I was raised in the Caribbean as well and although I have seen ‘Black” leaders not deliver, it is not fair to believe that all Black politicians are the same. It ts narrow and unrealistic to think that every time a ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ runs for President, we find ways to bring them down when they need our support the most.

The question is: how many times we make such statements when a ‘white’ man/woman runs with similar promises and never deliver? or is it okay for them to screw up?

As the sociologist of color that you are, do you know of any other way that a black man can win voters by being a complete leftist? So what if he is a centrist? Why not encourage our brothers and sisters to follow President JFK’s advice: “Ask NOT what the country can do for you… ask what you can do for the country”.

The bottom line is that we need to stop rallying against our black leaders unless you disagree with their issues. That will be a personal choice and it has nothing to do with the color of their skin. Stop the stereotyping!

If you talk to people who consider themselves “party activists,” or read some of their blogs, many do describe themselves as part of a movement pressuring the Democratic party to change, view Obama as their candidate and devote lots of their time thinking about how to use technology & the internet as organizational tools (not just for fundraising). Obama’s ability to tap into these technologies and the “netroots” has gotten a lot of attention from political pundits, but didn’t come up here at all. If he wins, however, this will no doubt be considered part of his “base” within the party, gaining credit for much of his success, especially early on.

I certainly don’t mean to take the position of the naive Obama backer here—I think skepticism about how much real “change we can believe in” is warranted (I’m especially in such a mood after watching too much of the sappy DNC already this week!)—but it does seem that Obama’s success is attributable in large part to at least a kind of “social movement.” It’s not necessarily the kind of typical Left-wing mass, protest-based, demands-on-the-state kind of movement sociologists tend to think of, but I suspect many of Obama’s supporters would be upset to stumble upon this discussion. I certainly don’t want to incite a big discussion about how to define a “social movement” (boring!) but there is a movement flavor to much of Obama’s base (if not his campaign itself), and I think this will be, historically, one of the more interesting aspects of his campaign; if for no reason other than the fact that Obama’s campaign is pulling the internet further inside the mainstream political process than previous campaigns.

So, like I said, I think this is an under-discussed aspect of Obama’s campaign in this discussion so far so I thought I’d throw that out there & see what everyone else thinks.

I think that Obama’s probable election (I agree that support for him among black and under 25 cell-phone only users is likely greatly underestimated and very important) will accelerate certain trends in American racial politics that began to germinate long before he declared his candidacy last February.

One major trend I see coming ever more to the forefront is the importance, or visibility, of the class divide in the black community. Both in terms of the discussions that take place among African Americans, and in terms of how blacks are seen by non-blacks in the wider world. As part of a larger book project on the significance of Obama’s candidacy, I have been conducting formal and informal interviews about Obama with African Americans– especially those belonging to the middle and upper-middle classes—for several months now, and these conversations have led me think particularly about the salience of class among blacks in this election.

As recent sociological research has emphasized, black experiences of race and racism in the U.S. today differ tremendously depending upon social class. The increasing significance of socioeconomic differences among blacks is reflected vividly in discussions on black radio talk shows, in Sunday sermons, and in casual conversations. A November 2007 report by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 40% of blacks believed that African Americans could no longer be thought of as a single race because of the socioeconomic diversity of the community and corresponding differences in “values” and identity.

It is not simply that the impact of race is “less” as you ascend in SES, but rather that it is qualitatively different. The Pew Center study cited above, in fact, notes that highly educated blacks are more likely than blacks with less formal education to believe that racial discrimination is a serious problem. Higher SES blacks that I talk to in the Twin Cities often tell me about the infuriating slights and marginalization they experience in professional settings. In one study, (quoted by Cedric Herring in his 2002 Contexts article “Is Job Discrimination Dead?”), 80% of blacks with college degrees and a whopping 90% of blacks with graduate degrees reported facing discrimination in the workplace.

On the other hand, the constant threat of police brutality, school failure, chronic underemployment, gun violence and inferior housing faced by residents of the lower-income, almost solidly black neighborhoods of North Minneapolis should never cease to be regarded as shocking and shameful. Most African-Americans, across lines of class, live feeling that our “blackness” is a master status; one that- for both good and for bad- shades every aspect of our daily lives. But we experience and express the meaning of “our blackness” in different ways.

