Refreshing Perspectives from Obama

Hillary Clinton says she thinks Barack Obama is inexperienced and naive if he thinks he can bring a fresh approach to foreign affairs. Too bad. What's wrong with the current approach is evident in the US standing in the world when it comes to respect. Obama would meet face to face with leaders of nations George W. Bush considers evil. Obama also would not let Pakistan off the hook when it comes to fighting terrorism. If Pakistan won't do the job of going after terrorists hiding there and in the border areas with Afghanistan, the US will.

Obama also has a good take on the intense focus on the N, B and H words by some civil rights and civic leaders to the exclusion of other issues. In the current VIBE magazine, where he's on the cover, he says: "My priority as a U.S. senator is dealing with poverty and educational opportunity and adequate health care. If I'm ignoring those issues and spending all my time worrying about rap lyrics, then I'm wasting my time."

The NAACP has taken up this cause; so, too, has Al Sharpton. Let Obama focus on other matters.

AL SHARPTON’S STRATEGY

For everyone who wonders why Al Sharpton is in the public eye as a Black civil rights Superman when so many others are accomplishing so much more in a less flamboyant way, I recommend reading an online article in City Hall (www.cityhallnews.com) by Edward-Isaac Dovere.

A couple of snippets:

“Cynics say, ‘He plays the media,’” Sharpton said. “But if I play the media toward the end goal, that’s saying I’m competent.”
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Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama are among those doing the math. Both want his presidential endorsement, and Sharpton has been making them wait. Both could benefit enormously in public perception from the reverend’s backing—Clinton by cementing the foothold in the African-American community her husband enjoyed in his own presidential runs, Obama by using it to help dispel a disconnect some prominent African-Americans have described feeling toward him. Both have made very strong appeals.

One thing many assume is weighing on Sharpton’s mind is jealousy of Obama, a worry that the Illinois senator’s ascendancy might mean that Sharpton gets eclipsed on the national political scene.

Sharpton dismisses this notion.

“We’re both athletes,” he said. “I box, he plays baseball. I mean, it’s different parts. It’s crazy.”
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[ I kind of get his point. Scary!!! Actually, as anyone who knows Obama knows, he plays BASKETBALL!!]

Money, Money, Money, MONEY!! But...

What does it all mean that the leading Democratic candidates and, on the Republican side, Mitt Romney, have raised so much money this soon into the presidential campaign season -- or that Sen. John McCain is panicking at trailing not just Romney but his own expectations?

Sen. Clinton has raised $26 million in the first quarter of the year. Sen. Obama has come on strong, "nipping at her heels," as one TV news anchor put it, with $25 million raised this quarter in a shorter period of actual fundraising. John Edwards has raised $14 million.

While McCain, the presumed frontrunner according to pundits and his own sense of self, raised $12.5 millon, that was dwarfed by Romney's $20 million. New York's former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has raised $15 million.


For now, it's the ability to raise money that seems to influence news coverage of who's on first in each party. But I want to hear a whole lot more about issues and less about money and popularity and star quality.

Rev. Jackson Likes Barack Obama

After some Blacks in prominent positions have raised questions about Sen. Obama’s bonafides as the candidate Black voters should embrace as THEIR candidate, the most visible leader in the civil rights community ended speculation about where he stands.

On Thursday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. told the Association Press, "He has my vote."

Among Blacks, that endorsement may go far. But we are a multifaceted people with multiple interests. When Jackson sought the presidency in 1984 and 1988, Black pride was a great part of his appeal. But we are past that. Now Obama’s positions must be weighed against those of others who are campaigning for the nominations of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Bloody Sunday, Part Two

If this was a competition, Barack Obama won in the Bloody Sunday Showdown in Selma, Alabama, today. No question.

Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the First Baptist Church. Barack Obama Jr. gave a politically-tinged sermon at the Brown A.M.E. Church, which was headquarters for the March 7, 1965, march for voting rights that ended in the beating and battering and tear gassing of the participants. He paid homage to the “Moses generation,” some of whom were in the congregation: the men and women who did so much to lead Blacks out of bondage but never quite made it to the Promised Land.

"We are in the presence today of a lot of Moseses. They are giants whose shoulders we stand on. They are people who battled on not just the behalf of African Americans, but on behalf of all Americans for America's soul....Like Moses, they challenged Pharoah, powers who said that some are on top and others are at the bottom and that's the way it's always going to be."

