Well, having juuuuust gotten home from making phone calls for Obama again today, I have to report that it was a little sobering.  (The calls went well in general, fret not.)  However, I've now spoken to two different people who will be voting a straight party Democratic ticket... except for "the Negro."  It was a little hard to maintain my composure when I heard that (and both of these people were "older," since they're more likely to be home during the day), but I was still a little shaken by the overt racism.

I wonder about the Bradley effect, though.  I had identified myself as being from the Democratic party, and the people had no compunctions about stating their views.  I'm hoping this means Obama's numbers are as solid as they have seemed.  (I also have to report that my previous confidence was a little unwarranted about Maine district 2.  It is apparently closer than is comfortable, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with Ms Moosehunter.)

Obama WAS "raised by white people".  What's wrong with that?

Anything that can help people see him as just another guy, if a really smart, creative, and potentially useful one, is fine with me.

Agreed, but it does make it sound as if he was rescued from the shanty town by kindly white folks who just happened to be passing through, as opposed to being raised part of the time by his grandparents.

What this post gets at is the degree to which "Muslim" in this context has nothing to do with religion. Witness the polling that showed that after the Rev. Wright affair first blew up, the number of people who thought that Obama was a Muslim went up. "Muslim" in this sense is just a way for a certain strain of white bigots to think all the thoughts that accompany the word "nigger" in the white mind, without the discomfort of the word "nigger" itself.

And for those of us old enough to have known people who didn't get the satire of Archie Bunker but liked the show anyway because they agreed with him, a colored boy who was raised by decent white folks cannot, by definition, be a nigger. Therefore if Obama was raised by God-fearing white folks, then he's not a nigger -- er, "Muslim" -- and he might just be alright after all.

I saw in my grandfather and some of his closest friends in the 1970s how quickly lifelong racist attitudes could be changed by personal experience with individuals of color. (A few bigots only have their bigotry reinforced by such experience, but they're the SOBs of the world anyway and they can't be helped. There are a lot of otherwise decent, well-meaning people who hold bigoted views, and for them, gaining personal comfort with even a single individual from the out-group can demolish their entire racist heuristic.) I hope that Obama wins for simple practical and policy reasons that have nothing to do with him as an individual or his race, but simply with the fact that I love my country too much to wish another four years of enemy-enabling Republican government on it. (Hey, Republican voters, Hamas and Russia say "thanks!") But I also hope that if he wins, the presence of a likable, almost culturally "white" black president in the country's living rooms will have the same effect on the otherwise decent bigots that working with a Filipino immigrant had on my grandfather three decades ago.

And here I was, supporting Obama cause I thought he was raised by a She-Wolf among the Seven Hills.  Now you tell me it's White Folk that raised him.  There's no End to Democrat Bait and Switch Lies.  I'm voting for that Moosehead now.

I would like to see the whole letter, if it has a picture of his white mother and white grandparents, basically regurgitating his biography, then how can anyone have any problem with that. And except for Alan Keyes I doubt there will be any blacks who will complain about the letter. And if White Republicans try to make anything out of it they can be accused of trying to make Obama deny his white heritage, a definite loser for them.

I think that in Time's Swampland they published one of those flyers some weeks ago (sorry, too busy to find the link), the "white people" thing was only one part of a flyer dispelling most of the myths around him (American, lapel pin, pledge of allegiance, etc.).

Rhubarbs, very eloquently put. A quibble: remember that he's not just any black guy -- he's Barack (Hussein) Obama. It's not like his name's Steve Williams or some other anodyne name.

Barack sounds semitic... in fact it is (means "blessed" in Hebrew, I think). General Barak makes an appearance in the Book of Judges and is mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Somewhere along the way, I suppose it got into Islamic tradition as well. And as for 'Obama', well, we all know where the potential confusion could arise in that case.

Anyway, I don't think it's unreasonable for Barack Obama to have so much trouble shaking off the Otherness among low-information gut-level voters. It's certainly parochial and xenophobic, but not racist in and of itself.

That's not to say those people wouldn't come up with some other code label for a putative Steve Williams candidate, or that a black candidate coming from the black tradition wouldn't have other obstacles to overcome. But how many times have you heard people call Harold Ford or Deval Patrick "Muslim"?

Great.  So the media begins to say that this will "come down to race", and now all the interest groups are absorbing that conjecture and underwriting their campaigns with it.  

