Is Worse Better? Some Surprising White Support For Obama
By Peter Bradley
If you pay a visit to Barack Obama's official campaign website, you will find a host of subgroups in the "People" section boosting his candidacy. The man who will help us overcome race has separate categories for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, First Americans (he is not talking about the ancestors of Kennewick Man) and, of course, African Americans. If you are white and racist enough to notice you are not part of Obama's rainbow, don't worry. You can still join groups for students, women, veterans or the LGBT crowd.
If you are just what Obama notoriously called a "typical white person" who is not part of these groups, then you are out of luck. But maybe not for much longer.
A significant number of white race activists—they often call themselves "white nationalists", analogous to black nationalists, Hispanic nationalists or Zionists and not the same thing as white supremacists—are supporting an Obama presidency as the lesser of two evils and, possibly, the catalyst for a wake up call for white America.
Newhouse News reporter Jonathan Tilove covered the 2008 American Renaissance conference in late February and quoted a number of whites who were ready to support the Senator from Illinois.
"We are facing the election of Barack Obama, or, even worse, McCain," said Sam Dickson, Atlanta attorney and longtime racial activist during his closing speech. [A View Of Obama From The Trenches Of White Nationalism, February 27, 2008) ]
Maryland attorney Howard Fezell wondered if black racial loyalty to Obama could make some whites wonder why they can't do the same. "Only white voters are expected to look beyond race," he said.
Even Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, praised Obama's campaign strategy and stated that he does not know who he will vote for in November.
Paul Gottfried, who also spoke at the event, speculated that most of the over 250 people in attendance would most likely support Obama over McCain. "Better a black who is honest about who he is than a conservative who is really delivering the liberal agenda," declared Gottfried.
There seem to be three main reasons for this unexpected support for Obama's candidacy.
- First: John McCain's stands on affirmative action, immigration, official English, the Confederate flag, and other racially-tinged issues are, in fact, pretty much the same as Obama's.
The Republican nominee recently told a black audience that his vote against the MLK holiday was the greatest mistake of his political career. He equates immigration reform with "bigotry." As I write this, McCain is promising a renewed "War on Poverty" and criticizing an ad by North Carolina Republicans that draws attention to the race-baiting comments of Obama's spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Larry Auster of the mildly white-nationalist View from the Right blog writes: "at least the Democratic president, as he welcomes Al Sharpton to the White House, won't be giving us lectures on 'true conservatism.'" Auster views McCain as a virtual death sentence for conservatism in America.
- Second: Iraq and neoconservative foreign policy. Almost all paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians are against the war and interventionism abroad.
If we must have race quotas and amnesties, at least a President Obama would get us out of a costly war. McCain could well get us into an even deadlier conflict with Iran.
- Third, and most important: an Obama presidency could shake up the current racial dynamics and bring about an end to white guilt and passivity over racial issues.
As Jared Taylor told Jonathan Tilove, "I think many smarter, far-thinking blacks are going to be worried that any time they start talking about discrimination, certainly institutional racism, people are going to say, 'Hey, look, you've got a black president for heaven's sake.'"
TakiMag's Christopher Roach made the point that an Obama presidency could make whites more racially aware even more bluntly: "a political equivalent of the O.J. Trial for four years might be the right catalyst for this sort of 'consciousness raising.'"
The Obama record on race is eye-opening for those who will look. The racialism of his autobiography, the anti-white comments of his wife and of his spiritual mentor, his attendance at Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, his support for the Jena Six race attackers, his insulting "race speech" and slurs about "typical whites" and "bitter" people in rural America all point to a man who has more in common with Al Sharpton than Ward Connerly.
Marcus Epstein agrees on the potential for a white backlash. "We can be sure that a president Obama will be push for the same anti-white policies of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, while posing as a post-racial unifier," he says. "The question is whether or not the public will buy that facade."
As director of Pat Buchanan's American Cause, Epstein receives quite a bit of feedback from blacks on the true meaning of an Obama presidency. One of the more printable responses came from a black man who told him: "You [presumably whites] have had 100 [sic]presidents, why can’t we have one?"
The whites who support Obama tend to be young, affluent liberals who truly believe the Obama campaign is about racial unity. But blacks are not supporting Obama so they can hold hands and sing Dave Matthews songs with rich white kids from the suburbs (I recently saw a news clip of a free Dave Matthews concert given in support of Obama and literally every face in the crowd was white).
Clearly these two main groups of Obama supporters are on a collision course.
It is not hard to predict which race is in for a rude awakening.
Personally, I plan to vote for the Constitution Party which just nominated Chuck Baldwin as its presidential candidate. Baldwin is an immigration patriot and a strong conservative on all issues. A vote for him will send a clear message to the GOP that the McCain-Bush type of Republican Party is unacceptable and unworthy of support.
But an Obama presidency at least offers the possibility of an energized right wing movement in which paleos and whites of the Jared Taylor-Sam Francis school can find a home.
Just as forced integration and busing woke up many northern white ethnics in the 1960s and 70s, a black race-driven president who uses his office to excuse black rioters and defend black gangs who attack white kids will be a real eye-opener for many a nice white liberal—to say nothing of the slumbering "conservative" masses.