Blacks uneasy about Obamas roots
miller8966
Posts: 1,450
Some blacks said uneasy over Obama roots
NEW YORK, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama, hailed by supporters as the hope of a multicultural nation, cannot count now on the black vote, a report says.
Some blacks are reported uneasy about the Illinois Democratic senator, the New York Times says, because, as black author Debra Dickerson put it, "Obama isn't black" in an American racial context.
Others have pointed out the American-born son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas did not embody the experiences of most African-Americans, including slavery, segregation and civil rights.
Some polls put Hillary Clinton ahead of Obama in the quest for black voters, the Times says.
But, Obama certainly has prominent black supporters, many of whom are said to be exasperated at such talk about a man they see as the first African-American with a real shot at the presidency.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20070202-093525-5107r
NEW YORK, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama, hailed by supporters as the hope of a multicultural nation, cannot count now on the black vote, a report says.
Some blacks are reported uneasy about the Illinois Democratic senator, the New York Times says, because, as black author Debra Dickerson put it, "Obama isn't black" in an American racial context.
Others have pointed out the American-born son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas did not embody the experiences of most African-Americans, including slavery, segregation and civil rights.
Some polls put Hillary Clinton ahead of Obama in the quest for black voters, the Times says.
But, Obama certainly has prominent black supporters, many of whom are said to be exasperated at such talk about a man they see as the first African-American with a real shot at the presidency.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20070202-093525-5107r
America...the greatest Country in the world.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
2) there is a huge irony in them saying he's not black enough when he is literally more african-american than they are.
slavery? wtf?
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
that's my thoughts exactly. There isn't an african american alive today that has the experience of slavery.
Here's the article in question from the times... it's actually quite disheartening.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — He is hailed by his supporters as the hope of an increasingly multicultural nation, a political phenomenon who can wow white voters while carrying the aspirations of African-Americans all the way to the White House.
So why are some black voters so uneasy about Senator Barack Obama?
The black author and essayist Debra J. Dickerson recently declared that “Obama isn’t black” in an American racial context. Some polls suggest that Mr. Obama trails one of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the battle for African-American support.
And at the Shepherd Park Barber Shop here, where the hair clippers hummed and the television blared, Calvin Lanier summed up the simmering ambivalence. Mr. Lanier pointed to Mr. Obama’s heritage — he is the American-born son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — and the fact that he did not embody the experiences of most African-Americans whose ancestors endured slavery, segregation and the bitter struggle for civil rights.
“When you think of a president, you think of an American,” said Mr. Lanier, a 58-year-old barber who is still considering whether to support Mr. Obama. “We’ve been taught that a president should come from right here, born, raised, bred, fed in America. To go outside and bring somebody in from another nationality, now that doesn’t feel right to some people.”
On Wednesday, the question of race took center stage in the presidential campaign because of remarks that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, made about Mr. Obama. Mr. Biden characterized Mr. Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” and then spent the day — his first as an official presidential candidate, explaining and apologizing for his remarks.
But among many blacks, the awkward and painful debate about race, immigrant heritage and the presidency has been bubbling for months.
Mr. Obama certainly has prominent black supporters and many shake their heads with exasperation at such talk about a man they see as the first African-American with a real shot at the presidency.
His supporters say his background only enhances his appeal as someone who has addressed the concerns of black Americans as a community organizer in Chicago, a state legislator in Illinois and a senator in Washington.
“He has a track record for being concerned about people who are poor, and it seems to be genuine,” said Carol M. Swain, a black professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who has written about black politics. “Not only do I think that black Americans will embrace Barack Obama, but I think they will do it with enthusiasm.”
Indeed, many pollsters and analysts believe Mr. Obama’s life story of growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia with his mother and his maternal grandparents and of his struggle to define his own racial identity will resonate with voters across ethnic and color lines.
But while many whites embrace Mr. Obama’s melting pot background, it remains profoundly unsettling for some blacks who argue that he is distant from the struggles and cultural identities of most black Americans. The black columnist Stanley Crouch has said, “When black Americans refer to Obama as ‘one of us,’ I do not know what they are talking about.”
