Commentary: The Obama factor: Is the United States ready for a black man in the White House?
|
| Published on Thursday, July 12, 2007 |
Email To Friend Print Version |
By Michael D. Roberts
I like the junior United States senator from Illinois. He’s charming, eloquent, dapper – and black. He says that he’s African and American and I expect that this is for internal domestic politics because he does not want to alienate his white base of support by playing up his black African heritage so soon. But no matter that his racial identity sticks out as a sore thumb – his big nose and all. And soon presidential hopeful Barack Obama may not be able to do so much nimble verbal gymnastics since its going to come down to one essential question.
Is the United States of America with a majority white, Caucasian population, ready to accept a black president in the White House?
For black people and political analysts alike this is the core question since nothing else matters in the scheme of things. In the United States politics and race are inseparable so Obama has better get used to it. While he still enjoys a great run and the money keeps pouring in to sustain his candidacy things can change in a jiffy and he could find himself relying on a vote that he up to now takes for granted to support and sustain his bid for the White House.
If history is our guide Obama must know that official and unofficial Washington, the Beltway establishment, is an entrenched institution no matter who the president of the United States is. That establishment has an unflattering history of hostility to black people that while not so overt today still persists. Ask former black Secretary of State General Colin Powell how he was treated by people like former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a prominent religious leader who advocated “bombing Foggy Bottom with Powell in it.”
So if a black Secretary of State could be so excluded and maligned by members of this establishment and party spewing racist comments one can only imagine the daunting uphill battle that a black president would have to face. Senator Obama must be very cognizant of the fact that if elected he’s not going to change Washington’s culture, the status quo, or its covert attitude to black people.
Historically, blacks working for white presidents were nothing short of token, window-dressing. It is only a political con-game designed to win black voter support especially by the Republican Party to appear to be “more black conscious.” But the bulk of the GOP’s party faithful is the Southern white states that will balk at the thought of a black president. Obama with all his charm, charisma and intellect will have to overcome this formidable obstacle of wooing white Southern voters to his cause if he is to become president.
It was the great Marcus Mosiah Garvey who admonished black people “to go armed in a world of wolves.” Garvey was not an animal hater and did not advocate the wholesale slaughter of this member of the canine sect. He was talking allegorically about how Black people must be armed with the lessons of history if they are to succeed in a world dominated by white racism, bigotry and prejudice. Today, Obama is campaigning in that world and he would do well to heed Garvey’s words.
He must remember that just about 50 years ago black people traveling from north eastern states like New York City going to the South had to transfer at Union Station in Washington from an integrated carriage to a segregated one because that was the system in the South. During that time white landlords were reluctant to rent to black diplomats and lawmakers making it exceedingly difficult for them to work in Washington.
Obama must remember that 62 years ago – in 1945 – the only two black congressmen in Washington could not get a haircut in the Congress’s barber shops or use the swimming pool. Black reporters and journalists were banned from the official Congressional press gallery prompting many to dub Capitol Hill as “the Old Southern Home” – the only place in the United States where the old South did not lose the civil war.
The lingering effects of this entrenched and ingrained system is still in modern Washington and while hypocrisy and concealment of true feelings is the new technique of those who still privately hold on to the racism of the past the senator from Illinois must be painfully aware that as a black lawmaker bipartisanship is truly a high-end art form.
And Barack Obama’s history, growth and development are littered with the rebelliousness and individual demons that perplex most black youths of today. His admitted search for his identity is most instructive since it documents his descent into substance abuse including alcohol and marijuana. Today, he seems to have come a very long way but nothing that he’s said so far indicates that he’s finally come to grips with who exactly Barack Obama really and truly is.
Yes, he’s African because his father is Kenyan and he can also claim Caucasian roots since his mother is a white American. But he does not look as a Caucasian and he must know that had he not been so nationally and internationally profiled some redneck cop could just as easily stop him for Driving While Black (DWB) as they would any other ordinary black brother. Identity matters and no matter how he dances, or spins it, white America will on the face of it see him simply a black man with a white mother.
If Obama is to become president he has to deal with the states of the Old Confederacy that is solidly Republican. Since 1964 – when Mr Obama was only 3 years old – when the Civil Rights Act was passed and in 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was signed into US law every Democratic President has been a southerner. Given the vagaries of the Electoral College, successful presidential candidates need to pick up states in the south to win. And, on the Democratic side, only southern moderates have proved adept at doing so.
He’ll also have to overcome serious objections in his own Democratic Party from the red-neck soccer mums and by the party’s appeal to its southern faithful. That is why I say: do not fall asleep on John Edwards. Obama must known that internal Democratic Party politics is based on race and political opportunism. The enemy within may prove to be far more dangerous than those outside.
Therefore, if Senator Barack Obama would become the first black president of the United States it is not his natural black base that will propel him there. No, for that to happen he has to win a set of solidly white southern states and persuade them to break from tradition. That, although not impossible, is exceedingly difficult unless Barack Obama becomes the consummate political salesman and the Republican Party runs a candidate so jaded and unappealing as to make the GOP’s faithful bolt from its ranks and defect to the Democratic Party.
Me? I’m not holding my breath. | | | | Reads : 193 | | | |
|
|