The “implicit pact” that I believe Obama is making with white America (discussed in my previous post) is for the acceptance of certain blacks into the American mainstream– those with educational backgrounds, jobs, “values,” diction, and cultural sensibilities similar to his. Obama is a very exciting figure for many middle-class blacks in part because he seems to represent our experiences and points of view. We recognize in his biography and trajectory elements of our own. Many of us take on faith that the compromises and choices he has made during his campaign are strategic and tactical– (as we hear more and more often, “Look, the man is running for president of America, not president of Black America!”)—and perhaps similar to ones we’ve had to make in our own careers.

The black professionals I have spoken to admire Obama’s ability to straddle the lines between white and black worlds; to be seen as brilliant and successful and “cool” at the same time (Ebony Magazine recently featured Obama as one of the “25 Coolest Brothers of All Time”); to keep it real, but not so real that he loses the election before the voters even go to the polls (see Dave Chapelle “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong”); to play real power politics (i.e. “When the Man is One of Us,” by Jack White on The Root.Com, July 10, 2008), and play to win. I realize here that I’m discussing style as much as substance. But in addressing the issue of what explains Obama’s appeal among different sectors of the electorate, such cultural cues are important.

As for the issue of racial identity, I believe that what Obama is doing is opening up the space for new, expanded notions of blackness. The more time he spends in the national spotlight, the choices will hopefully, no longer only be to be seen as either a) “authentically black,” i.e. in all ways identified with “the hood,” poor blacks, and the “urban experience,” or as b) “not really black,” “honorary white,” ”black lite” (to use Eduardo’s phrase), or “not black enough.”

While I realize that a number of progressive scholars and activists (from Jesse Jackson to Ralph Nader) disagree, for many of the members of the black professional classes that I have interviewed, Barack Obama is not simply a “whitewashed” black man. He is, rather, someone who represents the increasing diversity of the black community. Not all of us are from the hood. Some of us are biracial. Increasing numbers have parents from the Caribbean or from Africa. Obama seems to represent a blackness that is cosmopolitan, global, progressive, multifaceted, and forward-looking (rather than primarily referencing slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and our glorious past as Kings and Queens in Africa). We are more diverse, complex and dynamic than previously assumed; no longer so easily stereotyped or pigeonholed. We may not want to only be asked to speak about “black issues” or on behalf of the entire black community (see interview with Newark Mayor Cory Booker in “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” NYT Magazine, Aug 6, 2008). We may sip a latte and shop at Whole Foods from time to time, but we can still drop a three-pointer on cue, listen to Jay-Z on our iPods, and give our significant others a pound as they go off to face the day.

The problem with this all, as I discussed previously, is that I’m not sure that many of Obama’s black middle-class supporters are clear enough about the bargain that Obama is implicitly making in our names. While they may differ on the ways and extent to which race shapes their lives, none of the people that I have spoken to thinks of themselves as “post-racial,” believes the U.S. to be a “magical place,” or thinks that racism in America is dead (to quote African-American commentator Tavis Smiley- “I love America . . . .but this ain’t Disneyland”).

We must listen carefully to what Obama is saying, and ask ourselves if he is agreeing to too much. For one, he has conceded that the children of the black professional classes should probably be excluded from affirmative action policies (see “Delicate Obama Path on Class and Race Preferences” NYT Aug 3, 2008). And while robust debates about personal responsibility have been taking place among black people for years, there is a degree to which Obama sometimes seems to be airing dirty laundry in public and scolding black people in order to score points with whites (yes I’m agreeing with Jesse here) that should make more of us uncomfortable.

The undertones of the new politics of race that may come to characterize the Age of Obama thus sometimes seem rather sinister. The crux of the subtext that I read is that —

• It is time for us all to get past race; especially blacks (see for example the article by black conservative John McWhorter, New Yorker Magazine, Aug 10 2008). We will move forward as a nation if blacks agree to come out from behind their walls, abandon grievance, victimhood, protest politics, cease to speak about racism, leave behind identity politics and try to simply become “Americans.”