Danny, good insight about Maine-2.  I lived in Western Massachusetts and encountered lots of NH and ME conservatives, most of whom were prgamatically conservative and were not, as Andrew Sullivan would have it, "Christanist" zealots.  But there you go--no one knows until they ask for themselves.  

This lead me to thinking... is there some invocation of racial purity in the choice of Sarah Palin for VP?  We have all concluded that she was a choice that would appeal to the gut more than the brain, but to anchor the GOP ticket with a white suburban mother of a reassuring, homely disposition (in contrast to our troubling economic and foreign waters, mind you) against an empowered black male making a case for change is to invoke racial animosities.  If the GOP had gone with someone vetted KB Hutchinson or Megan Whitman, it would be a campaign grounded in policies and ideas, but Palin highlights the superficiality of politicians.  She was chosen exactly for this purpose.

What blackton said. A 78 year-old woman's offhand reference to a document screams out for the reporter to locate the document and tell us what's actually in it. It's probably trivial, in which case it shouldn't have been cited at all, but if it's as flagrantly race-based as the anecdote implies, then by all means the public should know about it.

Otherwise, this article seems to be balanced and fact-based, with due recognition of Obama's camp's smears. Good job overall by the Times. Maybe they'll survive the coming destruction of quality media by Google + hyperpartisanship.

"Otherwise, this article seems to be balanced and fact-based, with due recognition of Obama's camp's smears."

Huh?  What "smears"?  Were you reading the same article, tep?  If you mean the Moveon.org thing, it's hardly a smear, more another cringe-making tone-deaf exercise in a long tradition of same.

well wait a minute: you're taking the remarks of a 78-year-old retiree as a reported fact? Don't you think she could simply be referring to one of the AFL-CIO mailers from July and August that had Obama's biographical info, from which she gleaned that his mother was white and so his mother's parents, who helped raise him, were also white?

One of them went out around the convention, and probably marries up completely with the bio film shown before his acceptance speech:

"The glossy mailer describes Obama as a working-class champion who learned from his mother and grandparents to appreciate hard work and that he passed up Wall Street jobs to work in Chicago neighborhoods hurt by steel mills closure."

www.politicalgateway.com/.../167774

(unfortunately can't find any images of this mailer)

I volunteer taking calls  in-coming to Obama's office.  Like the first poster, I've had my share ot hate callers.  I dealt with the least one a bit differently than others:

ME:  Obama for America.  May I help you

Caller:  He should't be running.  He know black people make all the crime in this country?

ME:  Are you talking about Sen. Obama?

Caller:  YES!

ME:  Well, Senator Obama isn't black.  What makes you think that?

Caller:  WHAT!  What are you talking about.

ME:   Sen. Obama's not black.  He mother was white.  His grandparents were white.  His uncles and cousins spread throughout the Midwest were white.  Sen. Obama is white.

Caller:  NO HE's NOT!

Me:   Sure he is.

Caller: #^%&^)($@%#$&^(*Y*(%^E$@%$&^^&Tb (hang up)

Presenting the fact "Hey, I'm white" as a positive reason to vote for your candidacy would certainly be a race-based appeal--if you will, a racist appeal. This sort of racial pandering strengthens the memeplex of racism, and gives its sanction to racial discrimination--certainly something to be avoided.

Obama, of course, is not saying "Hey, I'm white"--people would never have gone for that; his father is African, and contra Rush Limbaugh, not from the Arab part. What is conservative about thinking racial identity is so flux and arbitrary? Obama did not, as some have suggested, choose to be black. It is merely that, to the retina, he is black.

So the situation here is plainly ironic: a union appealing to people on behalf of a black candidate by stressing his oft-neglected "whiteness." It is as though they are arguing Obama is okay in spite of being black--a sentiment that I resent. If this were from the Obama campaign it would seem self-loathing, and at the very least undignified and politically crude. Coming from a union there is a certain distance between it and Obama, and I suppose reflects poorly only on the union and its intended audience of latent racists.

The Muslim meme is rather fascinating as a reflection--rather a gross reflection--of the racial/religious paranoid profiling psychology of a regrettably large number of my countrymen. A lot of Obama's skeptics seem to think he's an imposter. He's a bit too smooth, you see, just like Thomas Jefferson. I think a lot of people fear him as a conniving bastard, out for his own. To me this notion seems fantastical, and reflects a paranoid inability to accept what is before our eyes. Obama's basically a talented, reflective, decent guy. It will be a sad reflection on human nature if he fails.

