You are wrong to underestimate Hillary Clinton's appeal in the black community. She has earned their support through years of hard work, and it is a credit to the black community, which often mitigates its electoral impact by lining up early behind one candidate, that they are not marching in lockstep for Barack Obama.
At the same time, Barack Obama should be given credit for not resorting to the race baiting that characterized the candidacies of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Obama can't take blacks for granted
July 1, 2007
BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist
It's time for Sen. Barack Obama to define his message to African Americans if he hopes to tighten his grip on the black vote.
And trust me, he needs to tighten it.
When a powerful family like the Jacksons is split -- with some of them publicly throwing their support to Obama while other members of this political clan host fund-raisers and show up at events for Hillary Clinton -- Obama still has a lot of work to do.
And when a heavyweight like U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel vows to use his muscle to lift Clinton, and a beloved activist like actor Danny Glover uses his celebrity status to back Sen. John Edwards, a candidate who's running a distant third to the front-runners, there's trouble afoot.
Debate exposes glaring flaw
Last week's historic televised presidential debate, which brought the eight Democratic presidential candidates to Howard University's campus in Washington, D.C., exposed a glaring flaw in Obama's campaign.
Besides being a call to order of the black elite, Tavis Smiley's "All-American Presidential Forum" gave black America an opportunity to judge the two favored candidates up close on issues directly affecting their lives. And, for the first time, the panel of Democrats was questioned by a distinguished panel of national black journalists.
The historic moment played out against the backdrop of a startling U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the court had ruled hours earlier that race could not be used by school districts as a factor in determining where children attend public schools.
Obama should have latched on to this issue -- clearly one that strikes at the heart of the civil rights movement -- at the outset. He should have delivered a clear message that the Supreme Court ruling undermines the very intent of Brown vs. Board of Education, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, which struck down segregation in America's schools.
He started out all right, pointing out that he was standing on the stage at Howard University, the place where a lawyer named "Thurgood Marshall and his team crafted their legal strategy" to successfully overturn school segregation.
"It it hadn't been for them, I would not be standing here today," Obama said. He went on to say that it was "their fundamental recognition that for us to achieve racial equality was not simply good for African Americans, but it was good for America as a whole, that we could not be what we might be as a nation unless we healed the brutal wounds of slavery and Jim Crow."
But the black people who came to hear the debate and those who were tuned in to PBS have already heard what is "good for America."
The question is what will the next president do to improve the quality of life for African Americans who are still affected by discrimination and racial bias in this country?
Hillary nailed it.
"For anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America is to deny the reality in front of our very eyes," she said. "You can look at the thousands of African Americans left behind by their government with Katrina. You can look at this decision today which turned the clock back on the promise of Brown vs. Board of Education. ... The march is not finished."
Clinton's critics will accuse her of pandering to a black crowd, but that's politics. When politicians speak before a predominantly Jewish crowd, they tailor their message to include solutions to the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. When politicians speak to labor, they tailor their message to appeal to unions. Every candidate who participated in Tavis' forum ought to have been prepared to give remarks specifically addressing the concerns of black people.
No reason to keep his distance
It is understandable that Obama doesn't want to be pigeonholed as the so-called black candidate, but he can't be so afraid of that label that he alienates the very base that could lift him in the primary election.
Frankly, his universalist strategy might work for white voters, but black voters have been taken for granted long enough. If Obama's handlers don't understand this, then he ought to be looking for some new strategists.
More important, Obama was in the perfect position to show that being pro-black doesn't mean someone has to be anti-white. I'm disappointed that he doesn't appear to know that real progress on the racial front ought to mean that political candidates who are embraced by white voters don't have to keep their distance from black ones.
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