Black America looks to the man whose appeal transcends race

I WENT to university in the USA in September 1963. It was a tremendous culture shock going from Tralee to Davenport, Iowa.

I had never talked to a black person simply because I only saw only one in Tralee while growing up. He was in the industrial school and was not allowed to mix with the local boys for some reason best known to the Christian Brothers.

There was already plenty of news coverage about the civil rights issue in southern states, but I was shocked to find that for all the talk about civil rights, there was a strong streak of racism in northern states.

In January 1964 I moved to Texas, which was part of the old confederacy. It was not yet 100 years since the American civil war, so it was still an issue with many people.

But the people in Texas were more open and friendly with black people. They would laugh and joke with them in the streets, but a great many still wanted segregation.

First-year students had to live in one of the university dormitories which had all been desegregated a few years earlier. There was a lot of friendly banter among the students.

“N***er, you’re not getting served here,” I often heard one of black students being told in the cafeteria, but it was always a joke between friends. The person saying it was just as black as the person he was talking to.

“Whitey,” one of them said to me, “I don’t know what you’re laughing at “cause you’re not getting served either.”

In the context of friendly banter between blacks the ‘n’ word was acceptable. Even well after the Civil Rights Act had been passed, however, the Help Wanted columns in the Dallas Morning News were carrying ads ending with NNNA, which politely translated as No Negroes Need Apply.

One did not have to go very far on this island at the time to find the same mentality, except that in Northern Ireland it was No Catholics Need Apply.

In the US, the racial attitude began to soften, but very slowly. The politician who did most for civil rights was the Texan, Lyndon Johnson.

At the university I joined a fraternity, which was a kind social club that owned its own house on campus. There were as many as 14 social fraternities at the university — 13 white and one black.

One of our members was on the university basketball team. He would often be the only white player on the court. But he was avowedly racist. One night he got a shotgun and lined up some the back students in the athletes’ dormitory. He lectured them on his racial views and then pulled the trigger. He knew the gun was empty, but the others didn’t know and a couple of them fainted. He thought this was hilarious, but the black players refused to play with him again, so he was kicked off the team.

Although there was no official segregation at the university, black students usually went to the cafeteria in the basement of the student union building, while white students went upstairs to the second floor. There was always a great buzz about the place. But one afternoon in 1972 it went deadly silent because there was a black student in line to pick up an order. He was served without any problem and the buzz started again. People just said “so what?”

I felt I witnessed real integration there that day.

In Alabama, Governor George Wallace, the notorious segregationist, used to crown the homecoming queen elected by the students each year. Some students decided to run a black woman, and she won. It made national news as people wondered what Wallace would do. He duly crowned her and shook her hand instead of kissing her. He said the people of Alabama were not ready for that yet. It was 1974.

Fraternities operated a system whereby every new member had to be accepted unanimously. One objection was enough to deny entry. Hence there was no way I could envisage a black member being admitted to the fraternity.

Before writing this I looked up the fraternity on the internet and there were photographs of a least two black members. That would have been inconceivable 35 years ago.

Barack Obama’s showing in the current primaries is proof of a revolutionary change in America because it is the young who are providing his greatest support. His biggest hurdle is proving his political viability. There is a perception he can’t win in November. This is due to his colour and his relative lack of experience, just as they used to say that Senator John F Kennedy’s handicaps were that he was Catholic and had never done anything of consequence in the Senate.

Over the years a number candidates have done extraordinarily well in the primaries only to crash in the actual election. Due largely to a bad miscalculation by Bill Clinton in trying to exploit the race issue during the South Carolina primary campaign, Obama may well have become indispensable to the Democrats. If Hillary wins the nomination, she may have to offer the number two spot to Obama or risk losing the black vote, especially if John McCain should select Condoleezza Rice as his running mate. Obama’s wins in South

Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama have all been attributed to the enthusiastic turnout among their large black populations, but his appeal extends well beyond race. Some of his biggest primary wins have been in Iowa, Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota, which all have relatively sparse black populations. Of course, those were caucus states.

Last Tuesday, Obama swept all six primaries decided by caucus. In five of those he won by a more than two-to-one majority and he won the other, North Dakota, by 61% to 37%. The caucus form of voting favours a candidate who has energised young supporters who will turn out for the meeting.

TUESDAY was a work day, and even if the meeting was held when most people had finished work, they still had the hassle of going to it afterwards. Hence the process really favoured non-working students.

In 1972, George McGovern swept the Democratic primaries with the support of a great majority of university students, but he proceeded to lose 49 of the 50 states in the actual election.

In the other 16 states where there were primary ballots on Tuesday, Clinton won nine, including New York and California, while Obama won in seven states. He has been doing particularly well in so-called red states that Republicans usually win in presidential elections.

Does Obama have the kind of political appeal that could transcend normal voting patterns? Public opinion polls have McCain in the lead to win the November election, but the polls also indicate that only 19% of the population think the country is on the right track. The others are essentially screaming for change.

Now that McCain has the Republican nomination virtually sewn up, God only knows how party supporters will vote in the remaining open primaries. Will they try to foul up the Democrats by voting for the candidate they think will be easiest for McCain to beat? Some may vote in the democratic primary for Obama as the weaker candidate, or for Hillary as the one most likely to energise the Republican base. The Republicans hate her even more than Bill. It’s still all to play for.