In the Age of Obama, Black America Suffering the Most

From the Nation via AlterNet:

In the black commentariat, opinion is divided over whether African-Americans should demand a more overt commitment to racial justice from a black president or refrain from doing so because it would weaken his appeal to others. The Rev. Al Sharpton insists that calling on Obama to be a “black exponent of black views” is “just stupid,” since it will embolden conservative attacks on projects black people need. Princeton professor Cornel West insists that Obama has “a certain fear of free black men” and “feels most comfortable with upper-middle-class white and Jewish men.”

By concentrating so heavily on race, both sides detract from his responsibilities. Obama should do more for black people -- not because he is black but because black people are the citizens suffering most. Black people have every right to make demands on Obama -- not because he’s black but because they gave him a greater percentage of their votes than any other group, and he owes his presidency to them. Like any president, he should be constantly pressured to put the issue of racial injustice front and center.

More here.

Indeed.

This is the track I've tried to take as a blogger and political critic: yes, Obama is a black man, but I accept and understand the position that he is the President of the United States, not chief representative for African-American concerns. I mean, obviously, it would have been suicide on the campaign trail to in any way encourage the notion that he would be going to Washington to clean up the centuries old mess of compounding injustices done to people of African descent in the name of America--we've come a long way as far as that goes, but we're still in a place such that white people, liberal and conservative alike, are freaked out by what they consider to be "identity politics," even though it's really all about justice.

But like the essay above asserts, Obama, as President of the United States, is, as an individual, the person who is most responsible for dealing with issues of racial justice, regardless of his own race and ethnicity--for that matter, so was Bush when he was in office, and Clinton before him, and back on down the line to the very beginning. So blasting the President for what appears to be utter impotence when it comes to making things right for African-Americans is totally fair game. I get that Obama is hyper-aware of the political risk he would take in being perceived as being too black, whatever that may mean, but frankly, I don't care. It has always been politically risky doing the right thing for black people in America--I mean, President Lincoln was fucking murdered for doing the right thing for black people; LBJ lost the South for the Democrats, an extraordinarily important region for the party's political fates, because he signed the Civil Rights Act back in 1965. There is no way to do what's right in this country for African-Americans without massive white backlash.

That is, no guts, no glory. If you sidestep the issue, things get worse. The only way to go is to deal with it head on. And Obama is most decidedly not dealing with the issue head on.

To some extent, I differ with Cornel West's point of view: while I agree with most of what I've heard him say about Obama in terms of political critique, I don't have the ability to stare into the President's soul to see what he's all about. That is, my view, based on Obama's issue positions and actions, is that he's a conservative pro-corporate Democrat, like the Clintons before him, meaning that he favors America's wealth-dominated establishment, which provided the lion's share of campaign funding that got him into office, and governs accordingly. In short, he's a neoliberal with socially progressive attitudes--neoliberals don't "fear...free black men;" they just don't give a shit one way or another unless such free black men have wealth and power.

But of this I am certain: African-Americans' lot in life has indeed gotten worse since Obama came to power, and it is his responsibility to reverse that trend, regardless of political risk. It is an absolute shame that his political ideology by and large rules that out.

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