• Do not remind whites that you are black, or talk about racism, because it may offend or upset them. (As highlighted in the upset over Obama’s comment that he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills,” which 53%of whites saw as racist !)

• Focus on individual achievement and pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps. Forget about institutional barriers to equality—not just those facing the black poor—but those that confront blacks in boardrooms, courtrooms and classrooms as well.

• Agree that racism is not structural but episodic, that most whites are well intentioned and colorblind, that racism is a two-way street, and whites and blacks can be equally racist.

• That men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are “hate mongers” and “race-peddlers” who stir up racial hatred simply to advance their careers.

• Etc!

These are the perils of the new politics of race. Somehow, we must find ways to support Obama and be excited about the expanded paradigm of blackness that he seems to represent without selling ourselves out in the process.

I think it was also telling that we as a group hesitated to get to the question of Obama’s blackness. It’s almost as if we played by the rules of acceptable discourse around his post-racial candidacy. Obama himself, as we’ve all noted, avoids the language of racial injustice, and does not dwell on the question of his own blackness. It is almost left largely to others to identify him. Post-racial politeness, though, calls for us to not to speak of the thorny issue.

But Obama’s post-racial discourse is almost like a fiction that no one buys but everyone is supposed to pretend is believable. African-Americans don’t (see Eduardo’s point about reading between the lines) , and Whites don’t either (see Joe F’s point about thinly disguised racist attacks, or the point above about his being a palatable black person). But decorum calls for avoidance of the issue, especially by the candidate himself. His campaign has tried to avoid leaking to the press the stories of threats and burnings of campaign offices in the heartland. And remember how everyone pounced on Obama for “playing the race card from the bottom of the deck” for the innocent statement that he did not look like the presidents on dollar bills. These rules speak profoundly to how things work in the current juncture of race relations as discussed elsewhere by both Eduardo and Joe F.

One way to interpret of it is clearly that the price a candidate of color must pay for mainstream respectability is the abandonment of racial discourse. Certainly something else going on is the “generational” effect that has had play in the media as well. I think it is correct to say that there is a newer generation of African American leadership that has come of age after the civil rights movement, with a different relationship to racial discourse, having lived much or most of their lives in the era of polite racism as opposed to overt, jim crow. I think it is also a generation that has on one had seen the erosion of civil rights victories but that has also had in some way a different horizon of possibilities as well since every civil rights era victory reversed (busing, affirmative action, and so on) has been justified as no longer being necessary since racism officially became “a thing of the past.”

Prospectively, I think many of Eduardo’s points are correct. I think Obama’s victory will for many signify a celebration of the end of racism, and will foreclose in many quarters discussion of racial injustice. But I also think that the very fact that Obama’s post-racial gestures are not quite believable means that there will also be productive tensions and ambiguous possibilities once he is in office. And here I think that the “Latinamericanization” analogy reaches a limit. One might say that Obama is akin to nonwhite politicians in Latin America whose very presence on mainstream political stage is premised on non-racialism. But the United States is not Brazil. Certainly racial structures here are evolving in that direction, but they do so in the context of a history of binary racial structures and a civil rights movement. Countries like Brazil have not had, until very recently and in a few places, “racial voting.” In other words, I think the Michelle Obamas and Jesse Jacksons of this world will not go away and the post-racial project would be far from accomplished in the case of an Obama victory.

On the earlier points on movements and the democrats, I also think that progressive forces will have a hard time holding Obama to progressive positions. There is tremendous effervescence now around his campaign, and it is hard to imagine how this will translate into a seat at the table that would provide a viable counterweight to all the “reaching across the aisle” that would be part of an Obama presidency.

Finally, I continue to think that the global repercussion of Obama’s victory would be huge. Imagine a Hussein in the white house! I think it will occasion at the very least some serious hand-wringing in countries whose self-image is as of less racist than the US. On foreign policy, we will certainly see a less unilateral United States. I suppose an educated guess on the contours of foreign policy would be that it would be a return to Clinton-era diplomacy, full of ugly moments, if not quite as bad as either of the Bush presidencies.

