The Byoune Killing Raises The Question: Do Police Rush to Judgment When They Investigate Themselves
Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Inglewood, California Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks faces a dilemma that many big city police chiefs face when their officer’s gun down unarmed civilians under dubious circumstances, and those civilians in almost all cases are young African Americans or Latinos. In this case the victim was 19 year-old Michael Byoune. The deep suspicion is that police routinely bend, twist and massage testimony and evidence to whitewash and ultimately exonerate officers. The way to counter that is to conduct a thorough and honest investigation and if the officer(s) are found guilty of wrongdoing impose swift punishment. But that almost always draws loud protests from police unions and some city officials.



The Byoune killing by any standard was a bad shooting. In fact, it evoked instant comparisons to the killing of bride-groom-to-be Sean Bell by NYPD officers in 2007. Bell, as Byoune, was a young African-American male. Bell and Byoune were unarmed. There is no indication that he, as Bell, was involved in any gang or criminal involvement. From tapes and news clips, Inglewood police officers riddled the car that Byoune was in with bullet holes. The car Bell was in was also riddled with gunfire.



The police killings of young blacks such as Bell and Byoune spark momentary outrage and demands for federal or local investigations, and prosecutions of the officers. That presents two problems.

The first is getting police officials to conduct an investigation that’s not weighted heavily toward the police version of the events when there is considerable witness evidence and testimony that contradicts the officer’s version. The second is getting a prosecution and then a conviction of the officers involved. The acquittal of the three NYPD officers charged in the shooting death of Bell was stark proof of that.

The frequent media portrayal of young blacks as crime-prone, drug-dealing gangsters, the gang and murder violence that continues to wrack many black neighborhoods in Los Angeles and other cities and the glorification of the thug lifestyle by many young blacks reinforces negative racial perceptions. This makes many whites, non-blacks, and even many blacks guarded, suspicious and fearful of blacks. It's still virtually impossible to convince many jurors, that some police lie, beat, maim, and even kill unarmed suspects. That goes for judges too. A New York Supreme Court judge acquitted the officers charged in the Bell shooting.

Since there are no ironclad standards of what is or isn't acceptable use of force, or what degree of force is excessive, it often comes down to a judgment call by the officer. That creates just enough doubt that if the victim no matter how innocent he may appear to be was not the aggressor, than he at least put up enough resistance to the arrest to justify some use of force to restrain him, or worse the use of deadly force.









The near universal failure of police officials to take punitive action against officers that overuse deadly force almost always starts with the investigation. Eye witnesses are not sworn.
And invariably when evidence contradicts the officers' version of events, police officials reflexively rely on the testimony of the officers to sustain their version of what happened.





This insures that police officials will rule in nearly every case that the officers did not violate any department policies or procedures on the use of deadly force. Chicago is an immediate and tragic example of that. The past couple years, Chicago police have shot a civilian on average once every 10 days. More than 100 people have been killed in the last decade; 250 others have been injured. But only a tiny fraction of shootings are ruled unjustified -- less than 1 percent, police records and court testimony indicate. The secrecy in which the investigations are conducted and the perfunctory ruling that a shooting was in policy means that it is virtually impossible to determine how many are in fact legitimate. The Chicago police that killed were cleared almost in every case and that pattern is the same in dubious police shootings in other cities.

A fair and impartial investigation into the circumstances surrounding police killings, and that certainly includes the Byoune killing, must have one aim. That is to find out what went so horribly wrong that police had to resort to gunplay and then insure that there’s no repeat of the tragedy. These are the tough questions that then should be routinely asked in a truly impartial police investigation.



Did the officers give a warning before opening fire? Did they attempt to find out if the victim had a gun or weapon, or even in the case of Byoune was his car a deadly weapon, and was it an actual threat to the officer? Do eyewitnesses corroborate the officer’s version of the shooting?

The Byoune and Bell killings, as well as those of the other young blacks, demand answers, honest answers. Police officials should give them. When they don’t they simply reinforce the suspicion that police rush to judgment to exonerate wrongdoing by their own.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Byoune Killing Casts another Bad Glare on Inglewood
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Inglewood police chief Jacqueline Seabrooks did the right and smart thing. She headed off an almost certain demand from outraged family members and community activists for a federal investigation into the killing of 19-year-old Michael Byoune. Seabrooks expressed condolences to Byoune’s family and promised a full and vigorous investigation into the killing of Byoune by Inglewood police officers. Seabrooks got ahead of any possible call for federal intervention for two good reasons. The killing for some observers evoked instant memories of the gunning down by NYPD officers of Sean Bell in 2007. The would-be bride groom, Bell, like Byoune, was a young African-American male. Bell and Byoune were unarmed. There is no indication that he, as Bell, was involved in any gang or criminal involvement. From tapes and news clips, Inglewood police officers riddled the car that Byoune was with bullet holes. The car Bell was in was also riddled with gunfire.

There is no indication whether the officers issued any warning to Byoune before opening fire. Byoune was killed when he attempted to flee for his safety after shots had been fired from unknown shooters in a block adjacent to the parking lot where he was killed.

Now that Seabrooks has promised a full probe into the killing, the questions that she and Inglewood city officials must answer are: did the officers follow standard procedure and give a warning before opening fire? Did they attempt to find out where the shots were coming from and if indeed Byoune was involved in the shooting? Was there any evidence that the car that Byoune was in was a car that fit the description of a car or cars that the shooters were driving? Did eyewitnesses corroborate the officers version of the shooting, namely that they thought Byoune might have been involved in the shooting? Did the vehicle that he was in actually endanger the officer’s lives as he attempted to exit the parking lot?
Were the officers involved in the shooting removed from their street assignments pending the outcome of the investigation? And if, any officer (s) involved in the shooting are found guilty of violating department policy and procedures on the use of force, what of any punishment will the chief impose on them?

This is an especially crucial and sensitive point for in nearly all officer involved shootings, even the most questionable ones, and even where officers are found to have used excessive force, the punishment has often been minimal or totally lacking. This reinforces the deep suspicion that police officials look for ways to exonerate officers rather than to hold them accountable for violating department policies and procedures. This in turn deepens the fear and distrust that many African-Americans and Latinos have toward the police.
There are many more questions that Inglewood officials must ask and answer about the Byoune killing. It’s even more important that accurate answers be given especially given that Inglewood police have been hammered in past years for incidents involving excessive force and charges of misconduct.

They include the videotape beating of Donovan Jackson in 2002, followed by a series of questionable shootings of unarmed suspects, and the allegation that of some Inglewood officers engaged in shakedowns and trading sexual favors. This is yet another prescription for a full blown crisis of confidence in the methods of policing and the professionalism of the department.

