Think the election of President Obama ushered in what's been dubbed as "post-racial America?" Think again. The mayoral election in Atlanta indicates that race still plays a crucial role in politics. Candidate Kasim Reed, who is African-American, beat rival Mary Norwood, who is white, in the city's mayoral runoff by 715 votes, a margin of less than 1 percent. Because the margin was so small, Norwood has requested a recount. Whoever's ultimately deemed the winner can thank members of their respective racial groups for voting for them.
"Tuesday's election shows votes were cast sharply along racial lines, splitting the city into the white north side and the black south side even more clearly than in the general election Nov. 3," wrote Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Dec. 3. "This pattern appears to have crossed class lines, with voters in wealthier and poorer sections all voting for the candidate who shared their skin color."
What makes the racial divide more startling is that neither Norwood nor Reed played up matters of race in their campaigns, unlike when Maynard Jackson, an African American, ran against Sam Massell, a Caucasian in 1973. Then, Tucker pointed out, Jackson garnered support from African Americans by linking his campaign to racial pride, and Massell garnered support from whites by drumming up fear at the prospect of Atlanta being run by a black man.
"Atlanta is too young to die," was Massell's slogan, according to Tucker. The motto suggested that the election of a black man would kill the city, she said.
Thirty-six years later mayoral candidates have moved beyond overtly appealing to the electorate's race-consciousness, but the fact that voters are highly likely to vote for a candidate who shares their ethnic background while ruling out those who don't is still cause for concern.
As Journal-Constitution writer Cameron McWhirter put it, "This week's mayoral election showed that decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. urged that people not be judged by the color of their skin, blacks and whites in his hometown are voting along racial lines."
Comments
Race is equal to skin color and skin color is actually skin shade. Solely based on skin color, we make way too big a deal about the amount of melanin your skin produces. Race and racism is truly a difference in culture and a set of preferred social norms. Race has no real scientific basis and only describes a set of genetic traits and in no way can character be determined by your genotype. I beleive that when we give up our obsession of making everyone fit into certain categories, we will finally get past race and racism.
I think the atlanta mayoral election shows that Blacks and (surprisingly to some) whites continue to vote thier race – the racial overtones of the election call into question notions of postracialism that dominate the public discourse.
I also think that negative campaigning (by Lisa Borders and then Norwood) turned off (or energized) some voters resulting in a higher than normal turnout for a “run-off’ election which usually benifits the white candidate.
Is anyone surprised by this? C’mon, man!
I really don’t think that racism is like it used to be. Maybe in Atlanta, because different parts of the United States tend to be more racist than others. I am caucasion and I voted for Obama. To me, it was a matter of who was the best candidate. If he didn’t get it though, I would have to say that “most people must not have thought that he was the best candidate”, and left it to that; and not called it racism. You can’t call it racism every time you don’t win. But yeah, in your article about “killing the city”, that was definitely uncalled for what was said! I really wish that people would quit with the deep-seeded hate and just call it a truce between all colors. We are all equal, and always have been. If you stand for what I stand for, then I’m going to vote for you….
It seems to me that people still do what they are comfortable with. People are scared of what they don’t know, or better yet, don’t understand.