Maher Owes Obama an Apology for Racist and Demeaning BP Dig

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On his Friday May 28 show, Real Time HBO host Bill Maher demanded that President Obama act like a black president and pack a gun when he meets with the BP CEOs. Now Maher should take his own advice and act like a responsible commentator and apologize for his own politically demeaning and racially offensive dig at Obama. Politically demeaning and racially offensive are probably not strong enough characterizations of Maher’s silly, inane, effort to get a laugh. In one fell line, Maher demoted Obama from American president Obama, to black president Obama, complete with gun tucked in waistband. This played to the vile stereotype that blacks are inherent gun toting gang bangers, drive shooters and thugs, and that violence is a natural way of life in black communities. In another fell line, he played hard on the media and GOP line that Obama fell badly asleep at the wheel on the BP spill, has done little to contain it, and has botched every chance to be the strong, commanding president and rein in the oil giant and the oil industry.

Non-funnyman Maher dredged up a textbook perfect bad guy image storm for Obama; a storm chock full of racial stereotypes, and the terrible, finger pointing by much the public and the GOP at Obama for the BP catastrophe. Maher could have hit Obama from any of a dozen angles to get a chuckle about the political straight the BP ooze has put Obama in. He could have cracked that Obama should clamp a wetsuit or a diving bell on the BP CEO, or spray him with an oil can, or even took it the street, and said Obama should kick his butt if he didn’t fix the spill. None of which carried any hint, overt at least, of a racial slam or disrespect for Obama and the office.

But Maher didn’t go there with that. Race stuff is simply too juicy and eye catching. And now in the wake of the BP spill, Maher, like the ever swelling pack of sharks circling their victim in the water, sniff Obama’s sudden vulnerability, and political blood. The hard fact is at this point BP can’t cap the well, and even if Obama did what the new crop of his bashers shout he do and order the oil giant to cap it immediately, it still wouldn’t get done that minute. Obama, then, can expect more blame, finger pointing, and cheap shots, will be heaped on and taken at him. Maher certainly heaped that on him for the wrong reason, and above all in the wrong way. Bill, you owe Obama an apology.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Why Didn’t Rand Paul Fire His Racially Suspect Spokesperson?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The news hit last December that there was a racially inflammatory picture of the lynching of a black man next to a smiling cherubic picture of three young happy go lucky whites captioned “Happy N….Day” on senate campaign spokesperson Chris Hightower’s myspace website. Rand Paul issued this statement. “I have never heard a single utterance of racism from this staffer nor do I believe him to have any racist tendencies. However, it is impossible to present the ideas and reforms we need in this country with this controversy present. Therefore I have accepted his resignation."

What’s wrong with this? Where to begin? The racially vile picture was posted on the site on January 2008. It’s irrelevant whether Hightower posted it or not (and he didn’t say) or by a nut case prankster. It stayed there for nearly two years was viewed and commented on by countless site visitors and many others. It was removed only after a mild furor about it. The furor became a furor only after Paul emerged as a serious contender for the GOP senate nomination in Kentucky. So the ancient question again is what did Paul (or Hightower) know about the posting and when did he know about it? And if he didn’t know anything about it which we still don’t know for a fact, why didn’t he know about it? Hightower was not some low level campaign grunt. He was Paul’s main spokesperson.

Now there’s Rand’s statement on Hightower’s resignation. Note carefully that he remorsefully and regretfully accepted it with the obligatory denunciation of racism. But Paul did not fire him. He did not even reprimand him. He did not promise a sweeping, thorough investigation of how this kind of blatant racist taunt could filter into anything that remotely touched on his campaign. Nor did he publicly threaten to ban in Boston anyone who remotely allowed the use of a site connected with his campaign to post or spew racially vile material. A few libertarian sites took Paul to task for his muted response to Hightower and questioned whether Paul took the issue seriously enough. They chided him for not taking a more aggressive stance against it. It was indeed a teaching moment that Paul could have used to make it clear racism has no place in his campaign, and anyone that goes there with that will get the swift boot.

