In the News - Voting for Obama

In Lisa Wikner's presentation today, she drew on an article about the recent election looking at the number of people who voted for Obama. It's clear that an increased number of minority voters voted in this election, many of them having voted for Obama. The article doesn't doesn't cover the fact that an increased percentage of white males voted for Obama (compared to the percentage that voted for Bush and Kerry in 2004). So, while there was an increase in minority voters, as the article suggests, there was an increase across all groups, which I think speaks to Obama's broad appeal.

Obama never positioned himself as the "African-American candidate," which was probably a good idea. He didn't need to do so to win minority votes, and doing so could have alienated some white voters. I'm surprised, however, that we continue to think of someone who has parents of different racial backgrounds as either black or white. This smacks of blood quotas and other racist ideas that claimed that one drop of African-American blood meant that you were no longer white.