Scott Kurashige: California's Multiracial Challenge to America
[Scott Kurashige is an associate professor of history at the University of Michigan and author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton University Press, 2008).]
The results from the CA Dem primary show that no serious candidate for the presidency can ignore the potential of multiracial voting coalition.
Sixty years ago, Carey McWilliams, the well-traveled writer/activist and soon to be editor of The Nation, described California as "our nation's racial frontier." As the West Coast's multiracial makeup posed new problems and challenges, it also offered America "one more chance, perhaps a last chance, to establish the principle of racial equality." In this regard, it blessed California's residents and observers with "a ringside seat in the great theatre of the future."
In stunning fashion, the California Democratic primary signaled that the future has arrived with dramatic implications for the entire nation. There has never been an important election like this where a candidate failed to win African Americans and whites but won overall-as Clinton did in California. Once again, California flipped the script. Latinos and Asians carried Hillary to victory in California on their backs and quite likely salvaged her entire campaign. The national media has now come around to the idea of Latinos as a "sleeping giant," and the Clinton strategists deserve credit for their attentiveness to the Latino vote. While I am not holding my breath waiting for the media to overcome decades of ignorance of and marginalization of Asian Americans, the Clinton campaign has undoubtedly benefited from the significant involvement of Asian American donors, staffers, and volunteers.
This is a turning point in U.S. political history: no serious candidate for the presidency from here on out can ignore the mandate to build a multiracial coalition. Obama built an impressive biracial coalition in California, winning overwhelmingly among African Americans and splitting the white vote equally. As a result, California may help forestall the media's misguided obsession with Obama's failure to overcome the black/white racial divide. Obama may have lost, but it was not because of the "Bradley effect." Still, his defeat exposed the inadequacy of biracial thinking in the face of a multiracial reality. ...
Casting Obama as a "colorblind" politician, the pundits and his left skeptics have largely missed the significance of what he represents. Getting "beyond race" today is not about ignoring the problem of racism or moderating ones politics to appease whites. Instead, it means thinking about America as a multiracial nation that dispels old notions of both white normativity and majority/minority identities. Culturally and demographically, millions of Americans -- especially youth -- already live in a world where that notion of white majority has been displaced by a multiethnic reality. Obama is helping us to envision what a new majority will look like politically.
For this reason, the Obama campaign is the only one with movement building potential and why we all have a stake in its efforts to build a multiracial coalition on new ground. Following the dictates of pollsters and consultants, traditional Democrats carve us all up into "interest groups," so they can push the hot buttons that reinforce our sense of victimization and vilify the other side. Obama has learned -- both from his study of what historian Charles Payne has called the black freedom struggle's "organizing tradition" and from his experience organizing against the depths of despair in Chicago's deindustrialized South Side -- that such an approach is not only ineffective but also spiritually bankrupt. If you are just a "minority leader," then you're not really a leader at all. If you are only fighting for your "fair share" of the riches controlled by those in power, you'll never address the root causes of oppression. Above all is the sense that none of us can be free in America or face the global crises of our lifetime until we change the whole country. That is why Obama has the "audacity" to think he is the best person to lead the entire nation. ...
Read entire article at AlterNet
The results from the CA Dem primary show that no serious candidate for the presidency can ignore the potential of multiracial voting coalition.
Sixty years ago, Carey McWilliams, the well-traveled writer/activist and soon to be editor of The Nation, described California as "our nation's racial frontier." As the West Coast's multiracial makeup posed new problems and challenges, it also offered America "one more chance, perhaps a last chance, to establish the principle of racial equality." In this regard, it blessed California's residents and observers with "a ringside seat in the great theatre of the future."
In stunning fashion, the California Democratic primary signaled that the future has arrived with dramatic implications for the entire nation. There has never been an important election like this where a candidate failed to win African Americans and whites but won overall-as Clinton did in California. Once again, California flipped the script. Latinos and Asians carried Hillary to victory in California on their backs and quite likely salvaged her entire campaign. The national media has now come around to the idea of Latinos as a "sleeping giant," and the Clinton strategists deserve credit for their attentiveness to the Latino vote. While I am not holding my breath waiting for the media to overcome decades of ignorance of and marginalization of Asian Americans, the Clinton campaign has undoubtedly benefited from the significant involvement of Asian American donors, staffers, and volunteers.
This is a turning point in U.S. political history: no serious candidate for the presidency from here on out can ignore the mandate to build a multiracial coalition. Obama built an impressive biracial coalition in California, winning overwhelmingly among African Americans and splitting the white vote equally. As a result, California may help forestall the media's misguided obsession with Obama's failure to overcome the black/white racial divide. Obama may have lost, but it was not because of the "Bradley effect." Still, his defeat exposed the inadequacy of biracial thinking in the face of a multiracial reality. ...
Casting Obama as a "colorblind" politician, the pundits and his left skeptics have largely missed the significance of what he represents. Getting "beyond race" today is not about ignoring the problem of racism or moderating ones politics to appease whites. Instead, it means thinking about America as a multiracial nation that dispels old notions of both white normativity and majority/minority identities. Culturally and demographically, millions of Americans -- especially youth -- already live in a world where that notion of white majority has been displaced by a multiethnic reality. Obama is helping us to envision what a new majority will look like politically.
For this reason, the Obama campaign is the only one with movement building potential and why we all have a stake in its efforts to build a multiracial coalition on new ground. Following the dictates of pollsters and consultants, traditional Democrats carve us all up into "interest groups," so they can push the hot buttons that reinforce our sense of victimization and vilify the other side. Obama has learned -- both from his study of what historian Charles Payne has called the black freedom struggle's "organizing tradition" and from his experience organizing against the depths of despair in Chicago's deindustrialized South Side -- that such an approach is not only ineffective but also spiritually bankrupt. If you are just a "minority leader," then you're not really a leader at all. If you are only fighting for your "fair share" of the riches controlled by those in power, you'll never address the root causes of oppression. Above all is the sense that none of us can be free in America or face the global crises of our lifetime until we change the whole country. That is why Obama has the "audacity" to think he is the best person to lead the entire nation. ...