism is," Felton said.
"They don't have to do that, they choose to do that, to let these people know they have an issue with people of color," he added. "Those are years of attitudes that have developed and that's just not going to change."
The Obama campaign has a policy prohibiting campaign workers and volunteers from speaking publicly about encounters with racism — a rule designed to keep the focus on the issues.
But one local campaign coordinator, who asked not to be identified, said the hostilities he and other Obama volunteers faced are endemic of a deep racial divide within the electorate and are harmful to the Democratic Party.
"We need to address this diversity issue," he said.
The campaign coordinator, a black veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, said he encountered flares of racism while campaigning for Obama in neighborhoods across the region — from Nanticoke and Wyoming, to Avoca and parts of Wilkes-Barre.
At one door, the campaign coordinator said, a resident told him, "I'll never vote for that black bastard."
The volunteers said biases clouded their door-to-door campaign visits and telephone calls to prospective voters.
"I wouldn't be saying it if it were one or two," the campaign coordinator said.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Obama in the Pennsylvania Primary on April 22 by 214,224 votes, or 9.2 percent.
She won Luzerne County by a 3-to-1 margin.
According to certified election returns, Clinton received 48,122 votes, or 74.71 percent of the Democratic ballots cast in the county. Obama won 16,022 votes, or 24.88 percent. Write-in candidates received 264 votes.
Clinton's dominance in Luzerne County appeared to be fueled by her family ties to nearby Scranton, frequent campaign trips to the area, and the strong support for her from county Democratic leaders.
Racism played a role too, the volunteers said.
"In this area there is too much bigotry," the campaign coordinator said. "We had some out-of-state people come in and the things they were subjected to, they had to go to church after and pray."
Another volunteer, who drove voters to polling places during the primary in a car marked with Obama signs, said he was subjected to a barrage of racial epithets.
"It's 2008, not 1908, but you have that attitude here," campaign volunteer Eric Graff of Fairview Township, said. "It's just a part of this area, but realistically it's a part of any area."
Obama and Clinton will continue their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination with primaries Tuesday in North Carolina and Indiana, which has similar demographics to Pennsylvania.
Obama volunteers in Luzerne County began feeling the sting of racism in the winter, as they solicited signatures to secure the candidate's place on the primary ballot, Ron Felton, president of the Wilkes-Barre branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said.
"They were running into a lot of negative comments, racial slurs and the sort," Felton said. "I was not surprised."
"This area has problems, it has racial problems. There's racism in this area."
Dr. David Sosar, a political science professor at King's College, said race and gender biases continue to be an issue, acknowledged or unacknowledged, in nearly every part of the country.
"In any area you go, you're going to find some people, a small number like this," Sosar said. "Just as many people could be anti-woman."
Both Obama and Clinton have the potential for history as the first black or first woman Democratic nominee and — pending a victory over presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in November — the first in either of those classifications to become president.
Clinton, the former first lady and current junior senator from New York, has been a nationally known political entity since she campaigned with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in 1992.
Obama served as a state senator in Illinois from 1997 to 2004 and won election to the United State Senate in 2004.
He had been described by newspaper columnists and radio commentators as the first "post-racism" presidential candidate — the first to break into the mainstream by simultaneously averting and transcending the traditional barriers of race that have undermined the seriousness of White House runs by previous black candidates such as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Obama proffered his message of trans-partisan, trans-racial unity in the speech that seared his name and visage into the national consciousness — the keynote at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July 27, 2004.
"Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us," Obama said. "Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America. There's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America."
Four years later, the racial divide still exists in the Pennsylvania and Luzerne County parts of the United States of America.
According to statewide exit polls conducted for the major television networks and the Associated Press, Clinton received nearly two-thirds of the white vote in the state, while Obama took 92 percent of the black vote.
The exit polls included results from surveys conducted at three polling places in Luzerne County, which is overwhelmingly white, but breakout figures were not released.
Of the 313,000 people living in Luzerne County, approximately 296,600, or 94.3 percent, are white and about 7,500, or 2.4 percent, are black, according to the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the Census Bureau.
Gov. Ed Rendell, Clinton's chief supporter in the state, sparked controversy in February when he raised the possibility of racism and a racial divide affecting the voting in the primary.
"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," Rendell said during a meeting with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking — but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so," Rendell said, referring to his
Republican opponent in the 2006 gubernatorial election, the former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Rendell's prophecy held in Luzerne County.
He defeated Swann among all voters in the county by a 35-percent margin and Clinton trounced Obama among county Democrats by nearly 50 points.
There are no black elected officials currently serving in Luzerne County, or in any of its 76 municipalities or 13 school districts. No black has ever represented Luzerne County in Congress or the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
Obama, whose mother was white and father black, acknowledged the continuing burden of racism and race relations in a March 18 speech in Philadelphia, delivered in response to a series of controversial sermons by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," Obama said.
Obama reiterated that sentiment in an interview on Fox News last Sunday, but said racism would not have an impact on his election.
"Is race still a factor in our society?" Obama said. "Yes. I don't think anybody would deny that."
"Is that going to be the determining factor in a general election? No, because I'm absolutely confident that the American people — what they're looking for is somebody who can solve their problems."
He added later, "If I lose, it won't be because of race. It will be because I made mistakes on the campaign trail, I wasn't communicating effectively my plans in terms of helping them in their everyday lives."
The campaign workers and volunteers in Luzerne County would disagree, Felton said.
"What these people are encountering when they're going door-to-door or however these comments are coming to them, it shows you how deeply rooted racism is," Felton said.
"They don't have to do that, they choose to do that, to let these people know they have an issue with people of color," he added. "Those are years of attitudes that have developed and that's just not going to change."
Labels: Citizens' Voice (2007-Present)
