Reply #58: the danger

[Two Americas]

The danger is that historically white voters have been driven to vote a certain way by appeals to racism.

There is no such thing as "reverse racism," by the way, so characterizing anything Obama or his associates are saying or doing as "racist" is not correct.

However, all politicians and political analysts look at voting blocs and talk about the impact of race on elections. Clinton has made some ill-conceived remarks, and this has raised the suspicion that she is doing more than analyzing and describing voting blocs, and is instead using race to advance her campaign. That may or may not be true - the arguments to that effect have not been very convincing for me. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with a candidate saying that they have a broader appeal - they cannot be necessarily held responsible for the causes of that - and every candidate has tried to make that claim over the years.

I think what is happening is not so much that whites are voting for Clinton because of race - although it would be naive to think that this is not happening to some extent - but rather than Blacks are overwhelmingly supporting Obama. The difference, then, is that we have a very strong candidate running a very effective campaign who happens to be Black. The mass media loves this, and has been playing up race all along, and much of the talking point uproar around here comes from people repeating the themes that the media pundits are inserting into the discussion.