BlogTalkRadio/Hankster: Dr. Omar Ali on Independent Black Politics and Barack Obama

Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with support of independent voters in 33 states with open primaries. A black and independent alliance put him in the White House and changed American history. There is a new political category on the radar: the black independent -- 6% of Obama's vote, according to independent strategist Jacqueline Salit in her recent post-election analysis "How the Independent Movement Went Left By Going Right".

Omar Ali, a long-time independent political activist and a faculty member of the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University, talks about his book In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third-Party Movements in the United States published by Ohio University Press.

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Recommended reading: In the Balance of Power

Independent Black Politics and Third-Party Movements in the United States
By Omar H. Ali
Ohio University Press and Swallow Press
Foreword by Eric Foner
With the presidential election looming, the “black vote” has been deemed a crucial portion of the electorate. Historically, most black voters have aligned themselves with one of the two major parties—the Republican Party from the time of the Civil War to the New Deal; and, since the New Deal, and especially since the height of the modern civil rights movement, the Democratic Party.However, as In the Balance of Power convincingly demonstrates, African Americans have long been part of independent political movements...