His is the “Joshua generation,” he said, tasked with the obligation to continue the journey and to move in directions the Moses generation could not even have imagined. "It's because they marched that the next generation hasn't been bloodied so much" and has excelled in many fields, including politics.

Not so subtlely silencing his critics about his racial identity, he recounted the life story of his Black grandfather, still called a "houseboy" when he was in his 60s in colonial Kenya and required to carry a passbook to get from one place in White-controlled Kenya to another part. But he dreamed and passed on his hope to his son, Barack Obama (Sr.), who benefitted from a US program to bring Africans to the US for education and to repair the American image abroad as a result of the well-publicized injustices and brutalities of the civil rights era. The possibilities for the Obamas changed "because some folks were willing to march across a bridge."

"So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama. I'm here because somebody marched for our freedom."

His message, beyond connecting his family’s racial odyssey and his own to the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was not that different from Clinton’s. They both said that the march must continue.

“We have to finish the march,” Hillary said. “That is the call to our generation, to our young people.”

"There are still some battles that need to be fought, some rivers that need to be crossed," Barack said.

And referring to God's message to Joshua, Barack admonished his listeners to “Be strong and have courage.” Blacks seem to be warming to that message.

Bloody Sunday, Part One

If the New York Times' Maureen Dowd had her way, the bloody part of this commemoration of a very important day in US history, would come from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton duking it out in Selma, Ala.

But Bloody Sunday is much more sacred than that. The name comes from that date in March 1965 when scores of Black people, including a very young John Lewis who is now a senior congressman from Georgia, had the crap beat out of them as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a march to the capital, Montgomery, to demand the right to vote. Because so many people, including those in the White House, were horrified at the televised beatings, another march was scheduled, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the line of advocates along with clergy of various faiths who came in as reinforcements. And President Johnson decided to use his muscle to convince Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This is an account of what happened that Bloody Sunday, taken from Juan Williams' Eyes on the Prize, a riveting companion book to the PBS series of the same name in the 1980s. Look for the book in your local stores; the documentary is available on DVD.

"'When we arrived at the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge," recalls Lewis, 'we saw a sea of blue[-clad] Alabama state troopers.' Gas masks hung from the belts of the troopers, who were slapping billy clubs against their hands....Major John Cloud ordered them to turn back. 'It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,' he said....Fifty policemen moved forward, knocking the first ten to twenty demonstrators off their feet. People screamed and struggled to break free as their packs and bags were scattered across the pavement. Tear gas was fired, and then lawmen on horseback charged into the stumbling protesters....'The police were riding along on horseback beating people,' remembers Andrew Young. 'The tear gas was so thick you couldn't get to where the people were who needed help'....Television coverage of the police assault interrupted the networks' regular programming; ABC broke into its broadcast of the film Judgment at Nuremberg. 'When that beating happened at the foot of the bridge, it looked like war,' recalls Mayor Smitherman. 'That went all over the country. And the people, the wrath of the nation came down on us.'"

Hillary is showing up with her ace in the hole for courting Blacks, former President Bill Clinton. Obama is speaking in the church that was headquarters for the Selma campaign, the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, and he has John Lewis at his side, along with others like Joseph Lowery who were King's aides and successors.

But rather that political strategizing, this day should be one for remembering what Blacks and some of their White allies went through to gain the right to vote that had been included in the US Constitution since 1870, but never really enforced. In essence, Blacks gained the right to vote in 1965 because of Bloody Sunday.

So Does THIS Make Obama "Black Enough"?

As you know, I reject this litmus test that some Blacks have for Obama or any other Black person seeking the US presidency -- that is to say, Were your forebears slaves?

Obama's mother, a White Kansan, and his father, a Black Kenyan -- and a healthy dose of ignorance, of course -- are the bases for raising the "Black enough" question.

So guess what? Obama is still showing how our racial identities are all mixed up and should be irrelevant as a determinant of whether one is worthy of our votes. It turns out that some of his mother's forebears OWNED slaves. So, I ask, does that make him Black enough? It's a connection to slavery!

Professor Ron Walters, a political scientist, said this to the Baltimore Sun, which ran the story as a major front-page "exclusive": "The twist is very interesting. It deepens his connection with the experience of slavery, even if it deepens it on a different side of the equation."