Democrats, civil rights leaders, and a wave of commentators have gotten hoarse screaming at the tea party leaders to speak out against the party’s unabashed bigots and the displays of racial hate. The pleas have fallen on deaf ears the tea party top. The simple reason is that it would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism, and really meant it. The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, joker posters, N word slurs, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waving by tea party activists is and has been an indispensable political necessity for the movement.
Just as Chris Hightower about that. Paul for sure didn’t.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Obama Can’t Talk About Race Even If He Wants To

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The bitter truth is that President Obama can’t talk about race even if he wants to. This has absolutely nothing to do with his mixed racial upbringing, or his straddle of many worlds. It has everything to do with politics.
If Obama spoke out on race he’d confirm the deep suspicions of the right that he’s a closet racial panderer, ala Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. He’d also get creamed as a Democrat who tilts to minorities. Democratic presidents and candidates Clinton, Gore, and Kerry in four presidential elections avoided that tag like the plague. It was deemed a political kiss of death. Obama followed the same script to the letter during the presidential campaign. He talked race only when he was shoved to the wall forced to denounce his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. That was the price to save his campaign.

Obama well knows that the GOP lost an election, but it still packs a wallop. It can disrupt, obstruct, and create chaos for his administration, his political agenda, and him personally. And it does it not only because that’s the warfare that Republicans wage against Democrats anyway, but because the GOP has masterfully reignited its populist base against Obama. The base is rock solid conservative, lower income white male loyalists, with a heavy mix of hard line Christian fundamentalists. Despite the GOP’s wailing that racism has nothing to do with the white fury at Obama, the final presidential vote gave ample warning that many white voters do not and will not accept a black president. Contrary to popular belief, McCain (not Obama) won a slim majority of the vote of white independents in the final tally. Obama bombed badly among Southern and Heartland America white voters. They gave McCain nearly 60 percent of the overall white vote. The percentage he got was even higher among white males.

McCain would not have been competitive in the presidential campaign without their vote. The flip side is that Obama would not have been competitive if African-American voters had not turned his election into a virtual holy crusade and gave him a record percentage and record number of their vote. Hispanic, Asian, young voters, and a significant percentage of independents, and progressives also gave him overwhelming support.
It's true that blue collar white voters have shrunk from more than half of the nation's voters in the past decade to less than forty percent in national elections. This hardly means that the GOP's white vote strategy is doomed to fail. Elections are usually won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. White males, particularly older white males, vote consistently and faithfully. And they vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks have in most elections.

Blue collar white male voters can be easily aroused to vote on the emotional wedge issues; abortion, family values, anti-gay marriage and rights, and tax cuts. GOP presidents and aspiring presidents, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and W. Bush, and McCain and legions of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons banked on these voters for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance. It didn’t work for the GOP in 2008 only because of Bush. His mangle of the war and the economy, and the terrible stench of GOP corruption and sex scandals, was too much even for legions of traditional GOP voters to stomach. Their vote for Obama or more likely their decision not to vote at all was more a personal and visceral reaction to their horror of the mess Bush and the GOP made of things. The GOP may well be an insular party of Deep South and narrow Heartland, rural and, non-college educated blue collar whites. But this isn’t a demographic to sneer at. Their numbers are still huge.
The recent straw poll among religious conservatives which put former Arkansas Deep South, religious fundamentalist governor Mike Huckabee at the top of their vote heap as their presidential pick in 2012 should not be laughed off or ridiculed. Huckabee’s base will be the same conservative white voters who turned out in record numbers to put Bush over the top twice in 2000 and 2004. They haven’t gone away. And race always lurks just underneath the surface to add an ugly but potent color to their vote and national politics.

If Obama ran around and talked candidly about race or tried to spark a dialogue on race as some clamor it would turn his administration into a referendum on race. This would set the GOP counterinsurgency on fire. Obama can’t talk about race even if he wants to.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January, 2010.

Obama’s Gates Trainwreck

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


The stock basketball one liner came to mind when I heard President Obama utter his now infamous “acting stupid” line referring to the cuffing of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The star player takes a wild shot and the livid coach screams “no,” “no” “no” and then when the improbable happens and the ball swishes through the net, the coach’s livid “no,” “no,” “no” instantly becomes a fist in the air shaking “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”
My response was the same only in reverse. I said an instant and visceral fist shaking yes, yes, yes to Obama’s Gates quip. After all, the president spoke boldly and unhesitatingly on the always contentious, divisive and painful issue of racial profiling. But then just as quickly I said “no,” “no,” “no.” No, not because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, and no not because I didn’t think he didn’t have the right to give an opinion, and it was just that an opinion on a touchy issue.

