Racial debate rises in US vote campaign
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Decades after the struggle against segregation, the race debate still pervades politics as Barack Obama fights to prove the United States is ready for a black president, observers say.
"The race card is on the table in this election and it is not coming off," wrote the US political news website Politico.
The Illinois senator has quashed the notion that his colour -- his father was a black Kenyan and his white mother from Kansas -- would hold him back in competing for the Democratic nomination for president.
He stormed to victory in the key first nominating state of Iowa before being narrowly beaten in New Hampshire by former first lady Hillary Clinton.
With Obama's face on the cover, Newsweek magazine recently hailed him as offering a "new chapter" for the United States, in a contest where Democratic candidates have campaigned hard on the theme of change.
Obama "offers a vision attempting to lead the US beyond racial divisions, beyond class, beyond race and put together coalitions of people who would be able to put people together, able to change things," said Ron Walters, a professor of political and African-American affairs at Maryland University.
Obama is not the first black American to run for president, but at 46 he is considered untainted by the tensions of the civil rights era, and has benefited from the advances they promoted.
As the only black member of Senate and a graduate of the prestigious Columbia and Harvard universities -- he was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review -- he seems to have breached racial divides.
But if civil rights have come a long way since Martin Luther King Jr. fought segregation in the 1960s, recent disputes have shown that racial equality is still sensitive.
The Democrats' next nomination battle is in South Carolina, a former hot-spot in the civil rights struggle, where half the voters are black. It holds its primary vote on Saturday.
Walters dismissed as "absurd" the notion that the United States could enter an era of "post-racial" politics, citing protests last year on race issues, including a case of racially charged violence in Louisiana.
"Obama has made a point of minimizing and keeping his race out of the campaign," said David Bositis, a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies think tank.
"He doesn't specifically talk about black issues ... black voters are not Obama's base," he added, stressing that Obama's main support base is actually among affluent white voters.
"His base has been younger people, people looking for a new generation of leadership, suburban whites," Bositis said.
Obama has been accused of seeming to smooth over the race issue in order to be liked. "That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me," said the black television entrepreneur Bob Johnson.
"He must win a large majority of the African-American vote," said political scientist Larry Sabato. "African-Americans have wondered whether he could win."
But recently, civil rights-related skirmishes broke out between the presidential candidates. Polls show that among black voters Obama enjoys nearly two-to-one support against Clinton.
Obama's side and African-American commentators were riled by Clinton's recent comments on King, accusing her of playing down the civil rights hero's contribution to equality by stressing that crucial achievements followed under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
"I think there's been a deliberate, systematic attempt on the part of some people in the Obama camp to really fan the flame of race and really try to distort what Senator Clinton said," said Georgia state legislator John Lewis.
"Clinton managed to insult a beloved black leader in her eager attempt to insult a rising black leader," wrote black journalist Marjorie Valbrun in a Washington Post editorial.
"Race, whether used subtly or as a blunt weapon, will undoubtedly be a factor" in the presidential campaign, she wrote.
