I’ll start by reiterating that it’s still way too early to make a final decision about the two Democratic Primary candidates. It’s still only March. The Pennsylvania Primary Election, on April 22, is more than a month from now and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a great many more hard questions to answer and, hopefully, many more substantive, economic and political solutions to offer before any intelligent voter in our city or state should be ready to choose between them.
But having said all of that, I have to admit that I learned something new about Senator Obama yesterday, something that was impressive and that will weigh heavily on my final decision.
What I learned was that, at least in this instance, the senator was able to speak honestly about the issue of race, in a way that no other significant candidate for public office has ever done ─ not city councilpeople, not state officeholders, not mayors, not governors, and certainly not presidential candidates (yes, that means you, too, Jesse Jackson). Certainly, there have been candidates that have, from time to time, talked about the symptoms of our country’s racial divide, but none have ever spoken more candidly and directly about its origins.
I recognize clearly that Obama and his campaign operatives were feeling the pressure that only the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet can bring to a sensational, negative political issue such as that attributed to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I understand completely that yesterday’s historic speech was one that Obama, and especially his campaign consultants, would have preferred not to give. As a case in point, CNN notes on its web site, today, “The senator mostly has avoided focusing on race during his campaign.”
In fact, the Obama campaign’s previous tendency to pretend that the U.S. is still not significantly challenged by negative, self-defeating racial attitudes (“There is no White America, There is no Black America,” etc.) was the major reason that I’ve been unimpressed by the Obama candidacy, to date.
Regrettably, there has very definitely been a White America and a Black America ─ consistently ─ since the founding of this nation and, until yesterday, Senator Obama’s campaign wouldn’t permit him to acknowledge that.
How can this country, in the new, more competitive and diverse world economy in which we operate, continue to marginalize economically, and discriminate against, the 40 million blacks, here, (13% of the total population) and still expect to be able to marshal the human and intellectual resources from them that would be necessary to help restore our nation’s dwindling economic power? In the global economy, America’s total population is already dwarfed by the 1.4 billion people in China, the 1.1 billion in India, the 850 million in the collective African states, the 560 million in Latin America, and the 320 million in the non-African Middle Eastern countries. That being the case, how can we afford to deprive so many of our own citizens of fair access to quality education, productive employment and an opportunity to contribute to the overall economic mission?
It’s probably fair to say that, up until yesterday, Clinton and Obama, both of whom certainly knew better, had been persuaded by those who were “doing the math” related to the size and composition of the national electorate, to choose the “safe” route, the less controversial route, to the General Election.
But yesterday was different.
In the overwhelming majority of his comments yesterday, Senator Obama was right on the mark. He courageously said things that were painfully accurate, but that needed desperately to be said. His reference to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was a recognition that that government agency, even as it made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to deserving white homeowners to help in ending the Great Depression, at the same time, formally established the practice of residential “redlining,” when its underwriting standards precluded loans in neighborhoods populated by African Americans. The reference to the way in which the welfare system contributed directly to the weakening of the black family, the reference to black exclusion from certain union workplaces – all of that has always been true, but our politicians – black and white, local and national – have chosen previously not to bring any of it up in “polite company.”
Senator Obama’s speech was great, but it wasn’t perfect. As with any other problem, our country’s lingering pattern of race-based inequality has been only addressed sporadically over the years because the people elected to address it believed it was not politically expedient to do so.
As a reminder of that mindset, even as he attempted to clear the air on this critical subject, the Senator and his speechwriters still tried to absolve 21st Century America of any direct involvement in discriminatory practices. I imagine it’s still difficult in the modern U.S.A., even for a newly courageous presidential candidate, to accuse a potential voter of being racially biased, and, then, to ask for their support on Election Day.
I find it fascinating that the very same people who have come down on Obama “like a ton of bricks” for “lying” about whether he had previously been aware of the general tone of Rev. Wright’s sermons, absolutely insist that they, themselves, be lied to, and not held accountable, with regard to their own, current complicity in the “racial divide.”
Anticipating that, the Senator also gave 21st Century America a “pass,” by implying that indignation among blacks for negative, race-based treatment existed only among “Rev. Wright and other African Americans of his generation.”
The recent Kerner Commission-related 40-year analysis of continuing racial inequality in this country clearly proves otherwise. In America, today, a 20-year-old African American is no less likely to be living in segregated housing, being economically marginalized because of his/her race or relegated to poverty than a 70-year-old African American. The only difference between the two is that the 20-year-old, like younger blacks and whites across the country, has been persuaded by society that we’ve already “come a long way” from the days of “Jim Crow” and, therefore, there should be nothing to complain about. And so, usually, they remain inexplicably silent. That doesn’t mean they are not being racially disadvantaged. It just means that, unlike Rev. Jeremiah Wright, they don’t believe they should speak up about it.
There’s no doubt that, for a small percentage of African Americans there has been progress. On the other hand, there have always been exceptions in the black community, who managed to survive and prosper no matter how daunting the odds were against them. In fact, I would remind the Senator that W.E.B. DuBois, author of “The Philadelphia Negro,” received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, and that many black multimillionaires lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the infamous Greenwood neighborhood (Black Wall Street), back in 1921, but none of those exceptions improved substantially the social and economic conditions of the majority of blacks in this country.
Nevertheless, the speech was a long-overdue first sign of recognition of the problem at the level of the presidential campaign. Unless we now, however, move to develop, as a nation, specific strategies for finally addressing the issue, it will have been just another speech, and an all-too-brief respite from what has largely been the normal, “canned,” “homogenized” and predictable election campaign.
Barack Obama sent a courageous message. Let’s challenge him, Hillary Clinton and even the totally disengaged John McCain, to speak directly now to how we resolve this critically important issue.
Saying what people want to hear so you can get elected…that’s called politics. Saying what people need to hear and actually changing the status quo…that’s called leadership.
I’m ready to vote for a leader on April 22. Let’s see if one shows up.
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