The morning after South Carolina

Politicos woke up a little hung over with the dregs of celebration from Obama's victory in South Carolina. The counter-intuitive outcome that punished Bill Clinton's racialized attack dog role in the Hillary campaign was fueled by recognition and response to the continuing significance of race in America.

Obama has an embedded constituency that supports him because of what he is not where he stands on the issues. The big three in the Democratic primary are very close and the top two appear to be twins on the issues. However the embeddedness that provides Obama his base, while not necessarily or even ordinarily a bad thing, is ignored, denied and rejected in his public persona and campaign speeches except for a nod and wink when appealing to prurient interests before predominantly Black audiences. We are who we are and that defines us though may not determine who we will be.

The South Carolina outcome is in part a rejection or response to the rabid, understated, implied, coded, down and dirty appeal to fear of a Black man that Bill Clinton used to promote his wife's candidacy. It is not clear that Obama was viewed in the election as "a presidential candidate" rather than as a "Black presidential candidate." What does this say about the articulated dream of Obama as a gestalt for the American consciousness that view their interests as the same across race, class and gender lines? I think it says that when America looks at the blot on the page they may see different things by different people but none are colorblind and they all recognize that it is a "black" blot.

That is not necessarily bad. But ignoring that reality is to ignore reality.