Obama's uphill battle familiar to many blacks
Fault lines of race and class becoming ever more visible
As hard as Sen. Barack Obama has tried, he hasn't been able to outrun the race question.
At times, that question has been shrouded in innuendo, and at others it has strutted boldly across America, dressed in phrases such as "Is Obama black enough?" and "Is America ready for a black president?"
Although Sen. Hillary Clinton's run for the Democratic nomination has set a new precedent for American politics, few of us have asked whether or not America is ready to send a woman to the White House.
And it was easily accepted that as the first white woman with a serious shot at the White House, Clinton's natural base would be white women. But Obama's campaign has been judged by a different standard.
For instance, after Obama's landslide in South Carolina, former President Bill Clinton downplayed the victory as insignificant since Jesse Jackson had won the state during his historic campaigns, thus casting Obama's strong showing as a what-do-you-expect-from-blacks moment.
Yet when Hillary Clinton nearly broke down in tears after losing to Obama in Iowa, her subsequent win in New Hampshire became a white-women-to-the-rescue moment.
To his credit, Obama has not blamed his losses on his race.
Still, recent poll results examining his losses in Texas and Ohio show that he continues to have a difficult time attracting older white women, Hispanics and uneducated white voters, with very little scrutiny by the media about why this is the case.
Speaking of Ohio, why is it exactly that the votes of a state where 62 percent of the white voters are high school graduates carry more weight with the Democratic Party than votes cast in the other states?
Frankly, most black people understand why this way of thinking doesn't bode well for an African-American candidate. Middle-class, educated whites tend to be more liberal in their attitudes about race than those who are less-educated and are in a lower income bracket. The notion that minimally educated whites in Ohio went for Clinton because of her stance on economic issues when there is virtually little difference between the two platforms is actually pretty ludicrous.
Worse yet, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a huge Clinton supporter, recently told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against Obama because he is black.
"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," Rendell said.
There has been no pressure from the media for Clinton to reject or denounce Rendell's racist remarks or to shun his support.
At the beginning of the campaign, I asked Obama why he was convinced that race would not play a role in this campaign. He told me that he believed if he lost the nomination, it would not be because of race. Indeed, both he and his wife, Michelle, have consistently given Americans the benefit of the doubt when it comes to race.
After all, Obama's early win in the Iowa caucuses, a state that is 96 percent white, was stunning.
But despite his optimism regarding race relations, Obama is a black man in America. As such, the bar will always be higher for him. It is amazing, for instance, for any candidate to rack up 12 victories in a row -- some of them landslides.
But Obama's impressive wins were swept aside after Clinton's comeback with three out of four victories in Tuesday's primary states, even though the wins did not put her ahead in the coveted delegate count.
Obama is facing the same uphill battle that most blacks face when competing against a white person. It isn't enough to be qualified. That black person has to be overly qualified. That is why Clinton can suggest that she would consider being on the ticket with Obama (with her at the top) at a time when she is behind in the delegate count.
Frankly, had Obama lost 12 straight contests and was forced to lend his campaign $5 million, we wouldn't still be talking about a Democratic primary.
The longer this contest goes on, the more visible the fault lines of race and class become.