Obama Brings the Hood to Montana

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


A conservative white guy from the South canvasses for Obama and breaks my heart. From the Christian Science Monitor (via Andrew Sullivan):

At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn’t the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.

Read the whole thing. It’s beautiful.

In the same vein, WaPo’s Wil Haygood went to Montana, where blacks are nearly non-existent, to see how these whitest of white folks are reacting to the thought of a black man as President.

Wil is an excellent, excellent writer (and a good friend) but I have to wonder how Montanans would have responded to a white reporter. Their comments sound a tad…careful to me. Not that they should be assumed to be Kluxers, but I just wonder. There are a few lovely images though:

[One 72 year old widow and her husband] Frank took their three boys to Denver in the early 1960s to attend a big stock show. There was an ice-skating rink outside the downtown hotel where they stayed, and Frank and Gay let the boys go skate. Now and then they’d peek through the window, checking up on them. “It was where we first met black people,” she says. “I remember looking out the window and two of my boys had this little black boy by his hands and they were taking him around the skating rink. If it weren’t for Denver, I don’t think my boys—even as they reached the age of 50—would have had meaningful contact with black people.”

Meaningful? I’m not belittling this lady and believe that their ‘careful’ answers bespeak their heartfelt attempts to adapt to a world turned on its axis. Whatever else Obama accomplishes, it simply cannot be gainsaid that his candidacy is both the beginning of racial progress and proof of just how much work there remains to be done to heal the schism.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate