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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Not as simple as black and white

Shanna Flowers

Would I be wrong to assume your support of Obama is because he is African American? -- Feb. 28 e-mail from a Hillary Clinton supporter

Inevitably, the question would come up.

Barack Obama, the presidential candidate who just last year was the subject of headlines asking whether he was black enough, has become a favorite of black voters.

Apparently, that bothers some white folks.

An Associated Press analysis on the front page of Monday's Roanoke Times found that some analysts believe Obama's heavy black support "is nudging some working-class white Democrats into Clinton's camp."

It doesn't help that the wife of the candidate whom blacks supported in 1992 and 1996 is now subtly using a black candidate's race against him to attract white voters to her.

The fact that Obama has benefited from a high turnout of black voters should suggest nothing other than that blacks want change, too. Obama has touched people in a way that some say they haven't seen since John F. Kennedy. I've come to realize that sometimes, intangibles are immeasurable. The abilities to inspire and to lead are two of those.

I do not for one minute diminish what Hillary Clinton has achieved in her life. But she points to her vast experience. Living in the White House for eight years doesn't automatically qualify her to run the country.

She points to health care as a signature issue. Her heart was in the right place on health care, but she couldn't deliver.

Many black people still think fondly of Bill Clinton. But his wife's campaign is alienating many others.

Certainly, race is a part of many blacks' decision to vote for Obama. They look with pride to an Ivy League-educated man who attracts them to a political process that for too long has largely ignored them.

They see a man who is married to a strong and equally smart black woman and the mother of his children, altering the portrait too often painted of black families.

But if race were the key factor, then Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would have gotten a heck of a lot more black votes in presidential primaries during years past.

Obama's power is that he unites a broad spectrum of people who want change. Blacks are among them.

We, too, are sick and tired of the eight years of economic and foreign policy backsliding under the Bush administration.

Just like whites, we're tired of Bush's spending money and the rest of us working stiffs picking up the tab or knowing that our grandkids will have to do so.

Yes, black people were slow -- and I'm no exception -- to embrace the viability of Obama's candidacy.

Blacks were wary that detractors would use his perceived shortcomings as an excuse for not supporting him. In recent weeks, Hillary Clinton has made that a key part of her campaign strategy.

But for me, and I believe for many black Americans, Iowa was the turning point. At that moment, we saw that Barack Obama was a viable candidate among white voters as well. We realized he had a chance. No one knows whether Obama will win his party's nomination, and if he does, whether he'll be elected. If nothing else, he has stirred voters in a way that hasn't been seen in decades.

Trish Boyd, who is a Roanoke Valley foot soldier for Obama's campaign, heard early from blacks that voting for him would be a waste of a vote.

They're not saying that anymore.

Does that answer the question?

Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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