Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008; A01
Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."
For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."
Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.
Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright."
Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. "I thought, this is a big deal." But he was told Obama campaign officials didn't want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.
"The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming," he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.
Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don't fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.
"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "
Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama's skill at bridging divides.
Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.
For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. "We've grown up in a different world," says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions -- state director, regional field director, field organizer -- that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.
Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.
In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.
"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."
Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.
Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"
* * *
Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."
The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.
Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.
Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn't on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."
The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.
At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. "Something new," Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.
Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."
"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.
He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. "It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."
Like him?
"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.
Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.
As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."
But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.
Staff writer Peter Slevin and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
[分享] Washington Post Article from Campaign Frontlines
[分享] Washington Post Article from Campaign Frontlines
I'm glad someone is finally writing about this subject.
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It is great. This is the civil movement of 21 century.Through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
Honestly, I don't give a F__K. The question is not if Obama is good enough for America, because he absolutely is. The question here is if America is good enough for Obama. If American "Hardworking Uneducated Whites" want to screw themselves again, by all means, go ahead. I don't give a F__K because I can personally benefit from another stupid tax cut or elimination of AMT. I never even plan on a retirment supported by SS money. I don't give a s__t about bad public education system because I don't have kids. Gas Price doesn't bother me because I don't drive. Grocery price can double but hey, how much do I eat anyway? Manufacturing jobs going to China? Awesome, I already speak Chinese and can move back anytime. If American's hardworking whites are willing to screw themselves becuase of the "funny feeling" -- by all means, go ahead, this is their country not mine.
And the next generation of Americans will learn from their parents' mistake, hopefully.
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Sarcasm aside, the reason I like this article is not because I am an Obamabot. Nor do I know whether sexism has and would have created similar venom in some people. This is not directly about Obama. I'm just glad that he has served as a lightening rod and a "device" to draw out some very interesting things and discussions that have been kept under the rug.
As a non-American person, I am often surprised by how many Americans (born and raised) are utterly oblvious to the racism against blacks and Latinos all around them. The power of denial is far stronger than what we like to admit (duh). The media do not want to talk about it, because the subject does not make anyone feel good or morally superior. People do not want to acknowledge it, because it makes them look bad and feel bad. But talking about racism openly and personally is the only way to ... learn. Just learn and know. (I'm not even saying the goal is racial harmony or everyone holding hands and singing koombaya.) Air the facts, all of them, and let people make up their own mind and choose their own stand.
I am most interested in the honest sentiments of average ordinary people, because we are all average ordinary people. Everyone can benefit from learning a little more about the many sides of true humanity rather than being fed black-and-white arguments (no pun intended). Truth has its own value beyond "good" or "should" or "moral".
Stretching farther, I'm thinking about the conflicts between our natural need to feel good (about ourselves, about the world, about our family and friends and kinspeople) and the long-term (but hard to get) benefits of accepting an imperfect reality.
As a non-American person, I am often surprised by how many Americans (born and raised) are utterly oblvious to the racism against blacks and Latinos all around them. The power of denial is far stronger than what we like to admit (duh). The media do not want to talk about it, because the subject does not make anyone feel good or morally superior. People do not want to acknowledge it, because it makes them look bad and feel bad. But talking about racism openly and personally is the only way to ... learn. Just learn and know. (I'm not even saying the goal is racial harmony or everyone holding hands and singing koombaya.) Air the facts, all of them, and let people make up their own mind and choose their own stand.
I am most interested in the honest sentiments of average ordinary people, because we are all average ordinary people. Everyone can benefit from learning a little more about the many sides of true humanity rather than being fed black-and-white arguments (no pun intended). Truth has its own value beyond "good" or "should" or "moral".
Stretching farther, I'm thinking about the conflicts between our natural need to feel good (about ourselves, about the world, about our family and friends and kinspeople) and the long-term (but hard to get) benefits of accepting an imperfect reality.
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I don't know, are they really just oblivious? Like in Obama's book, his grandpa and grandma saw the racism in Texas and were outraged because " people should not be treated that way". And I find it hard to believe the behavior displayed in the above article is mere denial. It is out right hatred. And do we really need to see the hatred displayed in the public and blown out of proportion?
I choose my friends carefully so that I don't have to hang out with racists or homophobias. Why do we have to see them on TV all the time then? Also, like what's said in Blink, the negative association does do damage on a subconcious level. I am annoyed by midwest "hardworking uneducated whites" as it is now, the more I read those reports, the more negative I will become about them. And frankly they have a reason to hate me -- a alien coming in, taking their jobs away, living in big city, making fun of their religion and guns...blah blah blah .. guilty as charged.
Here is why I love Obama. He is positive and his energy affected me in a positive way. That's called leadership. I am aware of the imperfect reality as well as my own lack of energy to do anything about it. And I appreciate someone who can and will. In 5 months we will find out if there are enough Americans feel the same way as I do. If yes, I will consider half-heartedly love Americans a little since we do have sth in common. If not, I will go back to my bitter elitist lifestyle and they can continue to cling to guns and religions. True everyone will be screwed by the super rich. But hey, at least I can still get out of here if things get REALLY bad. So why should I worry about this sinking boat more than those who couldn't swim.
