Twenty-three-year-old Aaron Bowen, a gay Chicagoan and Obama supporter, got his first taste of canvassing this year when he hit the road for Obama in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., oftentimes in areas that were predominantly white. Bowen said he encountered an older white man -- a former farmer, a factory worker, and self-identified Republican -- just outside of St. Louis, who unabashedly told him, "I'm voting for the [n word], not the old guy."
Bowen chalked up the statement to the gentleman's total lack of exposure to other races more than anything. "The level of ignorance is surprising, but I didn't find it malicious or spiteful," he said. "The man said to me, 'I've never encountered intelligent black people before.'"
Later in our conversation, I asked Bowen whether he thought the nation was changing. "When I met that man, that's when I knew it was changing. These people have been excluded by the system for so long," he said, identifying with the disenfranchisement of an older white working-class guy, who was throwing in the towel on the Republican Party to vote for the person who may well become America's first African-American president. (Kerry Eleveld)
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