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What Hyde Park Tells Us About Obama

Lefty enclave is racially mixed, but lofty

By Jonas Oransky,  Newser Staff

Posted Jun 9, 2008 7:37 PM CDT
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(Newser) – "It is the most racially integrated neighborhood in the nation's most racially segregated city," Andrew Ferguson writes in the Weekly Standard of the area in south Chicago Barack Obama calls home. It's a college town, a lefty enclave where the moneyed mix with boho bookworms, and "NPR announcer" types  walk the streets wearing wire rims and backpacks. But Hyde Park isn't an ordinary college town, it's an unusually isolated one—an island in the middle of a slum.


Politically, it's not part of Chicago politics, Ferguson writes, making Obama, "a politician of Hyde Park pedigree, outside the normal bloodlines of Chicago's black politics." There are advantages to that—being outside the machine, "he stayed clear of all the corruption that's involved with that." But he also had to prove himself to blacks.  "Barack is viewed in part to be the white man in blackface in our community," one rival said.

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., talks to reporters after he and his wife Michelle voted in the Illinois Primary.
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., talks to reporters after he and his wife Michelle voted in the Illinois Primary.   (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
The home of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.
The home of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.   (AP Photo)
The restaurant Pizza Capri as seen on Wednesday, July 11, 2007, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
The restaurant Pizza Capri as seen on Wednesday, July 11, 2007, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.   (AP Photo/Jerry Lai)
A car drives past Pizza Capri Wednesday, July 11, 2007, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
A car drives past Pizza Capri Wednesday, July 11, 2007, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.   (AP Photo)
Weekly Standard cover
Weekly Standard cover   (WeeklyStandard.com)
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US • Politics

 
Barack Obama • Chicago • University of Chicago • elitism • Bill Ayers • Hyde Park

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