Things that make you say... HMMMMMM

There's been alot of noise from certain white feminists of late ahemNOWNYahem calling out people like Teddy Kennedy for not supporting Hilary Clinton over Barack Obama. There's been alot of talk about the "historic" opportunity to vote for a woman for President, and the notion has been put on the table that failing to support Clinton is somehow disloyal to feminism, prefering a man -- even a black one -- over a woman -- even a white one.

We are also assured this is about supporting women and/or feminism, and not racism, oh no not at all.

It's just occurred to me to ask a question:

Where the fuck was all their outrage in 2004 when Carol Mosley Braun was running for the Democratic nomination for President, and people were backing white guys like Kerry?

Yes, Virginia, overt racism is still alive

jadegirl I spent part of last week visiting my in-laws in north-east Philly. They don't have internet access, so I had to trek to the local coffee shop for the free wifi. On the weekends, the local conservatives hang out there, as it turns out.

They were mourning the fact that the best their party could come up with was John McCain for president, and I was staying out of the conversation. My ability to keep my mouth shut ended when they put forth the theory the credit banking started in 1913 when we moved off the gold standard.

This is all by way of introduction. I'm sure everyone reading this blog understands what that theory isn't worth a Continental.

The conversation continued, and eventually they asked me who I liked for President. I replied that I had voted for Obama.

One of them asked me, "Why would you vote for a black man?"

The quote is direct. No sense of irony, no joke, the man was seriously asking me why I would vote for a black man. The man seriously thought that I, as a white man, should not consider it thinkable to vote for a black man.

I'm sure I don't have to point out to anyone the various ways that message has been put forth during this campaign in encoded form. But this guy was putting it on the table in plain English with no room for misunderstanding.

Did I mention that I was in Jackson, MS for two weeks before this? When I was sharing company with conservatives down there, race wasn't the issue at all, the fact that he was a Democrat was sufficient reason not to vote for him. This was right here in the North.

It's less relevant to the story, but my answer was, "Why wouldn't I vote for a black man?" He explained to me that black people only vote for black candidates, and fair is fair.

I swear I'm not making that answer of his up. I asked him if he was saying that black people didn't vote in November 2004 when their choices were two white guys. I didn't get an answer because one of his cronies cut him off, saying, "You can't ask an intelligent guy like this a stupid question like that."

You might think they were taking him to task for his racism, but look closely. Their objection wasn't to the fact that he thought being black was sufficient reason not to vote for him, it was to the fact that he didn't get the memo about how to encode that idea. One even wanted to argue that Obama's half-white, so it's OK to him. Note that the underlying principle remained unchallenged.

I've only had part of a day to process this, so I may post more about it later, but there it is.