"When we do things to help African Americans, they are not just African American issues; it's good for America," Edwards told the Hough audience.
But the crowd pressed him: Five or six people asked what his administration would do to help felons reassimilate after their release from prison. Cleo Busby, who works to create affordable housing in Cleveland, demanded that Edwards promise to make that a campaign issue.
"The answer is yes, I will commit to doing it and to make it a campaign issue," Edwards said. "We will fight for it." But two hours later, at a speech before a mostly white crowd in Warren, Edwards did not mention affordable housing, affirmative action or predatory lending.
He did mention race -- albeit briefly -- in a speech along the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wis., where a largely white crowd turned out. "Some people ask me where is the right place to talk about race in America," he said. "I have an answer: everywhere." Issues people care about are "not an Asian issue, not a Hispanic issue, not an Iraqi issue: They are American issues."
Edwards has often been compared to Bill Clinton: raised by working-class families in the racially sensitive South and eloquent speakers who are deft in their ability to empathize with both blacks and whites. Although Clinton came to office in an age of racial battles over Rodney King and O.J. Simpson and Edwards campaigns in an age when race is trumped by nationality in a time of war, Lawanna Holmes believes Edwards understands the nuances of how race matters today.
"He's from the South, and anyone from the South thinks about issues in that light," said Holmes, 43, a black homemaker from Rochester, Minn., who attended the La Crosse event.
Holmes and her husband, Curt Schmelling, 39, a computer programmer who is white, said they were disappointed not to see more minority faces in the La Crosse crowd. But they reasoned that the increasing numbers of Hispanics and Somalis who had immigrated to the region were not immersed enough in the political system to know the event was going on -- or, if they were aware, could not find time to attend. "I do find it painful," Holmes said. "It's too bad you don't see more people of color at events of this sort."
-- David Nakamura
