Barack Obama Wins Mississippi: Race Plays Major Role in Voting

(Alternate Title: Surprise, Surprise)

If we were wondering if race was going to play a role in the Democratic race then we should thank the Mississippi primary for firming it up in our minds. Am I saying that Obama's policies or heck, his inspirational speeches, were not the deciding factor for the state's fine residents, but rather that voting could have actually come down to skin color alone?

Yes. I am.

Sadly, it's not surprising. As a five-year resident of Mississippi, and a former professor at the University Barack Obama spoke at on Monday, there's no doubt in my mind that Obama won based on race.

Fortunately, he is a viable candidate with much to offer this country (this coming from a Hillary supporter).

We're all racists at one level or another, so really, it should not surprise us. We want to believe that race doesn't drive us. And for many of us, it does not. Well, most of the time.

But for the residents of Mississippi, I truly believe it does. Working and living in the poorest state of the Union, I experienced first hand the racial issues that we all thought (or at least hoped) were dead. White students openly expressing their fear of black students. Black students congregating together in the back of my classrooms with no one but me pointing it out. And both groups of students accepting the local high school's separate black and white homecoming court and offering their disdain for "mixed" couples.

Shocking to us? Yes. Everyday life in Mississippi? Absolutely.

Throughout this campaign I've wondered how voting in the South would go, not only due to the vibrant racial tensions still alive and well, but due to the perpetuation of misogyny as well.

I've sat in rooms with parents of my students in which the fathers would not talk to me. I had three of my ten incoming freshmen (17-year-olds!) leave my class to get married and become housewives. And I had way too many come talk to me asking what constitutes "abuse" from their significant others.

I agree with my fellow Momocrat that we shouldn't play "which is worse" when it comes to gender or race. But while I disagree with the intention and aim of Ferraro's words, I do believe she has a valid point when she said "It's OK to be sexist in some people's minds. It's not OK to be racist."

We can chalk the reasoning up to "the white man's" guilt from years of oppression, or that racial issues (for the most part) have been brought to the forefront due to various newsworthy situations (some promising, some gruesome). But race, for the most part, is cut and dry; jokes about anything related to race -- language, appearance, and stereotypical behaviors -- are totally off limits, deplorable. Unacceptable.

But gender is a whole other story, and from what I've seen, it holds way too many loopholes and nuances that people have taken advantage of in this particular race.

However, when it came down to Mississippi, racism won. Although, we'll never really know since there were only two choices on the ballot.

I suppose we'll find out soon enough in November when we add a white man back into the mix.

Kristen is a former college professor turned mom of two (and one on the way) who writes about life as a Yankee in the Deep South (among other things) at her blog Motherhood Uncensored.

Comments

[Lawyer Mama]

Sadly, Kristin, I completely agree with you. I'm from the South, although I've lived all over the world. Racism is alive and well and living all over the South openly. I don't want to perpetuate a stereotype and say that everyone in the South is racist. That's not the case. But it's so deeply ingrained in the culture, that I wonder if we can ever really change it. After I moved away from Louisiana as a child, I remember being shocked that inter-racial couple were considered no big deal (or at least less of a big deal) in other parts of the world and country.

You're also correct about sexism. Southern girls are perhaps led into traditional worlds more by the culture. I've known plenty of very strong Southern women though, who knew exactly how to get what they wanted from men, although they had to play the sweet Southern lady role to do it. That's not something that many people who weren't raised in the South understand. Game playing just seems so silly. But it's also why Hillary is going to have a much harder time in the deep South.

[cynematic]

Wow, it sounds like neither race nor gender gets talked about productively much in the South, sadly.

With Mississippi, two things seem visible to me that may not have been before:

1) African Americans have always crossed over racial lines to vote for whites--out of necessity. For BC and now HRC, the AfAm vote was a core constituency...until South Carolina. And with all these racial digs at Obama, I tend to think HRC has thrown AfAm support under the bus.

But if she focused on issues and left the innuendo alone, who's to say that she couldn't woo back some disaffected AfAm voters? I feel like she's gone negative on race, *and* ceded a demographic to racial categories instead of worked to repair that longstanding relationship with AfAm communities. Didn't she start out the campaign for president with more AfAm Civil Rights leaders' endorsements than Obama?

BTW, I don't think it's "racist" for AfAm voters to vote for an AfAm candidate. (Identity politics, yes, voicing strong obection to the way Clinton is handling race, yes, he's an accomplished and talented candidate, yes, but not racist. IMHO.) Just like I don't think AfAm students sitting together in the classroom or cafeteria is racist--just more visible than it was before. Because no one points out when white students all bunch together (and they do). We're so used to seeing this we take it as normative. (I've heard this numerous times wrt Asian American students--"why do they all bunch together? How come they don't go everywhere?" If we want to break up all homogeneous groups and sprinkle them around proportionately to achieve the appearance of equality or integration, we can, but wouldn't it be better to get kids together based on broadening shared interests and activities? Stuff we do instead of who we "are"?

2) AfAm voters (like all voters) are voting for Obama for lots of reasons in addition to the fact that he's a darn good candidate. Question is, will Southern whites now cross racial lines and do the same?

Hence my concern at HRC's tactics--in playing the race card to woo working class Southern whites (the classic "Reagan Democrat" bloc), she seems to be betting that activating that latent racism will bring her a majority of votes. Now if that isn't cynical and tacking hard right and same-old same-old politics and all-out Rovian, I don't know what is.

Who knows, maybe the effort to drop her g's (pundits have noticed an affected Southern twang when she stumps in the South) is an attempt to steer toward Steel Magnolia and away from East Coast Elite Shoulder Pad Feminism.

I'd like to believe there are lots of working class whites in the South and elsewhere who can be open to Obama's message of change and a shared fate. Or just any substantive message addressing their economic situation and aspirations. I'd like to believe this, I really do.

[Rachel]

I'm sure it's true that blacks have voted for Obama because of his race. But Hillary also got a lot of votes because of her race. In fact, we could say the same of every presidential candidate in the history of presidential politics.

The worst thing Ferraro said was that he was "lucky". That's just absurd, considering that 1 in 3 young black men in the U.S. are in jail, and black men lag every other group in this country in education, income, and health. Obama overcame some pretty incredible odds to get where he is today.

I am not voting for Obama because he's black, but because he was against the war from Day 1, and because I don't like the way Hillary has conducted herself in this campaign. This is just the latest in a long string of dirty, underhanded attacks.

[Jamelle]

If Obama has been winning primaries because he is black, then surely Clinton has been winning primaries because she's a woman?

[Jen]

Why is it "racist" for a group of black friends to sit together in the cafeteria? I am white and most of my friends are white and so far, when I sit with them no one ever points fingers at me and calls me a racist for it. If they did, I would say that I was just hanging around with my friends.

I think people in this country are very weird about race. It's not okay to be black and excited about Obama because he would be the first black president, but it's totally fine to silently vote for Hillary (like many voters in Ohio admitted they did) because you're white and don't want a black president.

If I were less averse to Hillary as a person, I can tell you I would have been over-the-moon-thrilled to vote for a woman president. A friend of mine voted for Hillary in the primary for just that reason, and I respected that decision and wished that I felt differently.