Told that some saw her tweet as racist, she said that's not what she meant. "I was saying that as a black woman, Romney doesn't have that much that would make us want to vote for him," said Scott-Miller, who is black. "Because Barack Obama lives with three black women in his house, he knows about what they need, he knows about the issues we may be facing, he talks to black women on the regular."
Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor at the University of Maryland, wrote a column last week exploring why so many black voters are rejecting Romney. She said it has less to do with the candidate than with his party's treatment of Obama, such as John Sununu calling the president "lazy" after the debate, a congressman shouting "You lie!" during the State of the Union address, claims that Obama is not a citizen and more.
In an interview, Ifill said that for black voters, such accusations feel like white people are attacking their own dignity. "In essence," she says, "they are closing ranks around Obama."
She noted that women were justifiably moved by Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy and Catholics flocked to the polls to elect President John F. Kennedy. Comparing black pride in Obama to white pride in Romney is a "false symmetry" because of the history of black oppression, she says, and she asked for patience from America at large.
