I've always kind of assumed that the overt racism being talked about recently is confined to rural West Virginia and other such places. But I was canvassing this yesterday afternoon in Northeast Philadelphia, as I've done for the past few weekends, and things changed. It's a very interesting place demographically: some minorities, but mostly working class whites of Irish, Italian, Polish descent - Catholic, less educated, but most importantly for my purposes, strong Clinton supporters. Northeast Philly went for Hillary 70-30 in the primaries, so we've made it a point here to introduce ourselves as volunteers with the Democratic party and not the Obama campaign. There are a lot of Democrats that have voted Democrat their whole lives and will look past reservations with Obama and once again vote for the Democratic ticket, just as they always have. By the way, Biden is very popular here, and people often cite him as one of the reasons they have come to support Obama in recent weeks. On the other hand, I've never heard a good word about Palin, and it seems to me that she really turned off truly undecided people who gave McCain a serious look but are now getting comfortable with Obama.
Anyway, at the second door I knocked on I was greeted by a woman who was about 60-70 years old, in a sweatshirt, with bad teeth. I asked for her husband and he wasn't home, so we struck up a conversation. I said I was going through the neighborhood asking people about who they're going to support in the election, and who she was voting for. She said, "Well, I hate black people."
So how do you respond to that? I certainly wasn't going to argue against her prejudice, so I tried to steer the conversation more towards the economy and her own well-being. She said she hasn't followed any of the financial news recently, and only knows that food prices have gone up at the local grocery store. I tried to tell her about middle class tax cuts and universal healthcare but she wasn't really comprehending any of it. Then she invited me in her house.
What the hell, I figured? The exchange was interesting so far. I went in and took a seat, a 12-14 year old girl was watching TV on the couch. The woman stood near me and continued the conversation over a movie blaring in the background.
The N word was dropped several times as she told me of how the blacks in the city are given all the jobs and housing, while white people like her other daughter couldn't get any help. You have to be black to get a job as a garbage man, apparently. "I take my garbage out to the curb," she said, "let me throw it in the back of them trucks." I guess she was unemployed. Obama might only help blacks as president, she speculated.
The woman knew for sure though that blacks were the source of just about every problem in Philadelphia. She said this as black people were singing on TV and black kids were playing in the street outside. I told her Obama was half white. Yeah, I could've avoided it for intellectual purposes, but I didn't let myself take any of the banter personally, nor did I lose my calm. It was more of an experiment to see if I could somehow get someone like this to vote for a black candidate.
I realized I never actually asked her who she supported. "Oh, I'll vote for him," she said.
"Obama?" I asked with careful surprise.
"Yeah, him" she said. "I'll vote for the white piece of 'em. McCain is too old."
Chalk up another "scrape the bottom of the barrel" vote. If Obama is getting these types of people that are unabashedly, even proudly racist and have no second thoughts about proclaiming it to a stranger on their doorstep, he's going to carry places like West Virginia too.
For me, it was just incredible to observe this wave in American political culture that we're really going to have to sort out if/when Obama actually wins.
I assumed the encounter would be an isolated incident. The next man, Melvin something-or-other, told me as he answered the door that he doesn't vote for two types of people.
"Republicans," he said. "And blacks."
It was a long afternoon.