The isolated towns of Virginia’s Appalachian coal region are home to strong labour unions and Democratic political machines that date back generations. Yet, voters here who eagerly pushed Democrats into the Senate and the Governor’s office are resisting Barack Obama.While some Americans say Obama’s race and exotic background make them uncomfortable, here those people include Democratic precinct chairmen and get-out-the-vote workers. While many Americans receive e-mails falsely calling Obama a Muslim, a local newspaper has joked in print that Obama would paint the White House black and put Islamic symbols on the US flag.And so Obama’s supporters are talking directly about race, betting that the best way to raise their neighbours’ comfort level with the prospect of the first Black President is to confront their feelings about his skin colour.When Cecil Roberts, president of the coal miners’ union that shapes politics in much of this mountain region, talks to voters, he tells them that their choice is to have “a Black friend in the White House or a White enemy”. Union organiser Jerry Stallard asks fellow coal workers what’s more important — improving their work conditions or holding onto their scepticism of Obama’s race, culture or religion. “We’re all black in the mines,” he tells them.The presidential campaign, in the almost all-white counties of southwestern Virginia, has produced an outcome that few people expected: A frank discussion of race. “I’ve never been prejudiced in my life,” said Sharon Fleming, 69, the wife of a retired coal miner, who spends hours at the union hall calling voters on behalf of Obama. “My niece married a Black, and I don’t have a problem with it. Now, I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama.”Some here blame Obama’s troubles on his mixed-race background, while others say his journey from Hawaii and Indonesia to Harvard and big-city Chicago politics makes him an oddity. Street has his own reason, concerning Obama’s alliance with Senator Edward M Kennedy.Local Democratic leaders are relieved that they can rely on another local organisation, United Mine Workers of America. The union portrays Obama as a friend of the coal industry, and it argues that Obama is culturally in step with local workers. Union literature reassures that the Democratic nominee supports gun rights, while attacking McCain for opposing legislation that would make union organising easier.
