Amid the barrage of post-election analyses and commentary, I have yet to see a story that examines the multi-ethnic wave that propelled Barack Obama to victory.
Obama won by forging a strong coalition of whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. You can see that wide spectrum most vividly in the images of election night celebrations, from Chicago to New York, from Dallas to Los Angeles.
Who was not moved by that televised sea of diversity in Grant Park — people of all sorts hugging each other, tears streaming down their faces? Who did not recognize themselves in that crowd? (And just who was that guy Oprah kept leaning on?)
Yet, as far as I’ve been able to tell, most of the post-election stories about race have focused on the boundaries and barriers between black Americans and white Americans.
Completely understandable: Obama, the nation’s first black president, broke through the color line. His election holds a profound resonance and meaning for African Americans — particularly those who grew up and marched during the Civil Rights movement, those who know first-hand the sacrifices that paved the way for Obama’s historical moment.
But while recognizing that all of that is important, the media needs to move beyond its traditional black-and-white prism when it reports on race and politics.
Obama won 43 percent of the white vote, 95 percent of the black vote, 67 percent of the Hispanic vote and 62 percent of the Asian vote, according to exit poll data published on The New York Times‘ Web site. The performance of Democratic presidential candidates in the past seven elections reveals the multi-ethnic strength of Obama’s win: With respect to percentages, only Bill Clinton did as well as Obama did with white voters (in 1996). Only Clinton (1996) and Michael Dukakis (1988) fared better with Hispanic voters. No other candidate has done better than Obama did in attracting black and Asian voters (the data for Asians only goes back to 1992).
And that’s just looking at percentages. I’m sure that Obama did better than most, if not all, of his Democratic predecessors when it comes to the absolute number of voters within each ethnic group.
In our society, the Latino and Asian populations are growing rapidly. By 2050, the number of Hispanics will nearly triple, to 133 million from 47 million, making up 30 percent of Americans, according to Census Bureau projections. The number of Asians will grow to 41 million from 16 million, making up more than 9 percent of the population.
Perhaps the economic slowdown and the housing crisis brought the different ethnic groups together to support Obama. Perhaps Obama’s stand on the war and on immigration issues appealed to them. But, particularly for Latino and Asian voters, I suspect it was more than that. I suspect they saw something in Obama that they hadn’t seen in previous candidates.
Writer Jeff Yang captured Obama’s essence when he told the Associated Press: “So much of what we deal with is the notion of being outsiders, foreigners, of being outside the social dialogue of the United States. You look at Obama and those are some of the same aspersions and slanders being cast at him. He’s kind of the closest thing we can have legally to an immigrant in the White House. He’s somebody who understands this journey that Asian-Americans and other immigrants have made.”
So Obama’s breakthrough symbolizes “The Overcoming” for many people — justifiably so. But for others, his victory caps another narrative: The Outsider who finally got in.
What stories have you found that address the multi-ethnic wave?
