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January 18th / 20th, 2008

"The Ugly Truth About New Hampshire"

Thus far, no one in the race for President has played the race card, but what happened in New Hampshire might just be our first indication that prejudices, not principals, may prevail in 2008.

Yes, Barack Obama won the much-touted but meaningless Iowa caucuses, which propelled him to a sizeable lead over Hillary Clinton in the pre-New Hampshire polls – as much as 13%. But when the Granite State votes were tallied, Clinton bested Obama by 3 points. Pundits attributed the upset to Clinton’s show of emotion a few days prior to the election, but I for one don’t believe that Barack could misplace 16% of the voters in three days, especially in the wake of his Iowa victory, and tons of favorable media coverage.

Unfortunately, the explanation may be far more sinister than the sudden welling in Hillary’s tear ducts. I believe that New Hampshirites had no intention of awarding their delegates to an African-American, so they lied to pollsters. They said they were supporting Obama, but once they entered the voting booth, they cast their ballot for Clinton.

Is there any empirical data to support my suspicions? In a way, yes. A Pew Research Center study last year confirmed that minority candidates do better in pre-election polls than in actual elections. Researchers concluded that white voters want to sound color blind to pollsters, but carry a strong racial preference into the voting booth.

ABC’s Good Morning America followed with their own report back in February of 2007 when Jack Trapper told Dianne Sawyer that “84% of Americans say a candidate being black would not effect their vote,… (however) some experts say that 15% of white voters lie.” But if that’s the case, then how could Obama have won in Iowa? Easy. Remember that whites and blacks meet together in a caucus, and no one is going to profess their prejudice in an open setting like that.

Moreover, history confirms the result of these hidden prejudices. For one thing, nearly every president has been elected after serving as either a U.S. senator, governor, or vice-president. Thus far, we have elected a total of five African-American senators, two governors (my good friend Doug Wilder was the first since Reconstruction), and no vice-presidents. And so, it is easy to see that without any blacks in the prerequisite office-holding pipeline, none could advance to the White House.

But as we expose these hidden prejudices, we must also realize that many people of color also refuse to vote for an African-American for president. A black female political observer reported to Harvey’s Columns website that a white woman has a better chance of garnering the minority vote than a black man does. And that brings me to Hillary. It is almost certain that, barring the end of race prejudice, Clinton will emerge the Democrat nominee. Obama has Iowa in his column, and will probably win Nevada and South Carolina (where blacks are almost the majority). After that, Hillary just has to hope that Edwards doesn’t release his delegates to Obama. If she gets the nomination, though, Clinton may find herself the victim of the same kind of prejudice that could be keeping Barack from making history this year.

Diana Grossman Kahn, professor of gender and women’s studies at Oberlin, says, “I am doubtful that a woman can be elected president. People are still imbued with the stereotype of a president as a ‘father’, or a military leader. ” If Kahn is correct, Hillary would lose to the eventual GOP (male) nominee.

It is sad to think that over 40 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, that a majority of voters would still refuse to elect a woman or a person of color to the highest office in the land. I hope that we can stamp out prejudice and racism during this election cycle, and learn to vote for the most qualified candidate, regardless of gender or race. And, wouldn’t it be great if Obama and Clinton became running mates? That would really put us to the test. We might just prove to the world that our hidden prejudices have finally given way to a sense of fairness and equality. Or then again, we might just maintain the status quo, and continue to keep the White House white.