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Most white Americans will not vote for Barack Obama. No Democratic candidate for president has received a majority of white votes since Lyndon Johnson won in a landslide 44 years ago.
But more white voters than voted for John Kerry, Al Gore and even Bill Clinton will vote for Obama on Tuesday if polls are correct. And they will join a majority of black, Asian American, Latino and Native American voters in a coalition that will make history on Tuesday.
This moment has been coming as seen in the growing number of black politicians elected in places where there are few non-white voters. Small town white voters have helped to create the path Barack Obama now walks.
Prejudices can be so deeply ingrained that we are not aware of them. We can hold biases yet vote differently. There is an anecdote of uncertain origin circulating which demonstrates that even openly racist voters can move past their hatred to vote for a African American in the face of economic crisis:
So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."
In this economy, racism is officially a luxury.
The ugly racism that still exists to this day in our country crescendoed when a group of neo-Nazi, white supremacist, sons of klansmen, skinheads plotted to kill black school children and then Barack Obama. But even as most Americans recoiled in horror and were grateful that the ATF quickly foiled the plotting as they've done twice before this election season, we will awake Wednesday morning to find that racism, fear and hatred still exist. Black men will still be seen as "bogeymen" and made out to be convenient scapegoats. Many will remain unsure and wary of those who are different from them and others still will openly express their hate. However, their ranks continue to shrink. Obama's candidacy has opened a space for dialog.
This 2008 election is a milestone and may put a black man in the White House. That creates an opportunity for an adult conversation about the murky complexities of race, in part because there’s evidence that when people become aware of their unconscious biases, they can overcome them.
Wounds may have been reopened and rubbed raw anew but in that freshness is an opportunity for them to better heal this time. And we have come far as a nation and that progress as we continue to grow into America's promise of greatness should be celebrated.
What should also be celebrated with this election is that many white voters will ignore the calls to their basest instincts. As Frank Rich noted in his New York Times Op-Ed "In Defense of White Americans":
But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.
Carmen VanKerckhove at Racialicious wrote "An open letter to white voters, or what McCain really thinks of you":
Dear white voter, it’s time for a decision.
This November, will you support the candidate who assumes the worst about your character and motivations?
Or will you vote for the candidate who has never stopped believing in and championing your capacity for greatness?
And perhaps that will be Obama's greatest gift towards healing the racial divisions still present in this country. However, it will be up to all of us Americans to use that gift:
We must. When we elect Barack on Tuesday we will not be at the end of struggle; we will be at the beginning. The White House is not the prize. Our calling is to something greater than any one man in the halls of power. When Obama wins we must begin to govern. We must begin to
