Look who’s calling whom racist now

Via The Hill:

Racial prejudice is being cited among senior union leaders to explain Sen. Barack Obama’s difficulty in winning over support from white rank-and-file members.

Obama (D-Ill.) is counting on organized labor to help win him key electoral votes in Ohio, Michigan and other battleground states.

Karen Ackerman, political director for the AFL-CIO, acknowledged that Obama’s race is an important factor for some union members.

“This race is very complicated because there is an African-American candidate for president,” said Ackerman. “We feel there is a racial component for some union members, but we’re confident we can overcome that.”

…Obama’s difficulties with white, working-class voters, who make up much of the ranks of organized labor, became apparent during the Democratic primary. Clinton beat Obama by large margins in states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, which have high concentrations of lower-income white voters.

“I think there’s more resistance than people want to admit,” said Edward Finkelstein, publisher of the Labor Tribune, a weekly publication distributed in about 80,000 union households in St. Louis and southern Illinois. “It’s ingrained that voting for a black is anathema to everything in their core.”

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