Originally Posted by Quicksi

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Obama's candidacy sparks debates on race
Is he African American if his roots don't include slavery?
Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, February 19, 2007

People across the political and racial spectrums started discussing presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's race after he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Some insist he is not African American and is unsuited to be a black candidate, because he is not a direct descendant of slaves and hasn't had what they see as an authentic African American experience.

Obama, who will speak in San Francisco tonight at a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer, identifies as black. But he doesn't fit the stereotype of a black leader, a church-based fighter for civil rights.

He was president of the Harvard Law Review. He is the son of a Kenyan immigrant, his father, and a white Kansas native, his mother. He has many white supporters. And he is running to win, not just to fix black America.
"He touches on hot-button issues among African Americans," said Kevin Johnson, a professor of law and Chicano studies at UC Davis.

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is frustrated by all the race talk. "The conversation highlights the lack of information that people in general have about African American contributions," said Harris, who supports Obama. "That is the added significance of Barack Obama. He is opening up what has been a limited perspective of who is an African American. "But remember it is an issue of perception, not reality." A personal connection to slavery and Jim Crow laws is still a common measure of who is and who isn't African American, said Melinda Chateauvert, an assistant professor of African American studies at the University of Maryland.

"A lot of my students are multicultural and don't have the problem with Barack Obama that you hear on the other levels, in the barber shop discussions," Chateauvert said. "We have to remember there has been a real interesting change in leadership." People forget that the concentration of black leadership in the church happened in the 1950s, she said. Earlier leaders came from the labor movement as well as politics and law.
"This is simply a return to the old-style leadership, the long history that doesn't come from the church," Chateauvert said. "That is not being recognized." In a sense, Obama is achieving what the church-based civil rights leaders wanted, the opportunities so many fought for.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who ran twice for president, in 1984 and 1988, said in an interview last week that African Americans always have to work hard to get past historical rejections. But it does happen. Black baseball players are now just players; black college presidents are college presidents; and black mayors are just mayors, he said. "United States president would be a huge first -- which means race remains an issue," Jackson said. "Every time blacks advance beyond historical roles, it is a point of intrigue." Harris, who attended Howard University, said many Americans -- of all social and racial backgrounds -- have a limited perception of black people. In college, she saw African American men and women in leotards studying ballet in the arts department, young women with briefcases in business school, African Americans in lab coats studying medicine and in street clothes protesting actions on Capitol Hill. "We are diverse and multifaceted," Harris said. "People are bombarded with stereotypical images and so they are limited in their ability to imagine our capacity." Some African American leaders came out against Obama because he announced his candidacy Feb. 10, the same day as the State of the Black Union, an annual event organized by Tavis Smiley to gather prominent African Americans. It drew 10,000 people and would have been a perfect venue, those leaders said.

Author and Princeton University Professor Cornel West said Obama's decision to announce in Illinois instead shows he "speaks to white folks and holds us at arm's length."

The Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who ran for president in 2004, was also upset. "We cannot put our people's aspirations on hold for anybody's career, black or white," said Sharpton. "Just because you are our color doesn't make you our kind."

Originally Posted by Quicksilver

The two major parties have fielded five black presidential candidates over the years -- Shirley Chisholm, Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun, Sharpton and Alan Keyes. But the issue of race didn't rise in those campaigns to the degree it has this year, perhaps because Obama is the first black person viewed as a possible winner.

In a "60 Minutes" interview on CBS television after Obama announced his candidacy, Steve Kroft spent as much time discussing Obama's blackness as he did the candidate's experience and politics. He asked Obama if he "decided" to be black. "I'm not sure I decided it," said Obama, 45.


"If you look African American in this society, you're treated as an African American. I am rooted in the African American community, but I am not defined by it. "I am comfortable in my racial identity, but that is not all I am."

Originally Posted by Quicksi

lver
Obama told Kroft that when he walked down the streets of Chicago, visited a barber shop or tried to hail a cab, everyone knew he was black. "They think you're black?" Kroft asked. Many media outlets seized on polls showing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., leading among African Americans and said black America is divided on Obama -- a presumption he addressed directly on "60 Minutes."

"There is a ridiculous assumption that somehow the black community is so unsophisticated that the minute you put an African American face on the screen, they say that's our guy," Obama said.

As a candidate, he has repeatedly said he should be judged on his positions and ability, not his race, especially when no one is asking if Clinton is woman enough, if former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is white enough, or if New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is Latino enough.

Ward Connerly, who has led campaigns in California, Washington and Michigan against affirmative action, said Obama appeals to a large segment of American people, especially white voters. "I suppose we should be very happy about that because it bespeaks the nation's yearning to get beyond race," Connerly said. The former UC regent recalled a conversation he had with a professor of his when he was a college student. Active in civil rights, the professor ended his lectures with the phrase, "We shall overcome." One day, Connerly asked how he would know when we had overcome. The professor said there were three tests: If a white father would accept his daughter marrying a black man, if a white person were willing to walk in a black person's shoes, and if a black person were taken seriously as a presidential candidate. "Judging Obama by those three rules, we have overcome," Connerly said. For Harris, the district attorney, the question of any candidate's race should be simple. "In every realm, there have been college-educated African Americans who have sought to serve and give their talent to improving the condition of all people," she said.


"As far as I'm concerned, in conduct, in deed and in word, he represents the face of America. "That is where the discussion should begin and end."