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Obama: America’s First Black President?

Barack Obama

Contributed by Ben Goldstein on 6/15/07

“Oh yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio - a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane - the awfulest old grad-headed nabob in the state. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but then when they told me there was a state in this county where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I said I never vote ag’in. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and this country may rot for all me- I’ll never vote ag’in as long as I live.” -Huckleberry Finn

The words are those of Mark Twain, in the guise of Pap Finn, his protagonists’ racist, drunk and generally spiteful father. They were written about 125 years ago, and yet it would likely be optimistic to suggest that we are free of such sentiments today. Indeed, in the time since Twain wrote those words, elections as big as statewide have produced exactly five black victors: two governors (Virginia’s Mark Warner in 1989 and current Massachusetts governor-elect Deval Patrick) and three senators (Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, Carol Mosely-Braun of Illinios, and the seated Barack Obama of Illinois). All of which is to say, there is very little precedent for black politicians winning elections in which the voting base is not, well, more black than the national average.

One place where the voting base is more black than average is Chicago, long an epicenter for black political activity; the Black Panthers were founded in Chicago, and the Nation of Islam is currently headquartered there. Together with the historical precedent of Mosely-Braun and the fact that he defeated a black opponent (Alan Keyes) for his Senate seat, Obama’s real ability to transcend the race may not have really been tested yet. Recent polls show Senator Obama is the second-leading choice amongst registered Democrats to represent the party in the 2008 presidential elections. And so the question must be asked: Is a country with one black senator and one black governor ready for the idea of a black president?

It is the legitimacy of an Obama ‘08 Campaign that truly begs the question. Jesse Jackson’s bid in ‘84 was merely a blip - the man lost to disgraced democrat Walter Mondale. Colin Powell was a vogue choice for the GOP ticket in 2000, but we all know how that turned out. The 2008 elections looks likely to throw the nation into a quandary: if we don’t see our first female candidate for a major party, we are almost guaranteed to see the first black one.

It is too simple to say that Obama’s success in Illinois is instantly translatable to a national stage, but it serves as the beginning of a complex argument that this nation is bound to have, be it 2008, 2012, or beyond. The sheer numbers of racial politics in the United States dictate that a black president and a Latino president are bound to happen someday. Bill Richardson’s PAC aside, a Latino president still maybe years away. But the reality of Obama the candidate is a question to be answered now.

Let’s put aside for a second the question of whether majority-white America is ready for a black president, and instead ask a question that likely has every bit as much relevance, not merely for a Obama or another minority president in this election, but for the very concept of a minority leader in the future: is urban, inner-city black America ready to go to bat for a black presidential candidate?

There can be little doubt that, even with the press and publicity he enjoys in today’s politically correct culture, Obama will lose traction with white swing voters, simply because he is black. Logic and numbers both dictate that that gap can be made up by a jump in black voter participation. It would be a misnomer to consider black voter percentages as apathetic; indeed, the percentage of registered black voters who actually take the time to vote is steadily climbing, almost to the point of equaling white voters. However, these participation rates are largely the result of a growing black middle-class. Similar participation numbers are well below average for major cities like New York and Chicago (around 50% for registered black voters), and even lower in predominantly black cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Newark.

It’s a given that an election in which Obama is a candidate will draw out the fringe of America’s, for lack of a better term, racist movement. As many pundits have pointed out, anyone for whom Obama’s race is an issue would more than likely not be voting for a Democrat president anyway. What a black man running for the Oval Office will do is energize the right to the voting booth, something Obama will have to counter with a surge of his own. The logical places to do this are the Baltimores and Gary, Indianas of the country.

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and split time growing up between the Aloha State and Jakarta, Indonesia. His father is a Kenyan diplomat, his mother a white woman from Kansas. He went to Columbia, and Harvard Law. In short, he may very well be a few life experiences short of what might be considered the “common experience” for your average black kid growing up in an American inner city. Yet it is just that sort of person that Obama will have to reach out to if he is to make any presidential aspirations a reality.

Obama’s campaign rhetoric to this point has largely ignored the gigantic, 2,000 ton elephant in the room that is race in America. His two campaigns for national office (losing a Democratic primary for the House in 2

Obama has always embraced, and must continue to embrace, what is, for lack of a better term, his blackness. He has always managed to do this - he is married to a black woman (from the south side of Chicago), and has never failed to be identified as a black politician, a black candidate, a spokesman for his race. Yet, it would be hard to point to any concrete evidence that Obama is specifically an advocate for the black community of the county; neither his committee appointments (Environment and Public Works, Foreign Relations, and Veterans’ Affairs) nor any of the legislation he has sponsored seem to point to any special empathy for the inner cities of America. Like most issues for Obama, this is a double-edged sword - the fact that he is not seen as a leading advocate for his race, but merely a politician, likely makes him far more palatable to the white majority, but makes one wonder whether he would indeed be able to garner extra support from black voters across the country.

In the end, Obama’s run may say more about the state of black America than white America. At its roots, the central question is whether black voters in this country consider themselves in dire enough straits to fall in line behind someone like Obama on an issue as simple as race. Using 2006 as a template, there is certainly the possibility of a groundswell, and of a group of voters becoming angry and organized enough to create a bloc strong enough to sweep an unprecedented victor into the White House.

Perhaps the only possible comparison to Obama’s situation is that of Tiger Woods, a multi-racial buttoned-down man who self-identifies as black while succeeding at a white man’s game. Tiger has faced derision in the black community since his earliest days on tour as being a “black man” who seemed more comfortable in the company of the lily-white PGA than in black society. His ascension to the top of golf was treated with any number of “breaking the barrier” stories, and slowly but surely, Tiger has become accepted, perhaps even popular in black society.

For Barack Obama to accede to the presidency, he will have to gain at least that level of popularity in the black community and gain it in a much shorter time span. Like it or not, fair or not, a black president will become the spokesman for the black population of this county on any number of issues of race for the first time since the days of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. There is absolutely no doubt that Obama, running on the Democratic ticket, would overwhelmingly win the black vote, a given because of his party affiliations. The question is, though, whether he can inspire enough normally-apathetic black voters to the polls to counteract the quietly racist backlash that would be sure to come.

hen, Obama’s presidency will accomplish the seemingly impossible: for once, inner-city black populations should have a candidate playing to them. For Obama, an inner-city surge means key votes in battleground states like Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio. His mere presence gives black voters a greater presence on the national stage; how they choose to utilize that stage will depend much on the candidate himself, and his ability to connect to the people that a good size of America’s white majority will unconsciously assume he represents.