Why does it matter if Black people are only voting for Obama because he's Black? We're only 12% of the population. And we're not like right-wing conservatives, who are small in number but loud and annoying; a good number of that 12% doesn't even vote. So since we're so shallow and uninformed, it's not like the remaining 88% won't have the power to drown us out. After all, the same people who gripe about this are the same well-informed voters who are supporting Sarah Palin just because she said some combination of the following words and phrases: Republican, Bible, Iraq, abortion, overturn Roe V. Wade, family values, terrorists, small government, free market, guns.
I just wonder what the gripe would have been if Hillary would have won the nomination and still have been beating McCain in the polls. Probably the old one were we always vote for Democrats, even though modern-day Republicans are generally opposed to anything that Black people want to do that doesn't involve "getting over" slavery. How Black people vote shouldn't even really be an issue, because there's never been a danger of us electing a President on our own. If there ever was, there would also have been history books with a reference about the "assassination of Presidential candidate Dick Gregory in 1968."
Putting all of that aside, there are a lot of us voting for Obama because of his stance on issues, not because our matching skin tones count as accessories when we go out. Just for the record, when I chose to support Obama, it wasn't because I was against McCain. It was because I like a lot of his ideas. I like John McCain; I just like Barack Obama more. Well, I liked the John McCain that was around before he sold his soul to Cheney, like a conscious rapper looking for a record deal. Today's John McCain does things like select inexperienced women that don't know how to do anything except alienate people as his running mate. So my support of Obama didn't make me vote for him automatically. I wasn't going to vote for him at all at first, because of my desire to help break the two-party system's grip on our nation's government. Then,I listened to a string of his speeches, and I gotta tell ya...that man could inspire a legless man to walk again.
To assume that we're all voting for Obama because he's Black is actually insulting, much like when white people "compliment" Black people by saying, "You speak so well." And just like we're capable of stringing together sentences without sounding like we stepped out of (random example of "urban" cinema), we're also smart enough to decide which candidate we'll support based on the issues. It's not like we supported him for ridiculous reasons like promising to put the Rebel shield back on the Georgia State flag, or because I'm a Born-Again Christian who believes in the death penalty. He's a brilliant man with a clear vision of what America should be, and it happens to be a vision I share, more or less. And to tell you the truth, if Jesse Ventura had decided to run, I don't know if I'd even be voting for Obama. Seriously.
Weren't the failed candidacies of Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley-Braun in 2004 (or Alan Keyes in general) proof enough that we don't just blindly support Black candidates? Let's find a new issue to gripe about. I can't believe people are STILL talking about this.
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