Obama Won't Get Snopes' Vote

Barack Obama’s win in the Iowa Democratic caucuses has triggered chatter in the national press, especially in The New Times, that his victory shows that in a state predominately white a black can garner white votes.

The commentary has its interests. First, note that Obama, though half white in origin, classifies as black in white and other eyes because he is half black. Indeed, for whites and even for blacks and other minorities, any genes that tint the skin automatically make you whatever that tint is. This prejudice applies with mathematical considerations to American Indians. The federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and though federally recognized tribes sets all kinds of percentages on what makes one an Indian qualifying for tribal membership and any monetary or other benefits that may attend. I have met tribal leaders with white skins, blue eyes, red hair and last names deriving from Vikings but with an Indian progenitor to trump as far as classification goes.

In Obama’s case, he won among those recruited and otherwise who came to Democratic caucuses to vote for him. Many of these were liberals, for whom racial prejudice amounts to two dirty words.

That’s good, but not good enough to support a claim that his victory among them indicates that white Americans in general will not let racial prejudice color their final decision about him or any other black. Indeed, in Obama’s case, if he becomes the Democratic nominee, the Republican dirty politics propaganda machine will spend many millions sandpapering the body politic with reminders, overt and subvert, that Obama is well, you know, a. . .(whisper, whisper, whisper).
I can’t shed my cynicism that Obama through charm and education and culture will fail to overcome the rampant racial prejudice in the U.S. of A.

If he had just won a primary vote in, say, Alabama or Mississippi, my mind might change. I await the first such vote below the Mason-Dixon Line to see who voted for him, and who against. I hunch he won’t get much of the Snopes’ vote.