Obama’s Race

THERE will always be a familiar but disturbing story line traversing through the history of this republic: the issue of race and politics. Politicians in general steer away from such volatile issues; some lose credibility altogether when they hit this “third rail” of American politics. Former senate majority leader Trent Lott, for example, lost his lofty position after appearing to sympathize with former senator Strom Thurmond, who, as a young senator, rallied behind federal and state policies sanctioning racial segregation in the southern states. Natural law, as reflected in the United States Constitution, sanctioned the separation of the races and allowed for a legal basis for racial segregation for over a half-century.

The whole Senate moved swiftly to demote Trent Lott from “majority leader” to “senator”. In an attempt to revive his credibility with African-Americans, he appeared on BET television to reiterate that racial segregation was, and is, illegal and immoral; his attempt at reviving credibility failed; the damage was done. Trent Lott eventually retired from the Senate; according to the “unwritten rule” of senatorial civility, he disgraced himself and the institution.

“Slavery was, of course, America’s “birth defect” said current secretary of state Condoleeza Rice to a gathering of reporters at a press briefing on the eve of Bush’s trip to Africa in 2003. “We’ve been trying to deal with the consequences of it ever since and to bring about reconciliation”.

Enter Barak Obama, who some hail as the first “bi-racial” presidential candidate. He’s no Trent Lott; Barak Obama is black. In point of fact, Barak Obama is the third black senator elected within the last 125 years of senatorial history. This fact alone illustrates an abysmal picture of race relations in this country.

Barak Obama is, above all, a politician who wants to become the 44th President of the United States of America. He wants to achieve this regardless of the color of his skin.

Some African-American leaders say that Barak Obama isn’t “black enough”; others say that he’s “too black”. Either way, Barak Obama is striving to run a “post-racial” campaign. The problem: he’s black.

I’m not concerned about whether Democratic super-delegates view Barak Obama as being “elect-able” to defeat rival Republican John McCain in the general election. I’m pointing to the fact that the issue of race would not have taken center stage had Barak Obama not decided to run for President of the United States. In other words, had any other Democratic white male politician decided to run at this juncture, would the issue of race be a blip on the radar screen? The Hillary Clinton campaign distanced itself from comments made by former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who said matter-of-factly: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position”. The logic of this statement assumes that the last 43 Presidents of these United States of America have been black.Then came the carefully orchestrated clips of a sermon circulating in the mainstream news media that was conducted by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, now retired senior pastor at the Trinity Baptist Church in Illinois. He talks of the continuing “disconnect” between white and black America.

In a timely speech given in Philadelphia a few days ago, Barak Obama distanced himself from Dr. Wright’s comments but at the same time refused to dissolve their friendship, saying that he could no more disown his friend and spiritual advisor than he (Obama) can disown the black community.

Despite Barak Obama’s rhetoric of racial unity, I believe that, if elected the 44th President of the United States, he would ultimately disappoint the black community; he cannot bridge the racial divide. Barak Obama claims that his spiritual mentor sees white and black America as a Manichean polarity, a society with two chambers – one black, the other white. Here is the reality: white America does not understand black America. Our social experiences are as clear as “black and white”.

Christ Matthews, one of the most visible white commentators on MSNBC, remarked that he had not met one black student throughout all his formal education, that is, throughout grammar to graduate school.

Roger Cohen, who wrote an op-ed column for the New York Times about a week ago, spent some of his childhood in apartheid South Africa. He writes of how vast and shimmering was Muizenberg beach, near Cape Town, was, “…with all that glistening white skin spread across the golden sand! The scrawny blacks were elsewhere, swimming off the rocks in a filthy harbor, and I watched from my grandfather’s house and I wondered”. Later on he wrote: “Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable”. I applaud Barak Obama’s pursuit for the highest office of this land. But I also know that he is “swimming upstream” and he may “drown” in the end. He is a man of great ideas who believes that his candidacy can heal this nation’s racial wounds, but his ideas are theoretical at best. Only sustained, candid reminders that white privilege continues to exist within America society will beckon white America to consider seriously a world they know nothing about – black America. Barak Obama cannot achieve this Herculean feat on his own.

The writer is a recent revert to Islam and can be contacted at: drummondhugh@verizon.net