Black voters hope, and fear

Tonya Jones doesn’t want to imagine what it would feel like to have a black president in the White House.

“I want to feel that euphoria, but I can’t,” said Jones, an African American hairstylist who was hanging out in front of her shop here on a slow afternoon. “Because I don’t want to put myself way up here” -- with this she raised her hand over her head -- “only to fall.” She let her hand plunge downward like a falling elevator.

“Everybody’s on edge, I’m telling you,” she said.

Such are the fraught emotions of African Americans, whose up-from-slavery story could culminate Nov. 4 in the election of a black president. Polls show that black voters overwhelmingly support Barack Obama in the presidential race, in many cases for reasons that transcend policy: One popular T-shirt depicts Obama with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. under the banner “A Dream Answered.”

But many blacks are also steeling themselves for the heartbreak that will come if a breakthrough does not. Damascus Harris, a school administrator in Chicago, rattled off a litany of past indignities his people have suffered -- from the broken promises that followed slavery to Jim Crow-era voter suppression to racist redlining by banks. They explained, in part, why Harris won’t be surprised if Obama loses this election.

“I’m not naive about what our history has been,” he said.

That skepticism, born of centuries of experience, is shaping the mood of the black electorate on the eve of this historic election. Even with Obama surging in national polls, the excitement of his black supporters is in many cases tempered by an acute anxiety.

“I’ve seen lots of moods around rage and progress and all those things,” said Andrea Y. Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Richmond who marched with King when she was a girl. “This is the strangest one I’ve experienced . . . of anticipation, hope, pride -- and fear.”

Fear finds its most intense expression in the ongoing concerns for Obama’s safety. Rosalind Johnson, a finance company worker from Camden, S.C., stated her deepest worry bluntly, as if it were a fact: “He will be assassinated,” she said on a sunny weekday morning recently as she walked out of her local registrar’s office.

There are other, less morbid concerns. Some voters fret over the shadowy workings of a system that they believe will prevent Obama from ascending to the highest office in the land. Sometimes this conversation hinges on the voting irregularities of the 2000 election. Sometimes the sentiment is more vague.

“It’s going to be something,” said Tony Gonzales, an Atlanta barber. “Because it’s a black person, something’s going to happen.”

Shan Dennis, a worker at a Decatur, Ga., insurance company, said she isn’t worried about a fix being in -- but she says it’s something she hears about quite a bit.

“That’s been a big [issue] in the African American community,” she said. “A lot of them think someone is not going to let him win.”

Other voters are dismayed by the ugly tone that has emerged in the last few months, as Obama’s candidacy unearthed frank expressions of prejudice from white voters, and polls show some of them may be resistant to the idea of a black president: One AP-Yahoo News poll in September suggested that a third of white Democrats held negative views toward blacks.

The Rev. Kevin M. Turman, pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Detroit, has seen similar polls. He grows worried and frustrated when he thinks of the scenario they could trigger.

“My concern is that white Democrats -- who agree with Obama on every issue -- won’t vote for him because he’s black,” Turman said.

Historically, Turman said, black voters have proved one of the most reliable constituencies for the Democratic Party. If whites don’t show up to vote for a qualified black candidate, he would feel something like betrayal.

“I will have to reconsider my lifelong support of the Democratic Party,” he said. “Perhaps it will be time for us to look at elections on more of a candidate-by-candidate basis, and not just vote the party ticket.”

Obama’s father was a black Kenyan; his mother was a white Kansan; and he was raised by white grandparents. The election, of course, is about many things, not just racial identity. And black voters have different opinions about whether the election should be viewed as a referendum on the state of American race relations.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights veteran and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, thinks the matter is plain:

“What we boil down to is a choice between ‘Will you vote for the good of the country?’ or ‘Will you vote your racial fears?’ ” said Lowery.

But Charles Johnson, a novelist and English professor at the University of Washington, said it may be difficult to draw hard and fast conclusions about race relations from the November vote.

“There will be black Americans who will be certain that if [Obama] loses it was on the basis of race,” Johnson said. “Then again, there’s going to be a percentage of people who, when the race issue is put to the side, didn’t like his policy proposals. It could be a combination of those.

“The conclusion that we draw from this is going be varied,” he added. “I think we just have to wait and see.”

Given the strong emotions Obama has stoked, however, it may be difficult for some voters to see the nuances.

Kevin Rodgers, who works alongside Tonya Jones at Atlanta’s First Class Barber Shop, spoke of a trip to Washington that he recently made with his young daughter. After visiting the Jefferson Memorial, he bought her a ruler with pictures of all 43 presidents.

“They were all white, and we discussed that,” said Rodgers. “Now, with a win, there’d be a black face on that ruler. That says everything to me.”

Rodgers predicted that an Obama victory might trigger a major change in the way black Americans view their country and their countrymen.

“The amount of heart it takes for white people to pick Barack -- I think that will help some black people look at this country with hope,” he said. “It will be a real gesture -- a major gesture. I think it’s a major blow to hatred.”

However, he said, an Obama loss “validates a lot of the discontent” that black Americans harbor.

“It proves it, in a way,” he said, referring to lingering prejudice. “It gives validity to it.” Some black voters don’t want to contemplate what a loss would feel like, much the way Tonya Jones does not want to contemplate a win. But Pennsylvania state Rep. Jewell Williams, a Democrat who represents one of the largest African American districts in the Keystone State, has given it some thought. He said he’d encourage blacks to make Nov. 5 a sick-out day.

“I would encourage every African American not to go to work,” he said. “We will need to show how important we are again. Maybe America will pay more attention to us if we all stayed at home.”

In the long term, an Obama loss could discourage future political participation among the black voters who have registered for the first time this year, said Wilbur C. Rich, a political scientist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

The loss of enthusiasm could extend beyond new voters. Harris, the Chicago school administrator, has voted in every presidential election he could. The 40-year-old likes to think of himself as a coolly dispassionate voter. But he said he cried when Obama claimed the Democratic nomination -- and expects the same kind of cathartic response if the candidate wins in November.

Imagining an Obama loss is another story. If that happens, Harris said, he will probably give up on the idea that voting makes a difference.

“This for me, politically, is the endgame,” he said. “If McCain wins, I’m done. I will have conclusively decided that this is a purposeless exercise.”

Michael Baisden, a popular radio host and Obama supporter, discounts such talk. “I think that’s people hoping for the best,” he said, “and preparing for the worst.”

--

richard.fausset@latimes.com