All presidents weigh in with their personal views, opinions, and thoughts, no matter how ill informed, at unscripted White House press conferences, and in countless network TV interviews on every subject under the sun. And certainly I didn’t say no because Obama shouldn’t toss racial matters and racial profiling out on the nation’s table. No apology necessary for that. The no, was because I knew that Obama would take a monster hit for piping up on a racial case that’s a ticking time bomb that could explode in his face. President’s can and do recover from ill chosen words on emotion charged issues.
In this case, though, his words came at the worst possible time; a time when the president needs to squeeze and squeeze hard every ounce of the considerable personal and political capital that he’s painstakingly built up over the past few months to get an ever growing number of push back Democrats, dogged obstructionist Republicans, and the recalcitrant powerhouse trio of insurers, medical professionals, and pharmaceuticals who flatly oppose or are waffling on Obama’s public option component of health care reform. This is the centerpiece of the reform package, without it reform is a meaningless exercise in political gamesmanship.

Two new presidential approval polls from Rasmussen and Zogby, confirmed my “no,” “no,” “no” shout. The Rasmussen is an absolute number’s nightmare for Obama. His disapproval rating has soared to nearly 40 percent among voters. Those that strongly approve of his performance sunk to 29 percent. That wasn’t the worst of the bad news. A bare 25 percent of voters thought his answer was good. More than 60 sixty percent thought it was fair or lousy. Even more ominous was the voter breakdown. The crack in Obama’s hitherto impregnable black vote support was glaring. Nearly 30 percent of black voters broke ranks with Obama on his Gates’ answer.
Among Obama’s two other huge breakthrough groups, independents, and young voters, the blowback was even more disastrous. Nearly 70 percent of Independents and nearly 50 percent of young persons rated his answer “fair” or “poor.”

This is just the opening that the usual suspect Obama foes need to pound the president, and by extension his policies on health care, the stimulus, on foreign policy overtures. All are suddenly back in play and in question as set hit pieces for the Obama mashers; but especially health care reform. The issue is no longer the standard knock that it is too costly and a gross case of too much government interference in health care. Obama is now anti-police and an out of the closet race inflamer whose judgment can’t and shouldn’t be trusted on the crucial issue of health care reform.
The more charitable don’t go that far, but instead firmly declare that the presidential honeymoon is officially over. The only good news is that Obama’s popularity outside the U.S. is still off the charts. But foreigners can’t vote for or elect the congresspersons and senators who make and decide major policy decisions, health care reform being front and center the most pressing.
Even Obama’s still high personal popularity ratings don’t mean much. Popular ratings are just that, over-hyped numbers that measure a president's likeability, not his leadership effectiveness.

The true test for a president and how the public rates him is the quality of his leadership. A foreign crisis, a souring economy, out of control partisan battles with Congress, fights with major labor and industry groups, and prolonged military adventures are the things that inflict mortal wounds on presidents. The same is true for real or perceived gaffes, slips, and shoot from the lip comments.
President Obama spoke from the heart and said would needed to be said about the thorny issue of racial profiling. Again, no apology needed for that. He just said it in the wrong case and at the wrong time. Gates was the trainwreck waiting to happen, in other words, “no,” “no,” “no.”

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Another Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Teens

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Four years ago the US Supreme Court took a big step toward righting a galling wrong. It joined nearly every other nation on the globe and banned teen executions. Now it should take the next big step and dump all laws that let states lock up juvenile offenders for the rest of their life. And there are lots of them. In a report last year, Human Rights Watch found that more than 2000 juvenile offenders are serving life without possibility of parole sentences. The U.S. locks up more juveniles for life without the possibility of parole than all nations combined.

The Court will rule on two Florida cases where juvenile offenders got no parole life sentences. The two cases point up the often appalling legal and racial inequities in the juvenile no parole sentencing. The two men committed crimes when they were 17 years old. The crimes were violent crimes; a rape and an armed home invasion robbery. But in both cases, the evidence, testimony and witness identification were muddled and contradictory. They were still convicted and have spent more than a decade in prison.

As is the case with the death penalty, the no-parole sentences are far from race neutral. In the Florida case, both men are African American. Black teens are ten times more likely to receive a no-parole life sentence than white youths. They are even more likely to get those sentences when their victims are white. This was the case in the Florida convictions, and they are often tried by all-white or majority white juries. Those same juries seldom consider their age as a mitigating factor.