I also predict intensive, thinly disguised racialized attacks on him after the conventions that will accent his not being “American enough” or “inexperienced,” or “elitist and too well spoken,” which resonate well with very old antiblack stereotypes in the white racial frame. There is much in his background (like many Muslim relatives, studying the Koran, poor close relatives he does not “care for,” etc), that will be used against him. Racial Frame resonance is a central problem for him, but not for McCain, since there is no old and deep frame of a “dangerous white man.”

This is a very sad time for this country, if he loses. Many activist youth and African Americans will be highly discouraged and depressed by the results.

1) Barring some John Edwards-like scandal or a tragedy, Obama will be elected President of the United States! (So I concur with Jeff on his prediction.) I remind all of you who are afraid that Obama will not be elected that you had the same fear during the Democratic primary. Your most recent concern over the tightening of the polls in the last weeks misses the fact that these polls are not accurate because they do not include an adequate representation* of the black masses and the white youth, two crucial groups that strongly support Obama.

*How can we assess these groups are not adequately sampled in polls? Because pollsters still rely on contacting people via land line telephones and these two segments of the population are significantly less likely to have land line phones (See Megan Thee, December 2007 New York Times article, “Cellphones Challenge Poll Sampling”). This use to be a minor concern for survey researchers in the past as less than 3% of the population relied on cell phones as their primary phone, but today, the number of Americans that has cell phones as their phone has increased to 16% of the population. Besides, we must always remember that the outcome of Presidential elections in the USA is based not on the popular vote but on the electoral college and the most recent estimate offered by the The Rasmussen Reports suggests Obama holds a healthy lead there—273 to 227 with 38 votes deemed as a “toss up.”

2) After Obama is elected President, the USA will experience a brief “We shall overcome” period of euphoria; a “Yes we can” frenzy. However, we will soon return to the politics of “America the Brutiful.” President Obama will follow-through with the historic policies of the USA in the world and will defend our “national interest” by keeping the troops in Iraq for three or more years, by redeploying troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, by increasing the size of the military, and by talking tough to Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba.

3) In the home front, President Obama will talk about unity and about how we are one indivisible nation under (his) God, but most of his policies will do little to challenge the capitalist, gendered, and racial character of the polity. President Obama will not dare intervene with the “invisible hand of the market” that has been slapping all of us quite hard as of late. President Obama will not make a priority crafting policies to reduce the 25% difference in earnings between men and women with similar qualifications. And President Obama will take a middle-of-the-road, post-racial stand on race matters that will maintain the racial status quo. On the crucial symbolic issue of affirmative action, he will reaffirm Bubba’s mended but not ended stand.

4) America will remain Amerika, but will have a brown person in charge of keeping the White House white. Whites, whether they supported Obama or not, will rejoice and postulate a soto voce that Obama’s election demonstrates that the nation has finally moved “beyond race” and, accordingly, will object more vociferously than ever before to anyone who dares speak about racism. Blacks and other racial minorities, after their little intoxication with Obama’s hope liquor, will sober up and realize that having a black man in “charge” does not necessarily put food on their tables. And in a short time, we will all see the curious spectacle of white folks fanatically supporting a black President while black folks ask “their” President, “Damn, where did the change we could believe in go?”

5) The space for criticizing Obama today is very limited. Those who have done so have been called all sorts of names and accused of having all kinds of agendas. But historians and social commentators will ponder in a generation or two why we could not see clearly that Obama was not a progressive and why we could not understand that his campaign was not a social movement but part and parcel of traditional American party politics. Future generations will examine this period and agree with Nietzche’s dictum that madness is rare in individuals but common in nations and peoples.

That said, in my view this election is still Obama’s to lose. Obama has been massively over-exposed as a candidate, while McCain has had a largely free ride up to this point. Having clinched the Republican nomination early, he has been able to coast on his close ties to the mainstream media and his “maverick” reputation. But that will soon change. As we approach the conventions and the start of the fall campaign, he will now begin to receive the same close scrutiny as Obama already has. McCain’s flaws, and his unpopular policy positions and stances (not least a close connection to a deeply unpopular incumbent) will become incresasingly clear. The Obama campaign is also just now beginning their “ground war” with negative ads pointing these things out to voters in the swing states. All of this will push up McCain’s negatives and undercut some of his most important advantages.

