Wampum

When I saw the first ad, I thought, okay, so she isn't going with the stock "white candidate talking with white voter". That's generally a good step, since, well, a large section of the Democratic party is non-white. I did notice that an African-American was used as the "listening prop", but then it still made sense, as blacks have always made up a majority of the minorty vote in the greater party.

A few minutes ago, however, I saw the second ad. I knew it wasn't a coincidence.

These are internet-only ads, placed on many of the bigger blogs: DailyKos, Atrios, MyDD, etc. Blogs with majority white audiences. Even targeted blogs with African-American contributors, such as Oliver Willis, Steve Gilliard, Pandagon and Feministe, still enjoy a mostly white audience. Most people of color, when we come online (and yes, we do, in larger and larger numbers) don't hang out much in the lefty blogosphere. Or if we do, it's in the blogocolorsphere, sites which may not focus exclusively on issues related to race and bigotry, but which are not uncomfortable discussing these issues at length.

So what signal is Senator Clinton sending with these images? Her audience is mainly white, so we know it's not to really reach out to people of color online; it's now too obvious, too contrived. We'd ask, "what are the chances that both "let's have a conversation" ads would feature only listeners of color?"

Of course, many whites wouldn't be comfortable even pointing out this feature; it would indicate that they're not in fact "colorblind", that they in fact noticed the color of the people in the ads. Only people who harbor racist tendencies would actually notice race, right? Which is of course why few white liberals noticed the extreme whiteness of the Clinton blogger lunch.

That infamous Clinton lunch, with the much promised, but still-MIA "transcripts". Transcripts which of course would show how uncomfortable all the participants, and President Clinton himself, were lack of diversity in the room. If I felt either the Clintons or the blogosphere had learned anything from that fiasco, I might have brushed the ads off as "over-compensating". But I don't think it's that.

The message is simpler, and directed at those who might cross the color line and vote for Obama. Hillary is reminding potential voters that people of color, particularly African Americans, are her natural constituency. Of course, many African Americans (I would imagine "most") find it humorous at best (offensive at worst) that the current meme concludes that African Americans will "naturally" vote skin color, i.e., Obama. Granted, that's from the same school that asserts I'll vote Hillary because she's in possession of a uterus.

Eric reminds me that Hillary's purported outreach to PoCs has an additional "benefit": Her having a conversation with non-whites means that other whites don't have to have that same, icky conversation. I don't know if I'd go that far (at least in public) but I do think he makes a valid point.

Your thoughts? I wonder if there's any information on the actual ad buys - did they go to bloggers of color whose audiences are non-white, versus only those few who blog for the overtly white lefty blogosphere.