Check this out in The Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Here's another article, from the New York Daily News, that suggests that Obama's family tree might also contain Quincy Jones. Does THAT make him Black enough?

A spokesman for Obama said: "It is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States."

Hillary and Obama

So far surrogates are doing the trash talking while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama insist they are taking the high road.

David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul, hosted a $1.3 million fundrasier for Obama Tuesday; in the past he has raised millions for the Clintons. This time around, though, he tries to boost Obama by calling the Clintons liars. Of course, much of media -- mainstream, fringe, Internet, whatever -- are having a field day with this. Of course, Hillary, rolling in the political dough, demands that Obama, who is just getting started, give back the money raised by his Hollywood supporters. Don't be a bitch, Hillary. And, Obama, don't be a sucker and fall lower than that high road.

"We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising $18 million for them and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom."

Geffen has said that his words are his own. Let's leave it at that and get on with the real issues of this campaign.

Obama Makes It Official: “Let’s Get to Work!”

Barack Obama stood in front of the statehouse in Springfield, Ill., where, like him, Abraham Lincoln served and in 1858 gave a speech known to history as “A House Divided.” ("A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”) It was his justification for campaigning to save the US from its growing sectarianism. For Obama this was the setting for his justification for entering presidential politics – and winning – to save the Union once again by cutting through the partisan crap and bringing about peace and prosperity.

To those who braved the wintry weather and, of course, who were watching on TV, he said: “In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect Union.”

Meanwhile, at Hampton University, in Virginia, where Tavis Smiley was hosting his annual talkfest about the state of Black America, one panelist, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said that Obama should have made his announcement there rather than at the house from which Lincoln launched his career. “We’ve got to quit giving the wrong people credit for our history!”

Sharpton’s notion of “we” and “our” is too much of the old school. Obama sees a wider canvas when talking about “we” and “us” – not bound by Black and White. His is, he said in making the announcement that he is campaigning to become the next president of the US, an “improbable quest.” He sounded much like Jack Kennedy, another senator with limited Washington experience, who upon his election in 1960, called upon his generation to take charge. Obama says it’s time for his generation – which I take to be my generation though I am a few years older than he – to answer the call to fix what’s broke in the US by honoring our core values.

"I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness - a certain audacity - to this announcement. I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

He probably hasn’t even thought how much he has to overcome to be heard by people who, even though they watched his speech, seem to have been hearing a different language. One of the first callers to C-SPAN after the speech was a woman who said that the United States did not need a Muslim as president. The call-in host told her that Obama was not a Muslim, that, indeed, he’s a member of the United Church of Christ. The woman said she thought he’d been influenced by some Muhammadism and had changed his name. The host explained that the senator was born with the name Barack Obama.

People are looking for reasons to sully the man before they even get to know him. (See Politico at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2694.html). Obama, you do, indeed, have to get to work. But so do those who share your vision of “what this country can be.”

Obama TOO Black?

In an earlier post (Feb. 2) I examined the notion among some Blacks that Barack Obama is not Black enough because of his parentage (White mother from Kansas; Black father from Kenya) and where he grew up (Hawaii and Indonesia).

Now on the eve of his expected formal announcement of his candidacy for president Saturday, some White people are saying that he is TOO Black because he belongs to a Chicago church, the historic Trinity United Church of Christ, that is dedicated to uplifting Black people and especially to strengthening Black families. These critics are zeroing in on the church’s 12-point Black Value System (www.tucc.org/about.htm) and its motto: “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”

This too-Black salvo comes from a certain sector of White conservatism that is showing its true colors. (Illinois Review, www.illinoisreview.typepad.com)

On its web site (www.tucc.org), Trinity says: “As a congregation of baptized believers, we are called to be agents of liberation not only for the oppressed, but for all of God’s family…. W.E.B. DuBois indicated that the problem in the 20th century was going to be the problem of the color line. He was absolutely correct. Our job as servants of God is to address that problem and eradicate it in the name of Him who came for the whole world by calling all men, women, boys and girls to Christ.”

Obama told The Chicago Tribune, which carried a prominent story on this issue Feb. 6, "If I say to anybody in Iowa--White, Black, Hispanic or Asian--that my church believes in the African-American community strengthening families or adhering to the Black work ethic or being committed to self-discipline and self-respect and not forgetting where you came from, I don't think that's something anybody would object to.