Second, we would have to think that the swing based on “race” is very large indeed to permit a McCain victory. The Democrats have almost everything going for them going into this election: an unpopular incumbent to run again, a declining economy coupled with widespread public insecurity about the future, an unpopular war (which can and will increasingly be powerfully framed in relation to economic insecurity). Now if Joe is right, it would require that Obama would “underperform” by something like 5-7% to lose this election. That is an awful lot of old-fashioned racism among normal Democratic and independent voters (noting that old fashioned racists who always vote Republican anyway are irrelevant, and there good reasons to think that the longstanding racial realignment in the post-Reagan era has long since moved those voters into Republican alignment.

Third, I think the Democratic campaign is going to benefit from a number of things that polls do not always pick up (some of which might offset whites lying to pollsters about their Obama preference). There is a huge reserve of anger and high motivation among activists and rank and file Democrats that will push up turnout among likely Democratic voters. I see nothing like that among Republicans; indeed, the religious right is divided and the Republican “base” is not excited about McCain, only fearing a large Democratic sweep and that is a much weaker motivation for action. Cell phone-only users are out of the sample in polls, and are likley to be Obama voters. And we have every reason to expect significantly increased turnout among minority voters that is, again, not necessarily being picked up.

It is always risky for social scientists to predict the future – the social psychologist Philip Tetlock has shown that “experts” are often no better than ordinary people in making projections – and as we wrap up this discussion on the eve of the conventions it is still “early.” That said, I will stick my neck out and project that Obama will get 53% +/- 3% of the major party vote, and that America will have its first black president come January 2009. What that will mean for public policy remains, of course to be seen.

First, the available evidence suggests the enthusiasm Obama’s campaign has generated among blacks, Latinos, progressives, and in the general electorate may have a positive spillover effect for democratic candidates. Heck, Democrat Travis Childers won the Mississippi special election and Democrats have no business winning anything in Mississippi! Whether this development is a good or bad depends on whether one believes the Democratic party—which has been moving to the right since Bill Clinton was elected President and since the DLC was established—will work on progressive social policies without a social movement pushing it.

Second, on how whites and non-whites look at Obama, I restate what I said recently in a speech in August in the conference POWER AND RESISTANCE: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS, POSSIBLE FUTURES in Boston organized by the journal CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY.

“Whites (again, the 40% or so of whites who like Obama) and blacks look at Obama differently and his potential election seems to mean and symbolize totally different things for them. White Obama supporters like him because he is the first “black” leader they feel comfortable; because he does not talk about racism; because he tells them every time he can he is half-white (and it helps his father is from Kenya rather than from the South side of Chicago); because he is so “articulate” or, in Senator Biden’s words, echoed later by Karl Rove, Obama is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”; because Obama is talking about national unity, and because he, unlike black leaders hated by whites such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and, of course, Minister Farrakhan, does not make them feel guilty about the state of racial affairs in the country. Obama has said and done almost anything to make whites feel comfortable and thrown under the proverbial bus anyone who makes him look “too black” (Michelle Obama better watch out!) or “too political.”

Symbolically, even for the 60% of whites who will not vote for Obama, his success is proof that America is finally beyond race. His white supporters see him as the leader who will be able to deal with America’s “real” problems as for them race inequality is a secondary matter. And, as an added bonus, supporting (and, ultimately, voting for) Obama is becoming a signifier of “racial progressiveness.” Voting for Obama may even be seen by some whites as their path for (self-) absolution from their racial sins! [Again, Josh's comments based on his experiences doing work in the campaign are important. I also think that anyone who wishes to corroborate these matters may examine closely the various Obama groups in FACEBOOK and see what the young, mostly white members are saying about Obama and about race matters in America.]

In sharp contrast, for many nonwhites, but particularly for blacks, Obama is a symbol of their possibilities. He is, as Obama has said of himself, their Joshua—the leader they hope will take them to the promised land of milk and honey. They read in between the lines (probably more than is there) and think he has a strong stance on race matters. Obama is, for the old generation desperate to see change before they die, and for many blacks who came to age in the post-Reagan generation who have seen very little racial change in their life, the new Messiah; the new “race man” following on the footsteps of Martin, Malcolm, the Jesse of the 1980s, and the Al Sharpton of 2004. Poor blacks believe Obama will bring economic and social change to them—higher wages, health care, etc., and, for elite blacks, Obama is a symbol and a confirmation of their own standing, politics, and even behavior and manners—the genteel, aristocratic character of the black elite.”

