Pundits presumed Black voters’ doubts reflected identity, not electoral strategy

Evidence

But Joe Biden’s comments—which he later “deeply” regretted—became a sign of things to come. What was to come over the course of the campaign was a reflection of the audacity of racist minds—from President Bush to radio mega-personality Rush Limbaugh to Democratic stalwarts—all to view Obama as an extraordinary Negro. In February 2007, Time magazine speculated that African Americans were expressing greater support for New York senator Hillary Clinton because of questions over whether Obama was “black enough.” It couldn’t be because they saw Obama as a long shot. It had to be that they did not see Obama as ordinarily Black like them, meaning inarticulate and ugly and unclean and unintelligent. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1212

Categorization

• XREF: An instance of the assimilationist/antiracist dynamic the reader wants to place: the ‘black enough’ question presupposes a defamatory baseline of ordinary Blackness.