Was South Carolina's primary a race race?

   

    A quarter of a century ago or so, it was Harold Washington who was forced to face the great racial divide in electoral politics.

Now the trick bag is back, getting loaded up with America’s political peculiarities once again. This time it's Barack Obama turn to stuff the sack where African American politicians automatically get assigned to the short side of our nation's dueling color categories rather than as one in many of our country's diverse ethnic groups.

But rather than discuss the changes Washington had to go through to overcome his opponent’s “before it’s too late” campaign slogan to become Chicago’s first African-American mayor, I’d rather review yesterday’s news.

Obama won South Carolina by a landslide. He ended up with 55.4 percent of the vote in a record turnout. Hillary Clinton got 26.5 percent of the vote and native South Carolinian John Edwards got 17.6 percent.

I was in South Carolina last week; on the Obama press bus, covering the election for the Afro American News, where only a few of the Carolinians I spoke with saw the race in racial terms. But most, like the supporters in lily-white New Hampshire, spoke of the contest in terms of change—status quo versus new or young versus old.

In sharp contrast, the BBC News reported yesterday’s election results under the headline:   Polarised vote in Obama sweep.

In dissecting who voted for whom, the U.S. national media analyzed the election along those lines as well: Obama got 80 percent of the black vote and 25 percent of the white vote because he was black. Hillary got 42 percent of the women’s vote, as compared with Obama’s 22 percent, because she’s a woman and Edwards got 45 percent of the white male vote, as compared to Obama’s 27 percent, because he’s a white man.

It seems to me, we’re playing with a glass is half full, half empty perspective. In a former slave-holding state where they’re still battling over displaying the Confederate flag and statues of the rabid racists still hold prominent positions in public places, Obama’s white vote could be interpreted as phenomenal.

    On the other hand, the racial-polarization story line does not bode well for Obama come super-duper Tuesday, February 5. Casting Obama’s performance in—in pure black and white—all but guarantees that Hillary will be opening a can of whip ass in 10 days.

    Being ever the competitive campaigner, our “first black president,” Bill, casually dismissed the victory over his Mrs. by pointing out that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88, leaving it easy to infer that yesterday’s election was nothing more than the black primary.

    Now we can get on to the February 5 primaries where the white voters can decide.

    And that’s the stuff that African American politicians get stuck in—the trick bag. Rather than paint this presidential contest in black and white, with Obama, obviously being the black candidate, why isn’t a matchup between hyphenated Americans?

    If Obama’s surname was Pucinski and his father was from Warsaw and his mother from Dodge City, the color coded coverage would vanish and the reporting would center on the possibility of the Democratic Party nominating the first Polish-American for its presidential standard bearer. That could then transform Hillary Rodham Clinton from the white woman candidate into the Welsh-American woman president.

    In general, Obama is the African-American candidate, a member of the nation’s second largest ethnic group, and, in particular, he is a Kenyan-American candidate, a member of one of the nation’s smallest ethnic groups.

    African or Kenyan, American voters in the 22 state primaries on February 5 should vote for the best candidate, free from being forced to make a black or white choice.