SocraticGadfly: What’s good for Obama might not be good for blacks

July 22, 2008

What’s good for Obama might not be good for blacks

Namely, Obama winning the presidency might not be so good for black Americans.

The story is variations on a theme, that white Americans, even more liberal ones, would think we’re in a new generation. From “Stuff White People Like” types talking about “post-racial America to racialist Steve Sailer saying Obama offers “White Guilt Repellent,” it’s a theme that cuts across political divisions.

Among the most worried? Some black commentators:
Glen Ford, executive editor of the online journal blackagendareport.com, offered some white Americans a free solution to the race problem: “Millions of whites came to believe Obama could solve the ‘race problem’ by his mere presence, at no cost to their own notions of skin privilege,” Ford wrote in an essay in January.

Ford and others also distinguish between individual prejudice and institutionalized racism, in the places it can still exist today.

And, could an Obama presidency also produce a black backlash?

Not likely, but expect an Internet video campaign commercial to that effect from some winger 527 in the near future.

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