Race and ObamaPitching a campaign to the masses

This article was originally going to be written about how Barack Obama had successfully managed to thread the needle of racial politics by avoiding the issues of race that dogged the candidacies of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Carol Mosley Braun. However, a funny thing happened on the road to the primaries: due to forces partly beyond his control, race became not only an issue, but the issue in the Democratic primary process, with accusations of Clintonian racism, New Hampshire voter racism, and the “fierce urgency of now” to nominate a black candidate by many in the “civil rights” establishment.

This is bad news for Senator Obama.

Nearly forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama has managed to inspire a new generation of Americans with his charm and charismatic campaign for change. I saw this enthusiasm first-hand when I stepped into a cold Pan-AM hangar in Portsmouth early in the morning on Friday, January 4, 2007, joining hundreds of Obama supporters eagerly awaiting the arrival of Iowa Caucus winner. The hangar was covered with signs in colorful variations of “Change We Can Believe In,” “Hope,” “N.H. Love’s [sic] Obama,” “Change with Barack.” The atmosphere was euphoric – parents with their children on the shoulders to give them a glimpse of Obama, hundreds of students who had skipped school to see their hero. It appeared more appropriate for the arrival of The Beatles than a politician.

Unfortunately for Obama, the hundreds of supporters at the Pan-AM hangar, and the several-thousand supporters at Obama’s event at Concord High School later in the day, were not enough to defeat Hillary Clinton in the state that her supporters have dubbed “Clinton Country.” But the drama was just beginning: Obama surrogates and talk show hosts, most notably Chris Matthews, soon accused Granite staters of racism to explain the discrepancies of polling expectations of a big Obama win and the actual narrow victory by Senator Clinton. Appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Obama Supporter Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown University, said that “we can‘t deny the Tom Bradley effect” – a term describing the difference between the vocal and actual support for black candidates. (Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, was leading by 7 points in the polls over George Deukmejian but ended up losing by one point on election night.) Professor Dyson hypothesized that many New Hampshire Democratic primary voters “had second thoughts or become skeptical about pulling the lever, so to speak, for a black man.”

Making this campaign about race, and essentially accusing Granite state, “Live Free or Die,” Democrats of racism is, in the words of Pat Buchanan, “tarnishing the Democratic Party and Hillary’s victory.” More importantly for the Obama camp: bringing racial issues into Senator Obama’s candidacy will rob it of what has made it so unique, by confronting real issues rather than blaming all of the African-American communities problems on the boogey-man of the “vestiges” of slavery, white racism, and the Jim Crow South. For example, Obama courageously decided not to interject himself into issues like the Don Imus incident and the Duke “Rape” Case that were fodder for, as J.C. Watts has described them, “race-hustling poverty pimps,” like Sharpton, Jackson, and Black Congressional leaders.

This record of sticking to issues and avoiding demagoguery presented the hope that Obama would take the “road less traveled” and not be seduced by the temptation of quick political advantages of racial politics like many African-American leaders in the past. For example, in 1947 Thurgood Marshall said that “Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws.” However, once Marshall became a Supreme Court Justice the temptation to exploit racial issues became too much to resist. During a 1971 case where a white law student protested his failure to be admitted to the Arizona bar despite doing better than black students who had been admitted, Justice Marshall said to fellow Justice William Douglass, “You guys have been discriminating for years. Now it is our turn.” More recently, Deval Patrick, an Obama supporter, ran for Governor of Massachusetts with the promise of “Together We Can,” but shortly after being elected abandoned his moderate tone for something more befitting activists like Jackson and Sharpton. During a Martin Luther King Day Speech in 2007, Governor Patrick said “I wonder how many of us know that in this term, right now, the Supreme Court is seriously considering overruling the Brown v. Board of Education decision.”

Equally important, because of his ethnicity, Obama is exempt from having to pander to the African-American community with downright foolish remarks on the campaign trail. For example, while speaking at a black church in Pittsburgh during the 2000 election, Vice President Gore said “When my opponent, Governor Bush, says that he will appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, I often think of the strictly constructionist meaning that was applied when the Constitution was written and how some people were considered three-fifths of a human being.” Four years later, during his failed 2004 presidential bid, Senator John Kerry (incorrectly) said that there were more blacks in prison than in college, remarking that it was “unacceptable, but it’s not their fault.” Senator Clinton has not been immune to this “willing suspension of disbelief” on race either. Speaking before a group of blacks, Hillary Clinton answered a question asking “what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans?” by saying that “When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about…” During the primary election cycle Senator Clinton has also said that ”If H.I.V./ AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.” Not true. In reality, according to the Center for Disease Control, H.I.V. AIDS is the third leading killer of black women between the ages of 25 and 34, behind accidental deaths and heart disease, and just ahead of malignant neo- plasms (cancer) and murder.

Thus far, Senator Obama has managed to avoid those theatrics and discuss real issues of concern. For example, after the Supreme Court decided that programs that were “directed only to racial balance, pure and simple” were forbidden by the Constitution and that, as Chief Justice Roberts said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Obama resisted the temptation to demagogue and instead offered some strait talk. For example, during the All-American Presidential forum on PBS, Obama said that “It is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African- Americans and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems we face.” Senator Obama added, “Even as I fight on behalf of more education funding . . . I have to also say that if parents don’t turn off the television set when the child comes home from school and make sure they sit down and do their homework and go talk to the teachers and find out how they’re doing . . . I don’t know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was something white.” In addition, in the MSNBC Debate in Nevada on January 15, Senator Obama spoke out about the need for fathers to take more responsibility in the black community. Discussing the need to improve educational opportunities for all children, Obama said, “We have to have our parents take their jobs seriously, and particularly African-American fathers who all too often are absent from the home, have not encouraged the kind of, you know, nurturing of our children that they need.” Senator Obama spoke from the heart, with blunt honesty that is elusive in Washington politics, stating, “as somebody who grew up without a father, I know how important that is. That is something that, as president, I intend to talk about.”

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said that Senator Obama has been able to take such bold positions “because he is black and impervious to charges of racism.” Regardless of the reasons, Obama’s ability to be honest about real problems in the African-American community is indeed a desperately needed change in the Democratic party. The important thing now is that Obama can continue to avoid the forces that are trying to pull him into a racial squabble, and resume his journey down the “road less traveled.” One tip for the Obama campaign, if you really want to not make race an issue in this campaign—as the Senator himself says is their goal—than you probably shouldn’t send around any more memos detailing incidents where Clinton or surrogates made comments that could be interpreted as racially insensitive. And Bill, if you want to complain about media bias, you should talk about why this memo isn’t being talked about more.