Well, in the midst of the disheartening news that people need to be reassured that he was raised b whites, it's somewhat heartening that evidence that he was indeed raised by whites is actually believed.

Nah, he ain't muslim.  He's just totally pro-union and pro fat paychecks for layabout lazy jerks with big rubber inflated rats standing outside stores in Manhattan chasing away customers.

You know, racism isn't a white thing.  In the NBA, black players often refuse to show their black coaches the same level of respect as they show white coaches.  Of course this is changing as there are more black coaches.  And as Jesse Jackson himself (the race-baiter) said, he feels relieved while walking at night, turning around, and seeing a white guy instead of a black guy following him.

The perception of young blacks is that they're all irresponsible violent punks.  And they do nothing to dispel that rumor.  Wear some respectable clothing for once.  If they wore khakis and dress shirts, no one would think they were hoods.  Hell, when white punks wear hoodies and baggy clothing, I think they're hoodlums too.  I feel like one of those geezers yelling at young hippies to get off their skateboards.

CAM2,

I'm sure that "#^%&^)($@%#$&^(*Y*(%^E$@%$&^^&Tb", when translated, means "Haven't you heard of the one-drop rule?"

JW,

I don't normally bring this rhetoric into our threads but here goes:  go fuck yourself.

dylanposer, amen to that. what the hell does the NBA have to do with any of this?

Re jwl2672, a few points:

1. When did hippies ever ride skateboards? There are individual exceptions, no doubt, but in my vast undergraduate experience, hippies =/= skaters. Skaters, even the stoners among them, tend to be pretty intense, whereas hippies are defined by lack of intensity. I mean, really, get your stereotypes straight, man!

2. I love it when conservigots start dissing unions. You know the people who put Reagan over the top and gave us thirty years of conservative government? They're union members. Or they were, back in 1979, before the conservatives they voted for turned the full power of the federal government against organized labor. Not coincidentally, real wages have been stagnant since then. But the point remains: Y'all keep pissing on the working man. Please. (Also, do note that Obama is the least reflexively pro-union Democratic candidate for president since possibly Woodrow Wilson. Not to bother you with facts or anything.)

3. Hint: If you ever have the urge to use the word "they" to describe the behavior of every young black person in the country, you are in fact a racist bigot. For your own sake as well as ours, please consider either reading the Bible with an eye to healing the rot in your soul, joining the Klan and be done with the pretense, or -- and this is my preference -- just take your shit elsewhere where decent people don't have to hear it.

Raised-by-white-people is very relevant, in this sense:

Lots of white people believe that black people hate them. This makes sense - I mean, how could they not hate us after all the slavery/lynching/blah blah blah, right? Not that they shouldn't, you know, get over it and all. This idea that black people hate us is, I believe, behind the feeling that they are anti-American, or, if you like, Muslim. But if you had a guy who was rasised by white people, well, his allegiances might not be so clear because - as he himself pointed out - how could he hate his own grandmother? As a black guy, he has to overcome the PRESUMPTION of hating whitey. Unfair or not. Raised-by-white-people does a lot to overcome it. And I say - whatever works!

What Rhubarbs said about hippies and skateboards.

Also: JW, there are a lot of people out there whose profiling is so out-of-wack that they will be scared of any black guy wearing anything. Ask the black guys in suits, holding briefcases, and graying at the temples, who can't catch a cab.

And: I think you might have caught a little less "go fuck yourself" if you had, in your point that blacks-are-racist-too, also made sure you conveyed the bit about "and that's really sad" - because otherwise it sounds like a defense of racism. Uh.. was it?

timteeter:  that's exactly the point.  Obama is the 1% rule magnified. Nobody challenges those who won't vote for a black president on the FACT that he is half white. They cannot deal with it.  It does not compute.  Like a leaden weight the legacy of slavery falls on this.  To them all 'black' people are purely of black African descent.  No 'white' person has African American blood. They were not brought up on the historical legacy of 1%.   Because Obama is first generation mixed race, they don't know what to think when confronted with the fact that you could also call him 'white.'  Maybe their (*$^()&_)**&^%#@!#$$)(__!!  means they are confused enough tol stay home in November.   I realize that it may be offensive to the African American community, but I'm all for playing the white race card to win the election.