Obama Leads Among Blacks in South Carolina Poll

Although Hillary “won” in Nevada last week, Obama got more delegates than she did. (This race may go down to the convention floor.) Since that time, however, the race in South Carolina has heated up. National polls still have Clinton ahead of Obama.

But in South Carolina, the African-American vote for Obama is increasing daily. When the presidential race began, African Americans weren’t sure of Obama’s viability. They knew the Clintons. They knew the Clintons understood them.

The uncertainty about Obama’s success was born from African Americans’ own insecurity: They could not believe, that in this day and age, when racism is still endemic, that an African American would come so close to winning the Democratic primary. (A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll underlines this. Asked if the country is ready for a black president, 72 percent of whites answered yes; only 61 percent of blacks answered yes.)

The State Of . . . Election ‘08 is still a toss up. One of my (rich) friends commemorated King day yesterday by voting early for Obama and she wasn’t the only one. As for this poor self image the poll “suggests,” we all know where it comes from. It’s the older generation who are still skeptical that Obama can give them more than the Clintons. It’s ironic that this same generation (Jesse, Charles Rangel, et al.) had to push the previous generation to move on civil rights. Now we have to do the same thing to them.