2008 Democratic Primaries Are Enfranchising Minorities and Women

By

Dr. Sherman N. Miller

1/27/2008

The Democratic Primaries are causing a paradigm shift in who can be the leader of the United States of America. As a child in the late Nineteen Forties and Fifties it was a given that a White male was the only one who could become the US President for racism and sexism were two very potent barriers to other American citizens possessing a hint of electability.  

In yesteryear, neither blacks nor women could vote for the racists and sexists overlords knew that these citizen groups would reshape the national psyche if they gained any hint of legitimacy at the polls. The fact that Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the frontrunners in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary season and former Senator John Edwards (white male) is running third offers us a gauge on the pace at which yesterday’s exclusivity of leadership barriers in the mainstream psyche are fading.

Blacks and women have become chairmen of the board of directors in Corporate America. Multiracial Tiger Woods is now the top golfer in the world. Many colleges and universities have classrooms with roughly two females for every male. Interracial marriages and relationships no longer carry yesteryear’s vilification and the multiracial children of these relationships are legitimate family members of both their white and nonwhite grand parentage. Does this mean that whites are seeing the white mother of Senator Obama as making him beholding to both Black and White America?  

Who would have expected Senator Obama to garner roughly 25 percent of the white vote in South Carolina when it was obvious that some political pundits were hoping that yesteryear’s anti-black leadership taint was still alive and well? As a senior citizen white lady recounted, whites from South Carolina would visit our office and they did not wish to be helped by the African American secretaries.

Senator Clinton energized the female vote. Clearly she represents the hope of a female President.

One might conclude that no matter who wins the Democratic Presidential candidate race it is clear that 2008 was a referendum on the change in Mainstream American thinking on enfranchising minorities and women.