STOP the slicing and dicing and see what Obama's campaign has been all about

[Adelante]

This is what's going on in the country, to one extent or another, this campaign season. This is how we win. All of us together.

In Dixie, Signs of a Rising Biracial Politics

Across the South, Barack Obama’s smashing primary victory in North Carolina last week reflects a new reality — a half-century of rising Republican red tide has crested, with signs of receding.

-snip

The trends suggest a region in transformation, with dynamic economic growth, an expanded black middle class, the arrival of millions of white migrants, the return of scores of thousands of African-American expatriates, and an emerging native white generation with little or no memory of racial segregation. The result has been greater tolerance, an expanded pool of talent, and growing openness to new ideas.

In the South Carolina presidential primary in January, one factor in Mr. Obama’s decisive victory was his ability to draw 25 percent of the white vote against two strong white opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. But the turnout may have been the strongest sign of change.

Almost 100,000 more South Carolinians voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican contest. The surge smashed the previous Democratic presidential primary record by more than 80 percent — this in a state where Republicans hold both Senate seats, the offices of governor and attorney general, and both houses of the legislature. The more astute white Democrats saw an energized black electorate as a core element for a future biracial comeback.

-snip

Although the effects of past discrimination still include widespread poverty among African-Americans, it’s mostly hidden from view. The outlawing of discrimination in employment, under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has resulted in a unified, biracial work force in which white and black Southerners can more easily acknowledge a common regional identity and biracial culture, as found in music, literature, religion, food and a sense of place.

-snip

Like Americans across the country, many Southerners, black and white, are troubled by the war in Iraq, rising deficits and a plummeting economy symbolized by the soaring price of gasoline. Race itself is receding as a divisive issue. Like the late afternoon sky across the region, there’s a purple hue across one horizon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/weekinreview/11bass.html?_r=2&oref=login&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

[Eric J in MN]

1. The big mistake of civil rights groups in 1990.

"After the 1990 census, the first Bush administration reached an agreement with civil rights groups under which the Justice Department required legislatures to increase the number of voting districts in which minority groups were concentrated. As a result, Southern blacks more than tripled their numbers in Congress; many now have seniority and status as committee chairmen or other posts. But with the removal of blacks from predominantly white districts that had tended to vote Democratic, Republicans too made huge gains, and the ranks of moderate white Democrats were decimated. Similar patterns emerged in state governments, like South Carolina’s."

The decision of civil rights groups to go along with the George H. W. Bush administration on racially segregating Congressional districts (for more black Congresspersons and fewer Democratic Congresspersons) gave us the rule of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay over the US House, as Republicans controlled the US House after the 1994 election and until the new Congress which followed the 2006 election.

[ms liberty]

2. Interesting article. K&R n/t