Obama: Some of my best friends make me unelectable

What does it mean when you have white people voting for the black candidate and black people voting for the white candidate?

That’s the situation news reports seemed to suggest last week. Barak Obama’s centrist appeal is drawing record numbers of crowds — of white people. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who have previously enjoyed support in black communities, are going back there to fight for the black vote — with good results.

At first blush, this development could be construed as a progress. This is the dream Martin Luther King Jr., spoke of, where a man can be judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character. So why isn’t this news being reported or received that way?

On some level, we know what we are witnessing probably has more to do with our own insecurities than the reality of any Utopia. For white people, Obama is safe and nonthreatening. He makes Colin Powell look like Bobby Seale. His much celebrated multicultural background (child of a Kenyan father and white Kansas mother who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia) and can’t-we-all-get-along approach is probably very appealing to a group of people who are weary of feeling guilty for the sins of their forebears. They desperately want to believe that racism no longer exists, and everyone can achieve the height of their aspirations with a little hard work. Sen. Obama permits them to do so. "Here's one I can support. See, the problem is not me."

For black people, that same nonthreatening appeal is a reason for distrust, probably because he is an unknown entity. Sen. Obama represents the ascendancy of the first non civil rights leader. He didn't derive his power by coming up through the ranks of the normal civil rights activist channels. As a result, he isn't beholden to them. He has been thrust into the position of a national leader without going to the brethren for their blessing. That has got to make the brethren uncomfortable, if not downright suspicious.

So there he floats. White people like him too much, so now black folks don't trust him. Can he do any good from that position?

Sen. Obama has probably astutely recognized that the candidate the tra-ditional civil rights crew wants him to be is not an electable one. He is also about to learn that the candidate the white voters want him to be will cost him his natural political base — also making him ultimately unelectable. His is a precarious road.

To be successful, he will have to buy each suitor flowers and make them feel pretty, but he can't sleep with them. If he can make that juggling act work, he will have earned the nomination.

My old Ma's a white old Ma
And my old Pa is black.
If ever I cursed my white old Ma
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old Pa
And wished he was in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish him well
My old Ma died in a fine big house.
My Pa died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

-Adapted from Langston Hughes’ Cross