We have been avoiding adding any verbiage to the racial dimensions of these primaries. In general, we hate the subject of race. However, a piece by Sykes at Am. Thinker - Barack Obama's Race Problem: White Liberals - nails the condescension of the liberal elites and of the lefty bien pensants. (thanks, Reader). A quote:
In the wake of Clinton's New Hampshire victory much of the punditocracy seems to be surprised by the sudden resurgence of race as a central factor in the presidential race. They shouldn't be.
Democrats, after all, are a party shaped and obsessed with identity and grievance politics, so the clash between sensitivities of race and gender will inevitably be magnified. Who is more offended? Women or Blacks? In New Hampshire it was women, who protectively rallied around an emotional Hillary Clinton who has been unfairly beaten up by the boys.
Now the focus is turning to the sensitivities of African Americans, who are offended by the subtle racial digs of the Clinton campaign. The political backlash of "denigrating women," is being replaced by a backlash against "denigrating African American."
and
Deep down, guilty white liberals feel guilty about other people's attitudes and behavior, not their own. To the contrary they are smugly certain of their own racial virtue; in fact, (they will tell themselves) they care so deeply about black people that they feel an obligation to protect them from an unenlightened electorate. Don't be surprised if many white liberals end up voting against Obama, while telling themselves they are doing it because they are so supportive of minority aspirations.
That's Obama's racial problem.
Update: Just found another worthwhile bit on the subject from David Brooks in the NYT today - The Identity Trap. A quote: All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde.
All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against critics of affirmative action, like Ward Churchill and Thomas Sowell, and critics of the radical feminism, like Christina Hoff Summers, are now being turned inward by the Democratic front-runners.