The shooting of Byoune by any standard was a bad shooting. And though there is yet no evidence that Inglewood police officers acted with reckless endangerment in killing Byoune, the Byoune family and others will be watching closely to see what if anything Inglewood police officials and city officials ultimately do about his death.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Gross Overkill on a Supervisor’s seat
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Talk about gross overkill. What else could anyone call dumping a record $2.5 million dollars (with $1.5 million more on the way) by a special interest group in this case Los Angeles labor unions into the campaign kitty of State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. The unions get away with this naked effort to buy a supervisor’s board seat through a thinly veiled skirt of the campaign finance rule limits by funneling the cash through independent committees. It’s all perfectly legal, and it’s all perfectly a sham to nab a seat.
Local unions have always pumped lots of cash into the campaigns of candidates that they believe are the most labor friendly. But they generally stayed within some recognizable bounds of spending proprieties. The Ridley-Thomas spending plunge obliterates that fine line.
It’s no surprise why. The supervisors manage the biggest county government in the nation. The more than 100,000 employees on the county payroll are the largest in the country. But the county is also tens of millions in the budget hole. That means two things. There will be deep slashes in spending on health and social services. With a projected nearly $200 million budget deficit for the county health department, for instance, the board talks of closing nearly all of the dwindling number of county-run health clinics but one. Other strapped county service agencies will be hit hard to make up for the shortfall.
That in turn means employee freezes, cuts in employee benefits and wages, and in an even worse case scenario, layoffs of county employees. Labor unions want and need the most dependable labor friendly guy they can get to keep a hawk like watch over any and every effort to gut employee contracts and staunch the pain of employee cuts. The $4 million that the labor unions are shoving to Ridley-Thomas is added insurance that they’ll get a supervisor who will keep a sharp eye on the supervisors when they start welding their budget slashing machete. With millions at stake in labor benefits, and jobs, the cash the unions are shelling out to grab the election seems like a relatively small price to protect fully labor’s back.
Parks is the last one that unions want on the board. He is a business friendly, fiscal conservative and he would be much more likely to take a long look at union contracts, and pensions and to fight anything that’s construed as excessive giveaways to county unions. He loudly protested that this kind of heavy handed spending on one candidate in a local race decidedly un levels the election playing field. He screams that the hefty union pay-off to Ridley-Thomas is proof that he’s in the hip pocket of labor.
His complaint can’t be waved off. Parks is no slouch when it comes to fundraising. He nearly doubled Ridley-Thomas’s total in the first quarter of this year, but much of it came from business groups. And it still pales in comparison to the king’s ransom Ridley-Thomas got from labor. In hard campaign dollar terms it amounts to six dollars for every one dollar that Ridley-Thomas got from non-labor campaign donors.
Ridley-Thomas’s suddenly swollen campaign war chest means that Parks now will have to work that much harder to pump the spigots from business groups and other campaign donors. The prospect that Parks could get even more cash from business groups is another big reason that labor upped the dollar ante for Ridley-Thomas. This is important for yet another reason. Running for an L.A. city or county office has become virtually a millionaire’s derby, and politicians spend nearly as much of their time arm-twisting, cajoling, pleading with, and jawboning donors to pony up money. A massive check from a special interest group gives the recipient a huge leg up over his or her opponent. They can bankroll tons of crucial ads, TV spots, and churn out reams of literature touting bragging about their accomplishments, make inflated election promises, and most importantly, beat up on their opponent. Almost certainly, much of Ridley-Thomas’s media hit will be to depict Park’s as a business industry shill.
For his part, Ridley-Thomas scoffs at the charge that he’ll be a compliant yes man on the board for labor unions. He says that he has business support too. He does. But the endorsements of a handful of prominent business leaders and the relatively small amount of money they’ve contributed to his campaign hardly add up to any semblance of balance between business and labor interests.
When the supervisors get around to making the inevitable tough decisions on labor contracts, wages and benefits, and possible job cuts, the hard fact is that labor will expect Ridley-Thomas to toe its line on resisting any cuts or give backs, no matter how bad a shape the county’s finances are in, and how fiscally prudent the cuts are.
But there’s much more at stake for labor in getting Ridley-Thomas on the board than just insuring a reliable labor vote in the coming board battles over pay and benefit issues for county employees. Los Angeles labor unions have been in the forefront of the continuing fight nationally for a living wage for newly organized union employees from security guards to hotel workers. The battles have been hard fought and labor’s successes have been mixed. With the economic meltdown and cites and counties facing massive budget cuts, the fight for a living wage will intensify, and the success or failure that unions have in that fight in L.A. County will be closely watched by unions in other states.
Labor unions can’t be faulted for doing what they do best and that’s tossing their cash at a candidate that they think will do their loyal bidding once in office. Business groups do the same. The problem is that the far over the top kind of heavy cash that the unions shoved out to Ridley-Thomas reinforces the deep public suspicion and even public disgust that candidates and their votes are for sale to the highest bidder. That may not be the case with Ridley-Thomas. At least he says not anyway. Yet, with $4 million in his pocket the voter’s eyes should stay riveted on him to see if he really means it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and frequent contributor to the Sunday Viewpoints. He can be reached at hutchinsonreport@aol.com

Much Mythmaking About Special Order 40
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A beleaguered LAPD chief William Bratton after weeks of being pounded and badgered by assorted right-wing talk radio show yakkers, and anti-immigrant rights groups, immigrant rights groups, and the L.A. City Council says that he’ll soon tell what LAPD officers can and can’t do in regards to the much attacked, much defended and much misunderstood Special Order 40. The controversy and the muddle has spawned much mythmaking about what the Order actually says and what it allows officers to do.
The Order specifically says that LAPD officers can’t initiate any “police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person,” and with the objective of arresting or booking a person for “illegal entry” into the United States.

In plain English, the Order and the policies and procedures that the LAPD top brass put in place decades back to under gird how the Order is interpreted and enforced on the streets prohibits officers from asking a person about his or her alien status and from notifying the ICE about a person’s undocumented status unless the person has been arrested.

That line has been widely cited by those that want the Order dumped and has stirred the anguish of Jamiel Shaw Sr., whipped up frenzy among anti-immigration reform activists, and gave right wing talk hosts the wedge they needed to pound the city council and Bratton and sneakily push their anti-immigration reform agenda. The part of the Order that they have sloppily misread or deliberately ignored never forbade LAPD officers from participating in task force investigations, responding to requests from the ICE for information regarding suspected illegal aliens, or assisting ICE agents in the execution of arrest warrants.