I choose my friends carefully so that I don't have to hang out with racists or homophobias. Why do we have to see them on TV all the time then? Also, like what's said in Blink, the negative association does do damage on a subconcious level. I am annoyed by midwest "hardworking uneducated whites" as it is now, the more I read those reports, the more negative I will become about them. And frankly they have a reason to hate me -- a alien coming in, taking their jobs away, living in big city, making fun of their religion and guns...blah blah blah .. guilty as charged.
Here is why I love Obama. He is positive and his energy affected me in a positive way. That's called leadership. I am aware of the imperfect reality as well as my own lack of energy to do anything about it. And I appreciate someone who can and will. In 5 months we will find out if there are enough Americans feel the same way as I do. If yes, I will consider half-heartedly love Americans a little since we do have sth in common. If not, I will go back to my bitter elitist lifestyle and they can continue to cling to guns and religions. True everyone will be screwed by the super rich. But hey, at least I can still get out of here if things get REALLY bad. So why should I worry about this sinking boat more than those who couldn't swim.
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Rock on, Sistas!
Misogyny I Won't Miss
By Marie Cocco
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A15
As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.
I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.
I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.
I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.
I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.
Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.
I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.
The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).
But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).
When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).
I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."
Most of all, I will not miss the silence.
I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.
Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?
There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.
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Another great, great commentary. I highly recommend it. 
"Why I love Hillary"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=90447578
"Why I love Hillary"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=90447578
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Hmmm...after listening to this, I realize why I don't relate to Hillary. It is the background. I did not grow up under the same pressure -- to look pretty, and to marry well. Exactly the opposite, my mom kept telling me not to ask for pretty outfit but to concentrate on my study. I guess I should thank for parents for that.
Just so that you get some comfort, HRC has already made history by coming so close. And we will the the difference.
Just so that you get some comfort, HRC has already made history by coming so close. And we will the the difference.
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Oh, I think they are the same. The same mom told you to concentrate on your study 20 yrs ago in China will ask you to look pretty and to marry well in USA.I did not grow up under the same pressure -- to look pretty, and to marry well. Exactly the opposite, my mom kept telling me not to ask for pretty outfit but to concentrate on my study.
Knowing同学你真是残酷无情……Just so that you get some comfort
Yeah but by the time they started to worry about my unattractive look, I was old enough and confident enough not to be affected by the comments much. //shrug火星狗 wrote: Oh, I think they are the same. The same mom told you to concentrate on your study 20 yrs ago in China will ask you to look pretty and to marry well in USA.
It is like if your parents tell you to work harder and finish your phd study quickly, would you be bothered?
I think there is always a turning point in parents/child relationship, and that's the ultimate sign of growing up: The child became the care giver and decision maker for parents, and parents rely on the child's judgement on big decisions in life. And I have passed that point somewhere in my late twenties.
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我刚出去陪客吃午餐，就是跟已经给了聘请对方还没决定来不来的人吃饭，夸我们公司怎么好。吃饭时对方问起我以前在那里。我说我在个德州公司工作过一年。她问那个。我说了名字。她说哦，我毕业时也面试过他们，但是我没接受他们的聘请。我说为什么？她说整个招聘过程中很多事情不好。我问啥。她说首先有二十几个人拿到了聘请，他们比了比数字发现非CS 的比CS 的低八千。我心说人家是软件公司，为什么不能给CS 的高点啊。然后她说：他们去德州面试，得到了不少礼物。男生拿到的攀岩工具。女生拿到的呢。。。是南方烹饪菜谱儿！她们一群女生气的跑到学校职业中心投诉了这个公司。
我倒。然后说，没关系，你的选择是对的。。。
我倒。然后说，没关系，你的选择是对的。。。
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I actually chose that company over the current one because I liked Austin better and I wanted to work in software industry not wallstreet. 
The pen had nothing to do with it.
I think many people (not from New York) feel the same way about New York. It is fun to visit, but not where you want to settle down and start a life and a family in.
The pen had nothing to do with it. I think many people (not from New York) feel the same way about New York. It is fun to visit, but not where you want to settle down and start a life and a family in.
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我终于有CNN HD 了。昨天晚上兴奋的看了一整集AC３６０。今天不是肯它基初选么？他们跑到那里最穷的一个郡采访。这个郡一半以上人没工作，人均收入一万美元以下，他们是共和党郡，但是对MCCAIN 没什么热情，记者问那OBAMA呢？他们表示怀疑。记者问那HRC呢？哗，胖妇女把拳头一砸愤慨的说：圣经上说，女人的位置在家里！我倒，腹诽说着什么急啊，反正你们那里男男女女都待在家里！
谁圣经读的熟？我好奇的问，圣经上哪儿说了？
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politi ... county.cnn
谁圣经读的熟？我好奇的问，圣经上哪儿说了？
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politi ... county.cnn
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