Ex-Clinton Supporter’s True Colors May Be Showing

**jaypeesmith** · 06-17-2008, 05:11 PM

06-17-2008 03:51 PM

Paula Abeles is one of those Hillary Clinton supporters who, in the wake of her losing the nomination to Barack Obama, has decided to switch her vote to McCain.

Such switches were, by no means, unheard of — anecdotally, I have seen many instances of people professing the same switch on various blogs I have read. For those who chose not to vote for Obama, their rationales for doing so range from his perceived lack of experience all the way to continued hard feelings over how they believe their candidate was treated.

However, let’s also be honest enough to say that there are some people who switched their support because they couldn’t see themselves supporting a black man for president.

I believe Paula Abeles to fit in this category.

We might not remember her name but, we might remember what happened a few years back. There was to be a meeting of the Monticello Association, which was a gathering of descendants of Thomas Jefferson. Well, as we know, because of Jefferson’s relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, some of those descendants are also black.

Abeles and her husband Nat, the former president of the association, enacted a campaign to block the black descendants of Jefferson from attending the gathering. This included her pretending to be a 67-year-old black woman while participating in an online Yahoo! group of Hemings descendants, in efforts to discourage their attendance. In response to her actions, Abeles offered the following:

“It might have been somewhat unethical.

…

It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering.”

In other words, we couldn’t have all those “uncivilized” negroes mingling with us “civilized” white folk.

To be fair, I consider this person, he likely beliefs and her past behaviors to be no reflection on Hillary Clinton. I simply don’t believe that, of her former supporters who are now supporting McCain, all of them do so out of a sisterly spirit. Some do so based on serious racial prejudices.