by Mikhail Lyubansky

“When it comes to African-American audiences, some have called Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid a ‘dual-track’ candidacy, one that seeks to prove he is in tune with the needs of the black community while also not alienating whites.”

This was the opening sentence of the John McCormick and Rick Pearson’s Chicago Tribune’s cover story July 15th and the typical way the mainstream media is covering the 2008 election. The unanswered (and typically not even asked) questions are what does he need to do in order to appeal to both of these groups, and is simultaneously appealing to both groups even possible. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief examination of these two questions.

Reporters and pundits alike often frame this issue racially – as in the example above. Nothing wrong with that. There are legitimate racial issues in this and other elections that deserve and are worthy of media scrutiny and citizen discussion. And certainly, Obama’s ability to simultaneously appeal to both White and Black voters (not to mention to other racial and ethnic minority groups) may both determine who wins the election and provide some much-needed racial unity (see my previous post on the racial implications of this election). That said, a purely racial framing of this question is much too simplistic. In the interest of space, I’ll focus on just one example: the intersection between race and social class:

by Mikhail Lyubansky

“Fiction,” said Stephen King, “is the truth inside the lie.” The problem is (apart from the necessary mental calisthenics involved in deciphering this comment) is that, for many filmgoers, it may well be the only truth they get, at least about some issues. It is therefore noteworthy that recent films (and of course the books and comics that spawned them) such as X-Men and Harry Potter have explicitly taken on racial issues and race relations. As a result, important issues such as blood purity, group prejudice, and even eugenics have become part of the dialog – both online and at the kitchen table. With several more Harry Potter and X-Men films currently in production, these themes are likely to remain in our cultural dialog for the foreseeable future.

by Mikhail Lyubansky

This is heresy I know, since most of the white majority likes to pretend that it’s colorblind, but race needs to be part of the calculus in the November election for all voters. Of course, it was never not going to be part of the equation. And race is certainly part of the explicit discourse for Black voters, as it always is. My point is that it's high time white folks join in the discussion and acknowledge that it matters. Because it does.