Home > Political Insider
Barack Obama and ‘symbolic racism’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alan Abramowitz, the Emory University political scientist, had an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post in which he argues that the resistance of white Democrats to Barack Obama “remains a serious threat to his chances in November.”
Read the entire article here. But this is the heart of his argument:
”Racial attitudes have changed dramatically in the United States over the past several decades, of course, and overtly racist beliefs are much less prevalent among white Americans of all classes today. But a more subtle form of prejudice, which social scientists sometimes call symbolic racism, is still out there — especially among working-class whites.
“Symbolic racism means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination. Who holds symbolically racist beliefs? A relatively large portion of white voters in general and white working-class voters in particular, according to the 2004 American National Election Study, the best data available on this topic.”
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment |
Morning polls on the Democratic race for Senate, GOP maneuverings for governor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Matt Towery’s InsiderAdvantage has done some overnight polling on the Democratic race for the U.S. Senate and the Republican side of a budding 2010 race for governor.
MOE for the 400-respondent survey is 5 percent. Towery’s Democratic numbers show all the candidates have much work to do, even though they have little money to do it: Vernon Jones, 21 percent; Dale Cardwell, 14 percent; Josh Lanier, 5 percent; Jim Martin, 3 percent; Rand Knight, 1 percent, and undecided, 56 percent.
According to Towery, if the 2010 GOP primary for governor were held today, undecided, at 41 percent, would walk into a runoff with Casey Cagle or John Oxendine, both at 17 percent.
As for the others, Jack Kingston stands at 10 percent, Karen Handel at 7 percent, Lynn Westmoreland at 6 percent, and Jerry Keen at 2 percent.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment |
The day ‘white’ and ‘colored’ signs disappeared from the state Capitol
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over the past several years, the state Capitol has earned a reputation for very loud fights over very small things.
It wasn’t always so. Once upon a time, Jericho-sized walls came tumbling down under the Gold Dome, and without the bleat of a single trumpet, much less a press conference.
Worlds were overthrown with a minimum of fuss. Revolutions required 15 minutes, a quiet phone call or two, and a certain sense of right and wrong.
Last year, Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) began an oral history program, recording interviews with past political figures of Georgia and posting the video on the Internet.
Former Gov. Carl Sanders, now 82, was added just a few days ago. He’d been preceded by state Sen. Leroy Johnson, the first black lawmaker elected since the days of Reconstruction. He’s 79.
Without coordination or prompting, both men — each interviewed by Eric Johnson — tell the same, little-known tale of the day 45 years ago that desegregation came to the Capitol.
Former state senator Leroy Johnson (left) and former Gov. Carl Sanders in the state Capitol. Rich Addicks/AJC
In January 1963, the seat of state government, like the rest of Georgia, was divided not so neatly into black and white.
Restrooms and drinking fountains were labeled “white” and “colored.” The galleries perched above the House and Senate chambers were likewise segregated. The army of young pages who delivered messages to lawmakers was uniformly pale. A driver’s license office in the basement had two separate lines.
Into this hostile world walked 34-year-old Leroy Johnson, a Morehouse graduate forced to study law in North Carolina because “the University of Georgia was not accepting Negroes.”
For most of the session, Johnson’s days were spent in silence. “Not one senator spoke to me,” he said.
Sanders, who had likewise just begun his term, was watching Johnson closely. “He could have been a pain in the neck, as far as I was concerned,” the former governor remembered.
With little else within reach, Johnson’s objective became the desegregation of the state Capitol. The question was how to go about it.
Given the combustible environment — only months later nearby Birmingham would point fire hoses and police dogs at protesters — Johnson judged that it was better to make a point than a scene. It took him three weeks to recruit his first black pages, and then he started.
“I carried my pages into restrooms that said ‘white’ instead of ‘colored.’ And when we got to the water fountain, I had them drink from the water fountain that had the sign that said ‘white’ instead of ‘colored,’” he said.
Johnson created incidents, but not drama. “None of this was done with a news camera pointed to capture the fact,” he said.
Guards sent word to Sanders that two all-important lines were being crossed.
In the Georgia of the ‘60s, a governor was something akin to a king. He named the House speaker and each committee chairman. More important, he ruled the building itself. Sanders’ reaction would set the tone for white inhabitants of the Capitol, regardless of rank.
That night, “white” and “colored” signs disappeared from every water fountain and restroom in the Capitol.
“The courts had already ruled, saying [this was] unlawful,” said Sanders, who like Johnson was a lawyer. “I went ahead and did what I knew the law said to do. And while I was doing that, George Wallace was over in Alabama standing in the schoolhouse door.”
But Sanders had taken note of Johnson’s quiet style, which allowed the governor to respond in kind. “He helped me do some things that I knew had to be done — and do them in a way that wouldn’t create problems,” Sanders said.
The identical thought occurred to Johnson. “[The governor] appreciated that more than I realized then,” the native Atlantan said. “I could have caused chaos with his administration. That was not my intent. My intent was to try to correct what I thought was wrong. And that’s what we did.”
The two had not yet met face to face, but Johnson knew he’d found the ally that mattered. The senator went to the driver’s license office in the basement and stood in the line for whites. A phone call was made, and separate service for black Georgians disappeared.
A cafeteria worker told Johnson she couldn’t serve him. Johnson advised her to check with her supervisor. The senator got his food, but white diners emptied the room when he sat down. Changing policy was one thing. Changing minds was another.
