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02/29/2008: "Guilt makes Obama popular among whites"

One of Britain's most influential black figures today accused Barack Obama of cynically exploiting America's racial divide and gave warning that he could prolong, rather than heal the rift.

Writing in Prospect, the monthly current affairs magazine, Mr Phillips suggested that guilt over transatlantic slavery was behind Mr Obama's support from middle class whites.

"If Obama can succeed, then maybe they can imagine that [Martin Luther] King's post-racial nirvana has arrived. A vote for Obama is a pain-free negation of their own racism. So long as they don't have to live next door to him; Obama has yet to win convincingly in white districts adjacent to black communities," he wrote.

Mr Phillips compared Mr Obama to Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey, prominent black "bargainers" – those who strike a deal with white America not to make an issue of historical racism if their own race is not used against them.

[ Bill Clinton ran on the same platform. White America is used to making problems go away by electing fools or buying products. In this case, it's not so simple, so the domesticated humanzees are waving their short-arms and flapping their hands in hopeless cluelessness. Obama's just attempting to profit from that. ]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3451323.ece