That’s just the start of the public and political mythmaking on the Order. It does not bar an LAPD officer from notifying ICE of the immigration status of a person arrested for a crime if the officer learns of that information. Further, nothing in the Order bars an officer who is investigating an individual for criminal activity other than an immigration violation from asking that person about his or her immigration status and then advising ICE.

The Order was never intended to prevent officers from not checking whether anyone being investigated for or arrested for a criminal offense, let alone arraigned and held in the county jail pending prosecution, from notifying ICE about the possible illegal status of the suspect. Even on the hotly disputed and debated point that the LAPD officers can’t ask a person who has been arrested for a crime about his or her alien status, there is nothing in the Department’s policies and procedures that explicitly prohibit that.


There’s nothing in the policies and procedures of Special Order 40 that prohibits LAPD officers from interacting with ICE agents for investigative purposes. This includes the issue that has caused the most confusion and inflamed public opinion and that’s officers providing the names of known gang members to the ICE in response to a request from the agency for information. There is also nothing in Special Order 40 that forbids LAPD officers from joining in a task force with ICE where the feds are investigating criminal violations of immigration laws at the same time that the LAPD is investigating violations of state criminal laws relating to say drug dealing or violent crimes. LAPD officers are certainly not prohibited from assisting the ICE to arrest a gang member for whom a warrant had been issued.

Here’s an added check list of what LAPD officers can do to nail gang members and violent criminals that are suspected illegals. They can:
*Respond to requests from ICE to provide information regarding an individual’s criminal activities or whereabouts.

*Assist ICE to execute arrest warrants for violations of the immigration laws.
*Provide tactical assistance when ICE is planning to conduct any operation that will prevent criminal acts and violence.

*Can provide the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with the names of gang members or those suspected of involvement in criminal acts that are suspected illegals to ICE once the criminal investigation process has started.
The problem is not and never has been that Special Order 40 ties the LAPD in such tight knots that it has been hapless and ineffective in dealing with violent gang members who may be illegals. The problem is the muddle in interpretation and enforcement of the Order. LAPD officers have gotten confused and mixed signals from LAPD officials about what they can and can’t do on the streets with criminals suspected of being illegals.

As it turns out they can do a lot to get them off the streets and eventually out of the country. It doesn’t take a full blown, divisive, and racially polarizing campaign fueled by myths and misunderstanding about the Order to do that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Swatting SWAT
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The instant that LAPD chief William Bratton called for a fresh look at the practices and gender make-up of SWAT in 2005, the howls went up from the LAPD Police Protective League, and the reflexive opponents of any LAPD change that Bratton was out to gut SWAT. This was silly, hyper-defensive, and politically motivated. Bratton was hardly out to dampen down the effectiveness of SWAT. The unit has had a solid record in handling tough situations with tact, professionalism, and most importantly a relative minimum loss of life.

The problem is that SWAT has made glaring operational mistakes in some very volatile situations. The equally big problem is that SWAT simply does not reflect the changing face and gender of the LAPD. The department in its blunt report dissecting SWAT said so. It called it insular, a good ole boy, and self-protective unit. Translated that means the unit is an iron-clad closed shop outfit, that brooks no outside interference, direction, and has doggedly resisted the entrance into SWAT of any other than hand-picked, elite male officers. This is a sure fire prescription to reinforce the clubby “them versus us” mindset and code of silence that has bedeviled the LAPD for decades.
This is the mindset that Bratton has sworn that he will do whatever he can to end during his second term at the LAPD helm.
But judging from the horrified reaction to the report and the changes that it recommended to break down the insular culture of SWAT, Bratton will have his work cut out for him on this. He’ll have an even tougher job in trying to make operational changes, or better still policy changes, on the thorny issue of the use of force. While SWAT has been lauded for handling most stand-off situations without resort to gunplay, on a few occasions when it has used force the result has been disastrous.

The most glaring and tormenting example of this was the accidental slaying of 19 month old Susie Pena, in a South L.A. hostage standoff in 2005. That forced a deep soul search within the department and within SWAT on when and when not to use force, and how much force is appropriate in tense situations. It also forced the LAPD top brass and the police commission to look at something else about SWAT. And that is when force may be inappropriate, or flat out overkill, in a situation where innocent civilians are injured or slain as a result. The question is how accountable are SWAT commanders and officers for the killing, and what if any punishment is meted out when a shooting is ruled out of policy.