Third, the question of Obama’s blackness makes sense if we understand that historically there has always been a “black majority” (Marable 1981) that has shared a similar set of life chances. By this standard, Obama is not Jesse, or Al, as Farrakhan, or Maxine Waters, or any other black leader with roots in the poor and working class segment of the black community. The question of his blackness then is not about his skin color, but about his life experiences and how his different experiences and background may affect his politics. Obama is black lite not because he is half-white, but because he has taken an almost raceless political stand and persona.

This said, the legitimacy of Obama’s blackness should be judged by his politics and, in my view, his are “neo-mulatto” politics (see the important essay on this subject by sociologist Hayward Horton in his edited book, SKIN DEEP, 2004).

This is kind of a hard one for me to field as I am by no means a race scholar (nor did I ever imagine that I would have much to say on the matter after undertaking a study of electoral politics in the heartland). For that reason, I’m just going to share a couple reflections that I found myself having repeatedly while doing fieldwork rather than try to say something definitive – feel free to take the reflections with a grain of salt.

As it became clear that Obama was a contender for the Democratic nomination , I found myself thinking a lot about William J. Wilson’s work. So for example, one of the traditionally very white cities in Iowa that I studied is experiencing a moderate influx of African Americans from Chicago’s south side. For the most part, these are former impoverished residents that have decided to move to Iowa because of its relatively generous public welfare provisions vis-à-vis Chicago (I know this to be true, because a fellow ethnographer is doing fieldwork on the south side, where she has attended community meetings during which strategies for moving to Iowa are discussed). For the most part, these migrants have settled in several traditionally all white blue-collar neighborhoods – one of which I conducted interviews in.
As you guys might imagine, this situation has generated a good deal of racial tension. So for example, one of my informants is Greg – a former meatpacker and truck driver in his fifties who is now disabled. Since he has a lot of time on his hands, my “interviews” with him usually just consist of hanging out for a couple hours and talking to him, his wife and sometimes his daughter (who is in her 20s). Over time, I have heard a lot a lot of veiled racist remarks (e.g. “can those people even keep track of all their kids?”) and many not so veiled remarks (e.g. you can probably imagine) at Greg’s house about the newcomers to the neighborhood. What always struck me about the situation, however, is how easily Greg would switch from these comments about his neighbors to praise, for example, of the few black professional involved in local politics, or, for that matter, to praise for Barrack Obama. The issue is not so much that these cases were used to illustrate exceptions to the rule or token black acquaintances (some much older people do perceive Obama that way; they say, for example, “he speaks well and seems educated for somebody from his background”). Rather, Greg made these switches so readily that it did not seem like he was thinking about Obama and local black professionals as “black”, at least not in the same way that his new neighbors were “black”.
So following Wilson, I have tended to think about such cases in the context of the widening gulf between the urban underclass and black middle class (which, if I remember, Wilson attributed to de-industrialization, decreasing residential segregation, the limited success of affirmative action, and a few other factors). The ideological echo of this gulf, I think, can sometimes produce an identification of African Americans with exclusively the black underclass among some people. Those that do not exhibit the characteristics of the black underclass, by contrast, are afforded a sort of provisional whiteness/”normalcy”. I think this certainly worked in Obama’s favor; a lot of people I spoke with found the fact that he did not “seem black” “refreshing” and that got him a lot of support (and was also one reason why the “scandal” about his distinctly inner-city black church so damaged him politically). This was predominantly the case in higher income neighborhoods, but even in the racially polarized working class neighborhood Obama got a lot of support (so Gary caucused for Edwards because his brother worked on the campaign, his wife went for Clinton and his daughter for Obama – although all three liked Obama a lot and are now supporting him during the general election).

Yikes, looks like I went and wrote a small treatise on thse two points. That is what a three hour flight will get you!