The Clintons are pulling some racial jui-jitsu on Barack Obama, using a different racial argument through the mouths of establishment black leaders (see below). The argument is that Obama is “the Great White Hope.” That is, a “safe” black man that will assuage white people’s guilty conscience, allowing them to continue to ignore black people’s concerns.
Just to correct the allusion, the “great white hope” was a white boxer, James Jeffries, who came out of retirement back in 1910 in a vain effort to dethrone Jack Johnson, the first black heavy-weight champion. The term does NOT refer to a black man who white people like! If white people turn to Hillary Clinton to try to keep a black man out of office, SHE would be the great white hope.
Anyway, this rhetoric strikes me as very low, an effort to undermine racial progress with racial mistrust.
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