A significant number of juveniles sentenced to no-parole sentences did not actually commit murder but were participants in a robbery or were at the scene of the crime when the death occurred as in the Florida cases. The majority of the teens slapped with the draconian sentence had no prior convictions, and a substantial number were aged 15 or under.

Judges and juries say that violence is violence no matter the age of the perpetrator, and that punishment must be severe to deter crime. Prosecutors and courts in the 40 states that convict and impose no-parole life sentences on juvenile offenders -- with California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, and Florida leading the pack -- have repeatedly rejected challenges that teen no-parole sentences are a violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Though murder rates have plunged to near record lows, the public is still scared of violent crime, especially young persons who commit violence. Lawmakers are loath to do anything that will bring public heat on them that they are soft on crime. This is still considered the kiss of death for political careers.

Yet most experts agree that children don't have the same maturity, judgment, or emotional development as adults. In a report on juveniles and the death penalty, Amnesty International found that a number of child offenders sentenced to death suffered severe physical or sexual abuse. Many others were alcohol or drug impaired, or suffered from acute mental illness or brain damage. Nearly all were below average intelligence.

Despite Hollywood sensationalism and media-driven myths about rampaging youth, most experts insist that children are not natural-born predators. If given proper treatment, counseling, skills training and education, most can be turned into productive adults.

An irony in the Supreme Court's 2005 ban on executing teen killers was that the ban actually worked against no-parole reform efforts. Since states could no longer execute juvenile offenders, then the legal thinking was that it was far more humane to sentence them to life sentences. Victims' rights advocacy groups claim that taking away the option of no- parole sentences for juveniles will weaken crime deterrents. This makes it even tougher to make the case that counseling, treatment, and education is the more effective way to redeem young people who commit crimes than harsh sentencing -- but it is.

And there’s the gnawing question of race. The racial gap between black and white juvenile offenders is vast and troubling. The rush to toss the key on black juveniles has had terrible consequences in black communities. It has increased poverty, fractured families, and further criminalized a generation of young black men.

No matter what their age, those who commit crimes -- especially murder -- must be punished, but the punishment should not only fit the crime, it should also fit the age of the person that committed it, and the circumstances that drove them to commit their offenses. If a juvenile offender with the right help can turn their life around, they deserve that chance, and judges should be able to give it to them.

The Supreme Court in its decision to ban juvenile executions called teen executions "shameful." They recognized that the practice cannot, and should not, be justified on moral or legal grounds, and that it was past time to put a stop to teen executions. The court should recognize the same with the no parole sentence for teens and outlaw it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Why Many Think Obama has to be Better Because He’s Black

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



A recent CNN poll seems to confirm what a majority of African-Americans and a significant percent of whites seem to think or at least say. And that’s that President Obama will have to be better because he’s black. Translated this means that at Obama’s first real or perceived screw up there will be howls that that’s what you get when you plop a black into any position that requires a brain and skill. The undercurrent that courses through this warped race tinged view of why blacks are expected to fail is that they are plopped in an important spot because of affirmative action or unexpunged white guilt, and they’re grossly unqualified for it.

These screwy reasons ignore the savvy, ability to think, preparation, or education that get African-Americans top spots in corporations, universities, and politics. Obama certainly had the right stuff to bag the biggest political prize of all, the presidency. The great what if, though, is would former President W. Bush have bagged the grand prize if he had been black? The CNN poll doesn’t answer that but some have set a bar virtually nonexistent for a mediocre white politician ridiculously high for Obama.

Obama is well aware that the old racial double standard rule might apply to him too and that he will be under torrid public glare; more torrid that any presidential candidate in campaign history. And there will be packs of voters who hope, even pray that he flops. Race is the only reason many of them wish that. Surveys during the campaign found that even some of the most passionate Obama backers did racial gymnastics and separated their man from other blacks. They raved about his political genius, hailed him as the one to lead the country out of the Bush morass. Yet many still said that blacks were more crime prone and less industrious than whites. A month after Obama’s triumph not much had changed. A long term study of racial attitudes by the National Academy of Sciences found that a significant percent of Americans still saw color as the major factor in determining who committed crime and who was most likely to be poor.

Obama acknowledged the racial wariness of some near the beginning of the campaign when he said that there were some who would not vote for him because he’s African-American. He said the same thing again albeit more subtly in his triumphant speech on Election Night in Chicago’s Grant Park when he said that he wanted to reach out to those who did not vote for him(accept him).