The report found that in almost all cases where there was the questionable use of force by SWAT, the shooting was not found out of policy. The couple of times that the shootings were ruled out of policy there was no indication what, if any punishment there was to the shooters?

This is no small point. This begs for a policy change and that change is that the department must establish clear and firm guidelines on when an officer, in this case a SWAT officer, can and can't use deadly force. The vague rule is that an officer can use deadly force when he or she feels their life is endangered. What does that really mean?

That's the first step to confronting this problem. The second is discipline. A chief must have full authority to punish an officer found guilty of using excessive force. That includes SWAT officers. This too must be addressed and changed.
The overuse of excessive force is still the single biggest thing that poisons relations between the police and minority communities. It has sparked deadly racial turmoil and civil unrest in Los Angeles and other cities.

Bratton should be applauded, not stoned, for having the foresight to examine all parts of the LAPD to see what works, what doesn’t work, and where appropriate changes can be made to make those parts work even better.

No one is condemning SWAT for the way it handles things, nor is anyone calling it an out of control bunch of Cowboys. It has repeatedly been praised for getting it right most of the time. However, it’s those times when it doesn’t that the report simply says demands some change. After all we all want to see SWAT be the absolute best that it can be. Don’t we?

Hang in There Tavis Smiley, Don’t let the Black Obama Thought Police Run You Out
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

As late as this past January, black talk show host Tavis Smiley was the darling of black America. Three months later he’s the butt of black America. The tip off that Smiley’s personal stock has plunged was his abrupt announcement that he was quitting his long standing post as political commentator on the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner morning show. The Joyner show is virtually the airwaves Bible for legions of blacks. For more than a decade, Smiley was the show’s black political and social issues voice. He was widely considered the go to guy for blacks on cutting edge social and advocacy issues.

So what is Smiley’s great sin? He had the temerity to be less than a court cheer leader for candidate Obama. He compounded the sin with the black Obama thought police by having the added temerity to invite and warmly greet and thank Hillary Clinton for speaking at his annual State of the Black Union (formerly State of Black America) forum in February. Then he had the added added temerity to publicly criticize Obama for offering to send his wife Michelle as a fill-in.

That did it. The howls went up that Smiley was A. anti-Obama B. A closet Hillary backer C. an egoistic, self-absorbed, full of himself, bad host and ingrate. One columnist summed up the chorus from the black Obama thought police with this plunge the knife in the back title “Who Died and made Tavis King?” That title and the sentiment behind it would have been nothing short of heresy in January.

But putting the suddenly hate Smiley tide aside for a moment. There are two shames and tragedies here. The first is that if an African-American, and it makes no different whether it’s a Smiley, or anyone else, even dares breathe a kind word about Hillary Clinton they will be run out of Dodge on a rail. Heaven forbid if they declare that they will vote for Clinton. No matter how many reasoned arguments they give—her experience, grasp of the issues, programs, and positions, staunch history in support of civil rights, women’s rights, and social justice issues and Obama’s paper thin if not outright dubious record on all of the aforementioned. Then remind the Obama chorus that the last time they looked the strength of democracy and the first amendment is the right to back a candidate of their choice and not be subjected to a verbal public lynching for making their choice.

The second shame and disgrace is that those blacks that exercise their democratic right to pick the candidate they think will do the best job and not blindly back a candidate based solely because he’s black are considered race traitors. This is almost a text book variation on the old Orwellian Animal Farm saga of when the formerly oppressed flip the power table and suddenly become the new masters. They think, act and behave like the bunch that they kicked out of power. They are just as oppressive, stifling and thick headed toward any views and opinions that don’t conform to theirs.

Given the history of the racial scorn heaped on them, blacks should be the absolute last ones to impose a racial code of conduct on other blacks. Unfortunately, in their absolute dogmatic, unyielding, Obama mania, they have turned what in any other season would be a healthy give and take reasoned dialogue and even debate on political issues into finger pointing, name calling, bashing, and yes as Smiley unhappily said “hate” toward any black who disagrees that Obama is the second coming of Dr. King.

