'The Black Primary'

South Carolina

Looking past New Hampshire tomorrow, the Democratic primary in South Carolina is a must-win for Edwards and Clinton, but for Obama, it has special import.

For most of 2007 Obama’s been feeling a chill down here, too. With African-Americans likely to make up a majority of primary voters on the Democratic side, South Carolina’s contest is as close to a “black primary” as we’re going to get in 2008–the only time in the entire campaign, almost certainly, when Democrats will be fighting all-out for African-American votes. Clinton’s support among African-Americans, largely thanks to her husband’s popularity, proved surprisingly strong at first, as did her smooth, state-of-the-art machine politics; as late as September, a CNN poll gave her a stunning 57 percent of the black vote here, to Obama’s paltry 33. That would deal a death blow to Obama’s chances, not only here but in the February 5 primaries, especially in Alabama and Georgia, where large numbers of black voters are weighing their choices–and watching South Carolina.

But while the contest here has been widely portrayed as a Clinton-Obama battle for black votes–especially those of black women reportedly torn between their enthusiasm for electing a sister versus a brother–the real focus, from the get-go, has been relentlessly on Obama. In a state where the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s wildly successful 1988 uprising still stands as a high-water mark for black political aspirations, Obama’s cool style and post-civil-rights rhetoric went over like a lead balloon in the early months of the campaign. The trouble was epitomized by a speech he gave to the legislative black caucus in April, where he offered his joking opinion that “a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren’t throwing garbage out of their cars.” To folks like Kevin Alexander Gray, who ran Jackson’s campaign here, this smacked not of fresh thinking but of “the oldest racial stereotypes. Translation: black people are dirty and lazy.” Obama’s middle-of-the-aisle message and delivery kept reinforcing black South Carolinians’ doubts about whether he was sufficiently one of them. “I’ve heard people say, and I’ve probably said it myself, ‘He’s a white boy,'” says Gray. “Or he’s what some working-class black people perceive as a middle-class Negro. Anyway, let’s face it: you don’t get a revolution from Harvard.”

[From The Nation]

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Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
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