Voting for Obama. His background elides a lot of the baggage other candidates like Jesse Jackson, etc, do in terms of lineage with slavery and the Civil Rights movement. Obama is black... but it's different, because his Dad is an immigrant and his Mom is white. So people can claim progressive thinking as they vote for him without really confronting the true problems of race in our country.

Would this country elect a truly angry black man running for President? Someone who's rhetoric wasn't about unity and hope? Does Obama's race limit his rhetorical range - can he get angry without it being threatening to white people?

I'm a white woman studying critical race theory, etc, and education. I'm really intrigued by the way race plays - and doesn't play - into this race (<--pun?) so far.

I'm not sure this country would elect an angry white man running for president whose rhetoric wasn't about unity and hope. At least I wouldn't vote for one. Unless he was an angry albino eskimo running for president with rhetoric that divided voters into pro-eskimo and anti-eskimo camps. I'd only vote for him because...how could I not?

Other than being "truly angry," what does your hypothetical black candidate offer to the American people? It's a serious question, and your failure to address it shows that you're involved in nothing more than a self fulfilling prophesy.

Obama said something to the effect of "If I lose this race, it won't be because I'm black." That is absolutly correct. Jessie Jackson lost because he failed to convince voters he was capable of the job.

I saw two Sunday opinion shows that both brought up the results from the same recent Gallup poll - that 69% of white voters claimed that they would have no problem voting for a black presidential candidate but that only 47% of black voters said the same. The forum members then discussed possible reasons for the disparity.

I take two things relevant to this discussion from the Sunday ones - While the question did not mention a specific candidate, it's pretty hard to believe that anyone wouldn't have Obama in mind, the voters responded to a theoretical question with an objective answer. So, 7 in 10 white voters are ready to cast their ballots for this specific black man (asked or not) because - well who knows, but at least they don't feel threatened by Obama. That seems logical - he's not a threateneing type of guy.

Given the same scenario/preconditions I've described, only 4.7 in 10 black voters are ready to cast their ballots for the same specific black man because - again, who knows. But it's certainly hard to ignore and easy to argue that half of black voters don't consider him 'black enough' (what ever that means). Certainly one shouldn't assume all blacks vote the same simply because they're black - same goes for whites.

But the poll statistic is quite interesting just the same.

lolacat:

Would this country elect a truly angry black man running for President? Someone who's rhetoric wasn't about unity and hope? Does Obama's race limit his rhetorical range - can he get angry without it being threatening to white people?

This is going to be taken badly but, well, here we go.

Let's not kid ourselves; angry black man often equals black racist, someone who just hates white people.

White people will not vote for someone who hates them because of their skin color for the same reason that a black person won't vote for someone who hates them because of their skin color.

You look at how Jackson/Sharpton act (the Duke Lacross case comes to mind) and it seems to be less about MLK's dream of unity, less about anger at the sin of racism, and more about simply hating white people.

Obama doesn't hate white people and that's why he succeedes while Jackson and Sharpton fail.

I'm just happy that the phrase "half breed" hasn't come up (Oops, my bad). I'm old enough to see that this fact, in itself, represents real progress. And yet, the subject has come up, hasn't it? So maybe the progress is not as real as one might hope.

He's native born and at least thirty-five years of age. Nothing else is truly relevant but his positions and his abilities. So the question becomes, are we still willing to let irrelevancies interfere with our search for the best person for the job?