Here’s the challenge to Obama. Smiley has given him countless opportunities on his TV show, website, radio show, a presidential debate, and other public venues that he’s hosted to amply express his views. That hardly sounds like an inherent political enemy. Why not issue a statement simply saying that Smiley’s a stellar and consistent media and public voice for black causes, and a man worthy of respect and admiration. But most importantly, he has the right to hold and voice his political opinions on the presidential candidates and that even includes principled criticism of candidate Obama.

He has the right to do that without being vilified and verbally assailed. This in no way diminishes his credibility or value to black America. In other words, knock off the “hating” on Smiley (and others). Tavis, let me know when, but more likely if, that statement is ever issued. Meanwhile hang tough, and don’t let the black Obama thought police run you out.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Race Is Still the X Factor for Obama
Earl Ofari Hutchinson



There’s a good and bad note for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama in the recent exit polls of white voters in Democratic primaries. The good note is that by a lopsided majority of six to one whites said that race was not a factor in considering whether to back Obama or not. That pretty much conforms to virtually every poll that’s been taken since Obama tossed his hat in the presidential ring a year ago. His red state Democratic primary and caucus wins and the handful of endorsements he’s gotten from the red state Democratic senators and governors seem to bolster the poll findings as well as his camp’s contention that the majority of whites have bought his race neutral change and unity pitch.

The bad note for him, though, is buried in the racial rose tinged poll numbers. In fact, they were actually buried there even as he rolled up big numbers in his primary victories in Georgia, Mississippi, Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, and South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. Blacks make up a substantial percentage of the vote in those states, and he bagged eighty to ninety percent of their vote. But much less noted was that Clinton got almost sixty five to seventy percent of white votes.

It wasn’t just the reverse racial numbers for Clinton and Obama. Obama does incredibly well in netting the vote of college educated, upscale whites. But Clinton does just as well in bagging support from lower income downscale, and rural white voters. This has huge potential downside implications for Obama in a head to head battle with John McCain in the red states. A significant percent of the voters there are lower income, rural and less educated whites. Obama banks that he can pry one or two of the red states from the GOP. Yet, if he can’t convince Clinton’s white vote supporters, and they are Democrats, to back him, the chances are nil that he’ll have any more success with Republican and independent white voters in these states.

A hint of that came in the Democratic primary in Ohio. Clinton beat out Obama in the primary, and she did it mainly with white votes. But that wasn’t the whole story. Nearly one quarter of whites in Ohio flatly said race did matter in voting. Presumably that meant that they would not vote for a black candidate no matter how politically attractive or competent he was.

An even bigger hint of the race difficulty could come in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary. The voter demographics in the state perfectly match those in Ohio. A huge percent of Pennsylvania voters are blue collar, anti-big government, socially conservative, pro defense, and intently patriotic, and there’s a tormenting history of a racial polarization in the state. Pundit James Carville has even described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between. Carville’s characterization is hyperbolic, but devastatingly accurate. Take the state’s two big, racially diverse cities out of the vote equation, and Pennsylvania would be rock solid red state Republican. While polls show some fluctuation in Clinton’s decisive lead over Obama there, she still has a solid lead.

The near unanimous backing that whites give to the notion of voting for a black candidate for president also deserves to be put to a political test to see how much truth there is to it. The question: “Would you vote for a black candidate for president?” is a direct question, and to flatly say no to it makes one sound like a bigot, and in the era of verbal racial correctness (ask Don Imus), it’s simply not fashionable to come off to pollsters sounding like one. That’s hardly the only measure of a respondent’s veracity. In a 2006 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, a Yale political economist found that white Republicans are 25 percentage points more likely to cross over and vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate against a black Republican foe. The study also found that in the near twenty year stretch from 1982 to 2000, when the GOP candidate was black, the greater majority of white independent voters backed the white candidate.

Republicans and independents weren’t the only ones guilty of dubious Election Day color-blindness. Many Democrats were too. In House races, the study found that Democrats were nearly 40 percent less likely to back a black Democratic candidate than a white Democrat.





Obama’s Democratic primary and caucus wins certainly show that many white voters will vote for him. They obviously feel that he has the right presidential stuff. But a large number of whites aren’t quite ready to strap on their racial blinders even for a candidate who has leaned way over backward to run a race neutral, bipartisan, unity campaign. The big question is just how many whites will refuse to strap on the racial blinders on Election Day. That’s still the X factor for Obama.