How would we (and Obama) fare if in the same game, on a level playing field? (Page 1 of 1)

Pennsylvania bothers me. I was born and raised there, 18 years in northwestern Pennsylvania, in New Castle, son of working-class parents who now live on Social Security and pensions.

In Pennsylvania, said the analyst as the April 22 primary polls closed, people like the familiar. That was his explanation for why Pennsylvania’s working-class, blue-collar voters chose Sen. Hillary Clinton.

It is an interesting explanation. Because the same polls showed more people (46 percent) said “change” was the most important issue in the election versus half that many who said “experience” was most important.

I know those voters. Politics as usual has taken us into a war that has cost thousands of lives and marked our country as a rogue nation, given billions of our tax dollars — billions! — to the oil companies making tens of billions of dollars in profits, given us free trade, a recession, deregulated banking and airline industries, but has not given us health care for seniors and children. I’m as ready for change as Pennsylvanians.

So why didn’t they vote for Sen. Barack Obama, who bills himself as the change candidate, rather than Clinton, who bills herself as the experienced candidate? Voters thought change was the most important issue in the election, but they voted against the change candidate.

It’s that “familiar” thing. I talked with a Pennsylvania voter several weeks ago about the election. What became clear to me as we talked is that “familiar” is code for “white.” While denouncing racism and racists, this retired teacher said she would have a hard time voting for Obama because she didn’t like “the way things were going with blacks.”

She cited a teacher she had in college in the 1970s who said radical things in class. Eventually, she acknowledged the only link between her old instructor and Obama is the color of their skin. But that was enough. Chalk up one for Clinton. It didn’t even matter to her Obama is every bit as much white 
as he is black.

Like most people, I would like to deny the power of race in the current election. Of those polled in Pennsylvania, 87 percent said race was no factor (13 percent admitted it was, and three out of four of them voted for the white candidate).

Listening to the teacher and watching Clinton on television, I can feel the profound significance of this historic moment, when a vote for a woman might actually result in a woman president.

But here’s what bothers me. Pennsylvania is a labor union state. People in Pennsylvania are feeling slammed economically. Folks in Pennsylvania don’t like the War in Iraq and really don’t like the lies Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld told to get us into the war. People in Pennsylvania need health care, are stunned at the gas pumps and want change.

So why did the people in Pennsylvania not vote for the candidate who promises change, who visibly represents change, who voted against the war, who has always been against anti-union free trade agreements, who has not already been burned on health care, whose policies and vision align more closely with their aspirations than any other candidate?

As the footage cut from Obama to Clinton mounting the stage before a cheering crowd, I saw this: Clinton represents the white, Democratic, big-state liberal but not too liberal establishment. And this traditional Democratic machine isn’t inclined to let a black man win the presidency even if he gets the most votes. How else to explain a seasoned politician refusing to concede when she cannot mathematically overcome the deficit in votes?

I’m not saying Clinton is a racist, or we’re all racists if Obama doesn’t win. But I am noting that members of the European white race have had a vast array of tools to keep blacks “in their place,” some as blunt, cruel and ugly as slavery and the lynch mob; others long embedded in law, like segregation. Our schools often treat white students differently than students of color; whites get job offers, newspaper columns, apartments and bank loans 
more easily than blacks.

We who are white take our advantages for granted and credit ourselves with earning everything we have. We are oblivious to the fact that we have never had to compete on a level playing field. Most of us are like major league baseball in the early 1940s — we don’t know how we would fare if everyone actually played in the same league.

In my 20 years serving an African-American Presbyterian congregation in East Tennessee, I saw the far-reaching power of our racist history. Blacks find it easy to be suspicious of whites’ intentions and motives — but should they?

My black friends at church believed Social Security numbers were coded by race. They were wrong. They also believed black students were channeled out of academic tracks at school, used but not respected as athletes, disciplined differently than white students, and unprotected by the administration at the schools. Suspicious? Yes, but they were also right. I read a handwritten report of an interview of an assistant principal who told the Office of Civil Rights there was a gang of white boys who harassed black students and wrote racial epithets on lockers and nothing was done about it. Given this, on what basis would people of color dismiss other charges and allegations of racism?

All kinds of arguments can be made for one candidate or the other — policy, experience, electability, charisma, vision, substance — but when you add it all up, don’t ignore race.

If Barack Obama, with a deep commitment to the change we say we want, and with the majority of votes, is not the Democratic nominee, some people will see it as one more way the Euro-white majority is keeping people of color “in their place.” They won’t all be black. You might disagree, but maybe you can at least see how they might see it that way. Maybe you will even see how it might be that way.

* The views expressed in Commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Knoxville Voice.