Maggie Maurer, 34, of Carrboro, an English instructor with a pierced nose who doesn't look much older than her community college students, says that "people my age and younger are afraid to say they're not for Obama."
She's worried that "race is playing more of an issue in the campaign" and that after Wright's latest statements, "people are starting to wonder if there's some sort of black agenda at work. I don't really know what to think. I hesitate to call anyone a racist, but I think if you just put all the pieces together, it makes people nervous."
Gerald D. Bell, who teaches at the University of North Carolina business school, offered unsolicited advice to the Obama campaign when the candidate spent the night at the Carolina Inn the other day.
"What he needs to do is to tell people, `I love America,'" said Bell, who didn't know that Obama used that phrase in a speech on campus the previous night.
"The psychology of what Reverend Wright has created has transferred almost subliminally to Obama," Bell said. "The most important question for people who are doubting Obama because of Wright is whether [Obama] loves America and whether he loves Americans."
Much like the bitter contest in South Carolina more than three months ago, the Wright controversy is likely to produce a polarized electorate on primary day, said a senior Obama aide. This time, though, it's not the Clintons who are getting blamed for inflaming racial divisions.
Democratic politicians and analysts in the state expect blacks to cast about one-third of the primary vote. Clinton is wooing them with a new ad that features poet Maya Angelou. But if Obama gets at least 85 percent of the black vote, as he has in recent primaries, Clinton could need as much as two-thirds of the white vote to win, a larger share than she's received in other big states.
paul.west@baltsun.com
