A Race Not Just About Race

Retired Philadelphia librarian Helen Miller, old enough to remember "Colored Only" signs in her native South, never thought she'd see the day a black man would stand within reach of the Democratic presidential nomination - and maybe even the White House.

But for now, that's not enough to nudge her into the loyalist ranks of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

"I've not decided between him and Hillary," she said. "I've had friends of mine say, 'I'm going to vote for Obama regardless of anything, simply because he's black.' That's not where I am."

A lot of black voters evidently are there with her.

Across the Philadelphia region last week, in coffee shops and city halls, in universities and churches, near Independence Hall and the archaeological dig of the President's House, where George Washington kept slaves, African Americans spoke with pride and wonder about a historic moment. They talked not of Obama's chances, but of America's chance - to take a huge step toward a long-imagined society.

Yet few said they would cast a vote for Obama based solely on shared race, or even on the chance to make history. Many said they were still evaluating other candidates, chiefly U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, as the primaries approached. New Jersey votes on Feb. 5, Pennsylvania on April 22.

"It's like Rev. King said: Look to the quality of their character before you look at the color of someone's skin," said Camden Mayor Gwendolyn Faison. "I like Hillary for her experience and what she stands for. But I like Obama for the way he says he wants to end the divisions in this country."

Across the Delaware River, Philadelphia's third black mayor, Michael Nutter, endorsed Clinton a month ago, saying "her priorities are the right priorities" for the city.

In Philadelphia, which is 44 percent African American; in Camden, 51 percent black; and even in the wider, whiter suburbs, the sense of possibility - and quandary - was palpable among voters, following Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses and second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

"Skin color does not play a role for me," said Vanessa Tidwell, who works in a Camden notary's office. "I like Obama, and I like Hillary."

Chris Daniels, 17, walking by Independence Mall after leaving the Charter High School for Architecture and Design, answered a question about Obama with a shrug.

"Any politician can say anything, but the question is what they do," he said. "The fact that he is a black man running for president - that is a big deal, but it all depends on what he does."

Obama is not the first African American to run for president. Democratic U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York sought the office in 1972, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson won primaries and caucuses in 1984 and 1988. Conservative author Alan Keyes, the Rev. Al Sharpton Jr., and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois waged campaigns in recent years. But Obama is the first to have a realistic chance of winning the nomination and the presidency - if America is willing to elect a black man.

"That's the big question," said F. Carl Walton, who teaches political science and directs the Horace Mann Bond Honors Program at Lincoln University in Chester County. "Our nation is being tested. I want to hope that we're ready."

Obama backers say his narrow loss in New Hampshire, where blacks make up 1 percent of the population, raises hopes for a win in South Carolina. African Americans are expected to make up half the voters in the Jan. 26 Democratic primary there.

The state's most prominent black politician, U.S. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, has not endorsed any of the contenders, which some observers believe will help Clinton. She maintains substantial support in the black community, reaching back to her husband's presidency. There is also admiration for the populism of former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who has made the plight of the poor a central cause of his campaign.

Obama has run a campaign promising change - on the war in Iraq, on the economy, on government spending, on practically everything. And John Jordan of Morrisville, president of the Bucks County chapter of the NAACP, said that message carries seminal appeal to people of all races.

"It's not a black-white thing right now," he said. "I feel it's a large portion of America that is embracing a person, not a person of color. I think that's going to be the difference in this election, people embracing someone who can change their lives, not someone who is black who can change their lives."

Even so, if Obama gets the nomination, Jordan said, "every hate group in this country is going to come out of the woodwork."

That's disquieting to many African Americans here, who noted in interviews that this year is the 40th anniversaries of the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

"I worry. I worry about Obama's family," said the Rev. Isaac Miller, pastor at the storied Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia. "And Hillary. I worry about the safety of both of them."

One morning last week at the church, long a center of social and political activism, Miller sat, sipping a cup of coffee. A viable black presidential candidate - his grandfather, a slave in the Old South, could never have imagined it, he said.

He's leaning strongly toward Obama, "with the hope that he can begin to address the issues that affect communities like this one."

On the walls around him were signs urging Philadelphians to put down their guns. Outside, on surrounding blocks, ruined buildings sat abandoned. In 45 minutes the church would open its daily soup kitchen, providing meals to 150 people.

The next president, Miller said, will face three big issues: U.S. use of force and loss of standing abroad, and turbulent race relations and harsh economic divisions at home.

"I trust the brother's got the ability to grow," he said of Obama. "And I trust he'll begin to address those issues."

Lawrence Miles is sure of it. "I'm voting for Obama," said Miles, whose La Unique bookstore in Camden serves as an Obama campaign headquarters.

"Youth are seeing him as a giant and are realizing the sky's the limit," he said. "But they're also seeing that the only way to get to that height is to work and work and work and read, read, read."

Helen Miller, the retired librarian, grew up in High Point, N.C., during the era of legal segregation. She came to Philadelphia in her early 20s, earning a master's degree at Drexel University and working 38 years at the Free Library.

Now 67, she's proud of the sweat, toil and sacrifice that Obama represents. But black Americans, she said, should not be expected to vote en masse for Obama any more than women should be expected to vote for Clinton.

"What does the person stand for?" she asked. "What has he done? What does he promise to do? And what needs to be done? People are going to have to think for themselves."

And are they ready to elect a black man?

"If America is not ready now," she said, "I wonder if America will be ready five, 10, 20 years, a half century from now."