Ms. Dickerson echoed that sentiment.
“I’ve got nothing but love for the brother, but we don’t have anything in common,” said Ms. Dickerson, who wrote recently about Mr. Obama in Salon, the online magazine. “His father was African. His mother was a white woman. He grew up with white grandparents.
“Now, I’m willing to adopt him,” Ms. Dickerson continued. “He married black. He acts black. But there’s a lot of distance between black Africans and African-Americans.”
Mr. Obama’s strategists are keenly aware of the gap and are trying to address it. On Martin Luther King’s Birthday, he spoke at a scholarship breakfast alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Mr. Jackson introduced him by saying, a “new president is in the house.”
Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, who is an African-American, were also on the February cover of Ebony.
Mr. Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, both former black presidential candidates, have declined to formally endorse Mr. Obama so far.
But Julian Bond, the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has described him as “tremendously appealing.” Several black Democrats in Congress, including Representatives John Lewis, the civil rights pioneer from Georgia; Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois, the son of Jesse Jackson, and Artur Davis of Alabama, have supported his presidential bid.
His supporters, who note that he carried the black vote in his Senate race, say they are unperturbed by a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that found that 20 percent of black voters surveyed supported Mr. Obama while 60 percent supported Mrs. Clinton. The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus nine percentage points.
Emil Jones Jr., the president of the Illinois state senate and one of Mr. Obama’s early mentors, says he is frustrated by black voters who question Mr. Obama’s Kenyan heritage. As a state legislator, Mr. Obama had the support of voters in his district, which is 67 percent black.
“He doesn’t share the same kind of background as most African-Americans, but he’s addressed those issues that related to underprivileged communities throughout Illinois,” said Mr. Jones, who is black.
Mr. Obama describes himself as an African-American, and as a young man, he has said, he yearned to be accepted by black Americans.
Mr. Obama declined to be interviewed, but in his memoir, published in 1995, he acknowledged being dogged by “the constant, crippling fear that I didn’t belong somehow, that unless I dodged and hid and pretended to be something I wasn’t, I would forever remain an outsider, with the rest of the world, black and white, always standing in judgment.”
Still, Mr. Biden’s remarks this week only heightened concerns among some blacks who believe that Mr. Obama, as the son of a black Kenyan, is more politically palatable to white voters because he is viewed as less confrontational and less focused on redress for past racial injustices than many black Americans descended from slaves. In that context, he resembles the last black man deemed to be a powerful presidential contender, Colin L. Powell, who flirted with a White House bid in 1995.
Discussing his appeal to white voters at the time, Mr. Powell, the light-skinned son of Jamaican parents, noted that he spoke English well and was not confrontational. He concluded by saying, “I ain’t that black.”
Philip Kasinitz, a sociologist at the City University Graduate Center, said such a description might as easily apply to Mr. Obama. “He’s identifiably black, but in many ways he’s outside of normal race relations,” said Mr. Kasinitz, who has studied black immigrants in New York City politics. “He’s a black politician for whom whites don’t have to feel guilty.”
Ronald Walters, who advised Mr. Jackson’s presidential campaigns, said Mr. Obama’s campaign “evokes something which is very much in vogue, this notion of diversity that is not rooted in a compensatory concept.”
“He’s going to have to win over some African-Americans,” said Mr. Walters, who is black and heads the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. “They have a right to be somewhat suspicious of people who come into the country and don’t share their experience.”
In the 1990s, the number of blacks with recent roots in sub-Saharan Africa nearly tripled while the number of blacks with origins in the Caribbean grew by more than 60 percent, according to the State University of New York at Albany. By 2000, foreign-born blacks constituted 30 percent of the blacks in New York City and 28 percent of the blacks in Boston, according to demographers at Queens College.
Several leaders of the civil rights era had immigrant roots, including Stokely Carmichael, who was born in Trinidad; and Shirley Chisholm, the former presidential candidate and the first black woman to be elected to Congress. Her father was born in Guyana and her mother in Barbados.
Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s presidential campaign, said she believed that Mr. Obama could woo black voters.
“Barack will tell us that we don’t have to go back to being just a white America or a black America, that we can now become something else, together,” said Ms. Brazile, who is unaffiliated with any presidential candidate.
“That’s the promise of his campaign,” she said, “and his challenge.”
Sabrina Pacifici contributed research for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/politics/02obama.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fO%2fObama%2c%20Barack
Yeah, that damn Melanin myth. :rolleyes:
Directly? Perhaps not. Indirectly however, every African-American alive is STILL experiencing slavery to various degrees.
Exactly. Still a democrat, and still Blacker than the other candidates. This article is little more than even more smear. Pathetic attempt by opponets to stir up negative feelings and images of a candidate they simply cannot beat.
"Not black he is"
I knew this would come up eventually but I didn't think this early. So you're not black if you weren't raised in the ghetto? Horse shit.
i was speaking directly. What someone else interprets as left overs from slavery I'm not getting into. It's been 140ish years since slavery was abolished; in my opinion, and it's time to quit attributing social problems to that. There are myriad other issues to deal with rather than chalking up problems to past slavery which not one person alive in the US had a hand in.
In all due respect, that simply isn't true. You don't think Slavery put African Americans in a hole they aren't still trying to climb out of. That simply isn't true.
I agree slavery put them in a hole back during slave times and even a generation after. I guess to me, it's too easy to say slavery is the reason for all the problems of african americans b/c it's something that we can say but can't do anything about. I'd say there's a breakdown of family, disparity of income, poor attitudes, poor educational systems etc... that are NOW limiting people in general. We have people of all races/ skin color that are having problems and they can't trace it back to slavery. There are successful blacks, whites, asians, indians etc... and there are unsuccessful [insert descriptor]. I just think it's a cop out to use slavery as the underlying reason..I very well could be wrong, but i think the problem is much more complex and since we can't fix the slavery issue (that was eliminated over 100 years ago) we need to focus on what the problems are and address those for ALL people.
Look at how things were 60 or 50 years ago for black people in the states. I think it lasted longer than one generation.
naděje umírá poslední
that's a good point. I was assuming a generation to be much longer than 20-25 years (I know i shouldn't assume).
-Enoch Powell
You speak of the breakdown of family, disparity of incomes, poor education etc. For African Americans, during slavery, families were separated and sold apart. Wives, husbands, and children wer separated and sold. Teaching a slave to read was a criminal offense and for a slave attempting to learn to read was punishable by death! There was NO income. Then slavery ended and the slaves were "freed". To what? No money. No family. Can't even read. You think this is eraseable in a few short generations? Especially with racism seeking to hold them back every step of the way? There are still people alive who experienced Jim Crow. All of the problems you mention are a direct legacy of slavery. Racism is a direct legacy of slavery and that is something African-Americans face EVERY day whether you care to admit it or not. i won't fight or argue with you over the subject. You clearly underestimate the implications of history on modern society.
Besides it really isn't the main point of this thread. Point is the article is ridiculous. "Some Blacks say Obama isn't Black enough". Vote for Hilary instead. She's much Blacker. :rolleyes: The article is crap. Its more smear.
I never said racism wasn't faced by people every day. I know we don't live in a utopia, far from it. I guess I have a hard time wrapping my head around how slavery is the culprit when no one alive today had any part in it. Yes you can trace some problems back to slavery and yes slavery was terrible, but I think that society has a problem on a whole and to me slavery isn't that justification b/c people form all backgrounds are having tough times. But you very well could be right, i could be underestimating slavery's effect.
I agree the article is rediculous and it is more politics and attempts to smear Obama. I esp liked the part where they said "some" people and "some" polls yet didn't really go into which people and which polls. I'm sure we could all here find "some" people to back up any assertation.
Since no instance of slavery is even remotely comparable to the African slave trade in the United States, and since we are discussing specifically the Black experince in America, i believe your question is a bit moot, not to mention damn silly.
Racism
4004 b.c. to 2007 a.d.
But, then, some people don't want to see Harriet Tubman in a Space Train.