The Harold effect

Unless you’ve spent the last year sedated, you have probably noticed that this year’s presidential election has been charged with talk of racism toward Sen. Barack Obama, starting right at the primaries.

In 2008, many Americans would like to think that we, as a nation, have moved beyond racism. Of those who know we haven’t, many acknowledge that at the very minimum, it is no longer socially acceptable to voice racist views.

I suppose it is for this reason that I find a recent Associated Press-Yahoo News Poll so interesting. It surveyed white voters about their attitudes regarding blacks and tied the results to their political views. Participants identified themselves as Democrats, independents or Republicans.

A full one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views about blacks, agreeing with words such as “lazy” and “violent.”

And that’s just the democrats.

According to the survey, 40 percent of white Americans harbor negative opinions about blacks (that includes Republicans, Democrats and independents.)

The purpose of the poll was to determine why Obama was in such a close race with McCain when the nation’s current political climate should clearly favor Democrats – President Bush’s extreme unpopularity, as well as the unpopularity of the Iraq war, economic issues and the fact that there are more Democratic voters than Republicans should have made this election year an easy win for the Dems.

Yet only 70 percent of people who identify as Democrats say they plan to vote for Obama, compared to 85 percent of Republicans who plan to vote for McCain.  
Though one could easily be accused of looking too much into the race factor, an eerie parallel can be drawn to the election of Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago.

Washington ran as a Democrat in Chicago’s mayoral election in 1983 against a virtually unknown republican named Bernard Epton.

Chicago had not voted a Republican mayor into office since 1927.

Jane Byrne, Washington’s predecessor as mayor, won the election with 82 percent of the vote. This means only 18 percent of the entire city voted for the Republican candidate.

Before Byrne, Democrat Richard J. Daley served in office for six consecutive terms – 21 years as the mayor of Chicago. Essentially, being on the Democratic ticket in Chicago was a sure shot to victory.

Yet what happened when Chicago was faced with a black candidate on the Democratic ticket?

Eight of the 14 white Democratic Party committee members endorsed Bernard Epton. People began donning “Whites for Epton” buttons and his official campaign slogan became “Epton – before it’s too late.” People Magazine ran a story called “Hatred Walks the Street” while Newsweek called it “Chicago’s Ugly Election.”

Harold Washington eventually won the election with a narrow margin of 3.7 percent. Even the skeptics could not help but point a finger at racism.

Twenty-five years later, Barack Obama faces a similar phenomenon – bigoted members of his own party turning against him because of the color of his skin.