For those of you actively phonebanking in places like Ohio, Kentucky, and the southern region of Indiana, it is important to know that even people who are not that fond of people of color can be convinced to vote for Obama.
This wouldn't have even occurred to me if what I am about to relate to you didn't happen to me this morning...
This morning I was on my usual AM run after dropping my daughter off at school. I was walking in a state park which has a mix of different types of people. I was taking a break on a bench when a woman, about 55?, white, sat down next to me. She saw my Obama shirt and instigated a political conversation.
"You voting for Obama?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said. "I'm wearing this shirt for that reason!" (I said this brightly though I realize it reads a little bitchy here.)
"What about you?" I asked her. "Are you registered to vote?"
"Oh yes," she told me. I knew she was, but I didn't want to pointedly ask her if she was voting for Obama just yet. "I've voted in every election since 1976."
"So, do you know who you'll be voting for?" I asked her.
"I don't know if I will vote this year," she said.
I asked her why. She explained (in some detail) that she was a Democrat and didn't want to vote for John McCain but that she wasn't "comfortable" with Obama.
"It's nothing against you," she said (I am black), "but I think we're not ready for a black President."
I kept it light. "I'm ready!" I joked. Then I said, "Barack Obama is so much more than 'just our first black President.'" Then I went on to talk to her about Obama's policies in general terms and to generally try to get her to think of him as something other than "a black president."
She kind of hemmed and hawed. Finally I said, "If you were to suddenly fall into this lake (the running/walking trail is around a lake) and need mouth-to-mouth, and there was me, who knows CPR, and a white person who didn't, would you rather me not give you mouth-to-mouth because I am black?"
She thought about it for a really long minute! Yes, folks, she thought about it! Let me pause to say this woman must be REALLY racist if she could tell me, an African American Obama supporter, she wasn't comfortable with a black man being President.
Finally she said, "I'd want you to save me. No doubt about it."
So then I said, "Well, our country is just like you would be if you'd fallen into the lake. It is in dire straights. And the only person who can save it, happens to be the black guy. Do we really want to watch our entire future be jeopardized because of something like this?"
"I never thought about it like that," she said. "That puts a new spin on it."
Then she said, "But my friends will all think I have gone nuts if I tell them I will vote for Obama."
I told her, "You don't have to tell them who you are voting for. It's like when you pray for people (I got the feeling she was also religious) you don't have to tell people what prayer you've said on their behalf--but they will still get all the benefit. If Obama wins," I told her, "you will have made their lives better, whether they realize it or not."
"You're telling me to lie?" she said jokingly.
"Yep," I said. "If that's what is going to get you to vote for Obama!"
"You're smart," she said. "I think you just converted me."
"I'm not as smart as Obama!" I told her.
Now she may have already been leaning and needed some validation. It might be that she'd tried to find validation among her friends and family and didn't get it--so she picked the easy target, a black woman in an Obama shirt. Nevertheless, I thought of using these same strategies in phonebanking and I wanted to share this episode to say to all of us volunteering that some racists are reachable; they can be convinced to "overlook" the race factor.
Let us ignore the mainstream meme that racists cannot vote for Obama. I think we can turn some of them. I think we can get them to go to the polls and "secretly" vote for him. I think if we show them that the country is gasping for air and only one of the two Presidential contenders has the skill to revive it, they will vote against their socially constructed racism. Of course some of them won't. But if we don't give up on them, if we keep working at it, some of them will.
(Wow, rec'd! Thanks everyone! Now I got a double reward...another Obama voter in Ohio and rec'd!)
Update re: some of your comments
I want to thank everyone for the truly kind things said in the comments section. In terms of strategies for dealing with problematic racial statements, I didn't get upset because I am a college prof in Southwestern Ohio and I am used to my students (who are predominantly white) making problematic racial statements. I have learned that racism is often better dealt with if you keep a cool head. People learn more if they aren't afraid you're going to fly off the handle. So I don't. My approach with my students has always been to create a safe environment to talk about race. The way to do this is to be unflappable. To let nothing phase you. The reaction of outrage can only alienate and divide.
I am also mixed race and my father's family is very, very racist. They call themselves "rednecks." My grandmother's great-grandfather fought in the confederacy during the civil war. She still has buttons from his uniform. She is proud of them. She is proud of him. I have experience with a kind of racism that you won't see in "Mississippi Burning." It's a kind of racism that is unapologetic but is also not that aware of itself as we, in the progressive community, might be aware of it.
It's true that this woman was more than halfway there. She'd already been won over, by Obama, and all I did (as one poster put it) was close the deal. But the most important thing this experience reminded me of is that there is no one we can give up on. Our fight is not only to contest the other side...it is also not let anyone convince us that we cannot all be transformed.