Yet in the end, as the South was slowly learning, matters of race would bend to political necessity. The silent treatment given Johnson ended near the end of his 1963 session, on the day his Senate colleagues found they needed his vote on a bill.
“I learned that, in politics, you get not what you deserve, but what you can negotiate,” Johnson said.
The Johnson-Sanders revolution extended beyond the Capitol grounds. Shortly before adjournment, the Senate scheduled a luncheon at the whites-only Commerce Club, the exclusive lunching place for downtown Atlanta’s power elite.
Johnson arrived, pushed passed a protesting guard, and took a place at the prepared table. The white maitre d’ approached. “He took my plate, my silverware, my glass, and walked out,” Johnson explained.
For the first time, the Atlanta senator issued a threat. Call the governor, Johnson told state Sen. Hugh Gillis, or he would call the newspapers.
Now, in Sanders’ account, Johnson called the governor himself. But Johnson insists it was Gillis. In any case, here’s what happened next:
“I said, ‘Give me about 15 minutes,’” Sanders said. “I called Mr. Bob Woodruff out at the Coca Cola Co. He and Mills Lane [the head of C&S Bank] had created the Commerce Club. I said, ‘Senator Johnson’s at the Commerce Club, and they won’t let him in. If they don’t let him in, we’re going to have the biggest row you’ve ever seen or heard around here.’”
And what did Woodruff say to the governor? “Give me 15 minutes,” Sanders recalled.
A quarter hour later, back at the Commerce Club, the white maitre d’ quietly returned with a plate, glass and silverware, and arranged them in front of the African-American senator. Once he disappeared, black waiters in the dining room applauded.
“That integrated the Commerce Club,” the governor concluded.
Sanders and Johnson were at the Capitol last week, to sit for the photograph that accompanies this account, and to fill a few gaps in the story.
For instance, what happened that morning four decades ago, when the Capitol doors opened, and it was found that the cardboard commands that had kept whites and blacks separate for so many years had suddenly disappeared?
“Nothing at all. I never did hear a complaint or word about it,” the former governor said.
Johnson finished Sanders’ thought. “As if they had never been there.”
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment |
Nunn gets another mention for veep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Georgia senator Sam Nunn earned another mention as a vice presidential selection for Democrat Barack Obama this morning on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous.”
Much of the discussion was over the merits of Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential nominee.
But columnist George Will proposed this as a possibility:
“You can use your nomination to address one of your perceived weaknesses. And the vulnerability of the Obama campaign is that there could be a national security event during this next nine months, eight nine months.
In which case you can pick Sam Nunn — great national security credentials, and he’s from Georgia where the turnout down there in the primary might at least give you the illusion that you might make that state competitive……”
Another thing in Nunn’s favor: He’s spent the last two years or so campaigning against politics as usual, and so would add to Obama politics-of-change message.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Post your comment |
On the fallout — and lack of it — from Isakson’s choice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keeping events in perspective is difficult when dealing with politics.
On Friday morning, Johnny Isakson’s decision to stick to the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor in 2010 was on the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Marietta Daily Journal.
It was the talk of Georgia’s political elite. We reporters were fascinated, because the decision unleashes the ambitions of a dozen or so elected officials.
But on Friday night, Isakson made his first public appearance since making his choice — at the Marietta Country Club, to speak to a group of Rotarians.
Isakson gave his stock speech. Energy, taxes and Iraq were the primary topics. The only allusion to the newspaper articles was a brief expression by Isakson of how much he enjoyed working in Washington. The word “governor” never passed his lips.
More important, in the question-and-answer session that followed, neither did the audience. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas, corn-for-fuel vs. corn-for-food, and the economy took precedent.
One more thought :
We’ve heard much about who might run for governor, even that state Sens. Eric Johnson of Savannah and Chip Rogers of Woodstock are interested in lieutenant governor should Casey Cagle abandon the position.
What hasn’t been mentioned is the fact that, by staying put in Washington, Isakson has put a limit — at least for the time being — on an extension of Sonny Perdue’s political career once he leaves the Governor’s Mansion.
For there was always the possibility that Isakson and Perdue could simply swap jobs in 2010.
Now there’s nowhere for Perdue to go — unless John McCain has something for him.
MOST POPULAR STORIES
Latest comments
Obama just became irrelevant. Bob Barr just entered the race, and he’s got at least one vote in South GA!... read the full comment by Jeff | Comment on Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism' Read Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism'
I really want someone to address an issue I have that’s really alarming to me. WHY WON’T ANYONE ACKNOWLEDGE THE POSSIBILITY THAT A TAPE EXISTS OF OBAMA ATTENDING ONE OF THOSE “FIERY” SPEECHES? I truly believe that... read the full comment by Mr. Reality | Comment on Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism' Read Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism'
Its funny how liberals keep pounding this McCain will be a 3rd term of Bush nonsense. The only Bush policy that McCain supports is the war in Iraq. Other policies such as spending, environment, taxes, healthcare, education, etc….McCain has not towed... read the full comment by Gary | Comment on Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism' Read Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism'
Article is right on. I am white male with BS degree. I have looked very hard at Obama and was very seriously considering voting for him. It was so refreshing having a black not playing, and even running from, the race card. Then Rev. Wright came along... read the full comment by KenC | Comment on Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism' Read Barack Obama and 'symbolic racism'