"I think I'd get a few Amens."

Obama’s announcement will be carried on C-SPAN Saturday morning and no doubt on cable networks like CNN. My guess is that whatever he says will attempt to bridge the gulfs that race-based campaigns – on the Black side and on the White side – have revealed. This will be a true test of his mettle.

Obama's Blackness

Why do so many American-born Blacks, who take on African names and don African or African-inspired garb, now question the authenticity of a true African-American: Barack Obama? He is the progeny of a White American woman and a Black Kenyan man. How much more American and African can you get?

Barack Obama has never denied his Blackness. He has embraced it, though he has never denied his White or Indonesian relatives. In his pre-Senator Rock Star career, he was a community organizer in Black Chicago neighborhoods. He lobbied for Black interests as an Illinois state legislator. He's married to a Black woman, and he has two Black children.

Maybe it is fortunate that the Blackness issue is emerging so early -- even among well-meaning but patronizing folks like Joe Biden, who has been taken to task for thinking he was praising Obama when he described his fellow senator and potential presidential campaign rival as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

Jesse Jackson has defended Obama's Blackness and has tried to depict Biden as guilty of nothing more than "foot-in-mouth syndrome." Forget Biden, though, and the kind of benign ignorance he represents. I'm more concerned about Black folks.

Is having a slave in one's family tree REALLY the litmus test? More important than that, and I say this as one who has slaves in her family tree, is his stand on the issues we care about -- or should care about.

First Black President? Hah!

In fiction and in fact, we have already had several. I'll start with the fiction because if you don't already know this, you're perhaps not ready for the "facts."

"The most famous Black President of this century is one Douglass Dilman: he is the hero of The Man, a 1964 best-selling novel by Irving Wallace, which was later made into a movie starring James Earl Jones. Thrust into the Oval Office after a crisis of succession, President Dilman swiftly finds himself the target of popular animosity and Beltway intrigue," the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in a fascinating article in the New Yorker magazine some years ago, while profiling Colin Powell. At the time Powell was the Barack Obama of the 1996 presidential season.

On the currently popular Fox series, 24, we have our second Black president within the span of a few years: The current president, Wayne Palmer, is the brother of President David Palmer, who was assassinated. Now, how much of a stretch is this? A kind of Bush dynasty.

But let me get more serious. I am a fan of the late J. A. Rogers, a Black man who devoted his life to shredding myths about Blacks in the U.S. and in Africa. Not long before his death in 1966, Rogers, a former Pullman porter, published a pamphlet called The Five Negro Presidents. It's available in many Afro-centric bookstores, on eBay and on other web sites.

This is my thumbnail sketch: When it has been convenient in the US to label people as Colored or Negro or Black to deny them the rights and privileges of American citizenship, this has been done. If anyone could identify even the most minute Black lineage, then that could be held against you. Rogers wanted to turn this "even itty-bitty blackness makes you Black" into a positive. Thus, using public documents and published works, he "outed" Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Warren Harding. He did not name "Soul Brother President No. 5," but a journalist who produced a program about this for PBS told me that he was Dwight Eisenhower. Another historian has added Calvin Coolidge to this list.

Because of racial head trips, some people I've come across can imagine that Jefferson's father and uncles could have fathered children with their Black slaves, but cannot imagine that Jefferson could be the father of Sally Hemings' children. Or that President Jefferson himself could have had at least a little dab of blackness in him.

Maybe we are moving towards a place and time where these notions about race are irrelevant. After all, Obama is a White man as much as he is a Black man. His mother: a White woman from Kansas; his father: a Black man from Kenya; his stepfather: an Indonesian. He grew up in Hawaii and in Indonesia.

J. A. Rogers would have a field day with this!

Obama Makes A Move Towards The Presidency

Today Sen. Barack Obama announced plans to form an exploratory committee for a presidential candidacy. That's a step saying he seriously believes he has the chops to become President of the United States. I'm not yet convinced, based on his sparse track record. But I had a spirited debate with a friend yesterday who said that the very freshness that Obama brings to the political table makes him formidable. Obama himself says the U.S. is hungering for "a different kind of politics."

Here's how you can see what Obama said today on his own website: http://www.barackobama.com