Too Black for West Virginia?

Tuesday's primary in West Virginia was hardly the high point of the Obama campaign. The electoral numbers are still being sorted and crunched. Many unusual voting trends -- unusual, at least, compared to earlier primaries in other states -- have been identified.

Over fifty percent of the Democratic voters in West Virginia believe that Barack Obama does not share their values and is not honest and trustworthy. More amazing -- fifty percent believe that Obama secretly shares the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I find this incredible.

Before West Virginia, Obama's opponents charged him with "elitism." This charge was at least believable, I felt. Obama is highly educated. The more educated one becomes, the greater the danger that he is, or seems to others, an "elitist." "Elitism," in this sense, can be the downside of being educated, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan.

People with those traits, traits that are good in themselves, tend to clump together in groups of the like-minded. They dominate the west and east coasts. While they may well differ among themselves in their political opinions and pet solutions to national problems, they tend to hold a uniform outlook toward life. In today's world, that outlook includes reliance on rational thought as opposed to emotion or tradition in arriving at decisions; individualism; a sense of being a "citizen of the world" rather than simply an American; a sense that standards of right and wrong evolve with changing conditions; an ease with ambiguity and an aversion to seeing problems in terms of black and white; and a tendency to view opponents as human beings with understandable wants and needs, folks with whom one can negotiate, rather than demons that must be destroyed.

To me, at least, these are all admirable traits. But when everyone you know, your friends and your competitors alike, share this same unified outlook toward life, you're in danger of being surprised when you meet others who do not share that outlook. Subconsciously, you feel continually off balance, constantly facing not so much arguments that are unexpected and surprising, as ways of viewing the very nature of the dispute itself in a way that's disorienting.

The so-called elitist may conclude that he's dealing with people who are not quite sane, or at least not quite rational and aware of all the facts. Unfortunately, these people are not stupid, and they are quite intelligent enough to be insulted by this reaction. Hence, the charge of elitism.

I have no idea whether Obama is really an elitist, in this sense. It's a claim easy to make when your adversary enjoys engaging in abstract and speculative discussion, as Obama does. The derisive term "egghead" was enough to sink the political future of Adlai Stevenson. But, regardless of its reality, the charge of elitism had enough credibility to be worthy of concern for Obama's supporters.

But the claim that Obama shares the world outlook of Rev. Wright seems, to me, bizarre. This is a man who had to fight for the black vote, because he was viewed as "not black enough." "Black" is not just skin color, in America today. It's a stereotypical assembly of habits, customs, attitudes and speech patterns, all of which arouse the scorn of many whites. Obama shares none of them. His life may have been hard at times, but his teenage years were spent attending prep school, not fighting on the streets of south Chicago.

The infinitely more believable accusation would be that Obama pretends to be blacker than he really is, in order to keep his grip on the black electorate. Obama needs to persuade a lot of West Virginia white voters of that fact between now and November.