A Turning Point

As I type this, the news wires are jumping with rumors about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; an AP story reported that Clinton was preparing to concede to Barack Obama tonight, while his campaign managers have issued denials and suggestions that she was simply going to acknowledge that Obama will soon have enough delegates to cinch the Democratic nomination (which somehow isn’t a concession in their eyes). But regardless of Clinton’s reaction, it appears as though the Democratic primaries will finally be over tonight; John McCain and Barack Obama will now begin facing off for the office of president in an election that may shape this generation.

 

I am an ardent Obama supporter and have been for nearly a year now. Back in the beginning of 2007, I was skeptical of the man; he seemed like a media darling without substance. But then I did the research, and I read one of his books, and it became apparent that the praise from the media was not unwarranted: he really was a great candidate, a Robert Kennedy for our generation (but hopefully without the untimely end). What scares me going into the general election, though, is the fact that my initial perception of Obama has not left many Americans, Democratic or Republican. The scant research necessary to find out what Obama proposes is apparently too much work for the thousands upon thousands who claim that he doesn’t stand for anything.

 

And as I read the shrill attacks that the remaining Clinton supporters continue to levy against Obama, I realize that most of these people don’t want to know what he stands for. They don’t want to be bothered with this candidate, and it’s probably because he’s black.

 

Now, I know that’s a steep accusation to make; I’m not going to claim that everyone who doesn’t support Obama is a racist, as there are legitimate reasons not to support him. However, a growing subset of supposed Democrats and loyal Clinton supporters are revealing their true colors; when the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee decided to only seat half of Michigan and Florida’s delegates, pro-Clinton protestors began screaming about Obama winning the nomination through affirmative action and “latte liberals’” embrace of an “unqualified black man” for no reason other than white guilt. These activists are mostly older voters; they lived in a time before the civil rights movement, and they seem to have trouble adjusting to the reality of nonwhite political leaders.

 

But they do realize how foolish they would sound for opposing Obama for such a reason; that’s why several contradictory “Obama as the other” rumors have paradoxically been floating around and accepted so easily by older voters. It’s easy for an old closet racist to believe that Obama is a Muslim because he looks different and has a foreign name; it’s easy for a bigot to condemn Jeremiah Wright for saying that US foreign policy brought on 9/11 while ignoring John Hagee for saying that the attack was divine retribution; and if those don’t stick, one can always fall back on “I just don’t trust him,” the acceptable phrase for rejecting someone different from oneself in the decades following the civil rights movement. As of now, it’s hard to tell how many of these people are going to stay home or move to McCain on election day, since they all think the primaries are still going on; for the sake of our future, I hope we aren’t shackled to four more years of Bush policies because the older generation cannot let go of its prejudices.