Well, Duh: Obama Supports Met with Staunch Racism in WV

WASHINGTON - Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."

Hooraydiation said:
But he's half black and half white. Shouldn't that mean he's accepted by both races?

bean said:
I've been really down on WV and KY in the last couple of weeks because of some of the things I've heard people in those states saying about the candidates.

I think everyone who feels like giving up on WV and KY and writing them off as back-woods hillbilly states filled with ignorance and racism should take a few minutes and read this DailyKos user diary.

An excerpt:

DevilsReject said:
wait.....Obama is black????

Narghile said:

Yep, just like Rick Astley.

Shiny_Metal_Ass said:

I just wanna know where Tiger Woods fits in to all of this.

FearTheReaper said:
And I have never experienced anything like West Virginia. Spectacularly disturbing.

FearTheReaper said:
I have never been to a more racist place that West Virginia. I have been to every state in the country - except Alaska. I have been to many nooks and crannies in those states. And I have never experienced anything like West Virginia. Spectacularly disturbing.

RudieCantFail said:

MinusFourDegrees said:

You having fun with that link I gave you guys in Silliness?

MinusFourDegrees said:

They're pretty bad in Southwestern Virginia too. I've made the argument in the past that they just need to annex that part of the state off, or, better yet, let West Virginia have them. Its almost like the West Virginian offspring migrated across state lines and nestled themselves into the mountains there.

stockula said:
I guess this explains why Robert Byrd is voted back in year after year, despite his being a senior member of the KKK.

Democrats have a bottomless well of forgiveness of racism in that special case.