During the campaign the political stars aligned for Obama as they did for no other Democratic presidential candidate in a decade and a half. There was massive public fatigue from Bush policies, rage at Republican corruption and ineptitude, an SNL laughingstock vice presidential candidate, and a catastrophic financial meltdown and crumbled economy. There was also Obama’s backward stretch to keep race out of the campaign. The only time he dealt with the issue was to damp down public unease over the inflammatory racial tirades of his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Despite all the towering political pluses he had, a majority of whites and that included a narrow percentage of young whites did not vote for him

But the presidential campaign is now a fast fading memory. The big concern for most Americans no matter whether they backed Obama or not is can his policies work? This doesn’t mean that racial stereotypes, open and closeted, have magically vanished. He’s in the bare embryonic stage of his presidency, and few are willing to say anything about his style or program that can be remotely seen as having a hidden racial animus. It’s simply politically incorrect and crass to hint or infer that Obama is not up to the weighty task of governance. Even GOP hard bitten conservative William Bennett publicly but lightly rapped talk show kingpin Rush Limbaugh on the knuckles for allegedly wishing that he wants Obama to fail.

The true test, though, will come when Obama makes a real or perceived foreign policy or domestic issue stumble or takes a stance on an issue that angers his opponents. Obama will be lambasted for that. All presidents are. Criticism is a part of the job; it comes with the political turf. Presidents know that, expect that, and should even welcome positive criticism. The difference is that America has never had a black president who has had to bear the brunt of criticism for missteps or policy blunders. Obama is the first. There are two kinds of criticism Obama will get. One is leveled based solely on whether his policies and decision making help or harm public interests. The other comes with a sneaky racial motive. Obama sadly will get both.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009). http://www.learnhowobamawon.blogspot.com

Obama Does and Doesn’t Fulfill King’s Dream

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


The unchallenged article of faith is that the election of President Barack Obama fulfills Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that the content of character should trump skin color. King uttered the words in his March on Washington speech in 1963. We’ll hear that said time and again in the march up to the King national holiday January 19 and Obama’s inauguration the next day.
Obama’s election did show that millions of whites could strap racial blinders around their eyes and punch the ticket for an African-American for the world’s most powerful political post. King would almost certainly glow with approval at that. But there are a couple of troubling caveats that mar America’s great racial leap forward. Obama won in large part because he did what no other Democratic presidential candidate did, and that includes Bill Clinton. He turned his presidential campaign into a virtual holy crusade by African-Americans voters to get him in the White House. The staggering 96 percent of the black vote he got made the crucial difference in the key Democratic primaries and later in nailing down the victory over Republican rival John McCain in the must win states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
At the same time, Obama’s allure to white college educated young, business and professionals was overstated. McCain got 53 percent of their vote. He trounced Obama among North and South rural, and blue collar whites. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of more than 400 counties from New York to Mississippi. Overall, he got less than a third of Southern white votes. The racial fault lines are still tightly drawn within a wide segment of the electorate.

A mid-September 2008 survey also found that a significant percentage of whites who said they’d vote for Obama also said that blacks were more crime prone and less industrious than whites. There were several ways to look at this seeming racial paradox. One is that these Obama backers were so fed up with Bush policies and a battered economy that Obama offered a change and a lifeline. Another was that he presented a race neutral soothing departure from the perceived race baiting antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And yet another was that he simply was sufficiently racially ambiguous enough not to pose any real racial threat.
In other words, he was seen as a racial exception. That's the penchant for some whites to make artificial distinctions between supposedly good and bad blacks.
These explanations don’t point to a profound and benign sea change in racial attitudes let alone tell why negative racial notions could still be rife among many white Obama supporters. The reports that Obama has received more taunts and physical threats than any other president-elect is another troubling indication that an untold number of Americans still can’t stomach the thought of an African-American in the White House.

The hoisting of Obama to a rarified political or non racial pedestal is the exact opposite of what King had in mind. In that same March on Washington speech what’s forgotten or deliberately distorted is that King talked much about the legacy of segregation, bigotry and discrimination that trapped thousands of poor blacks and that offered no easy resolution. Nearly a half century after King’s I Have a Dream words the black poor are still just as tightly trapped in the grip of poverty and discrimination that King warned about.

On the eve of the King national holiday and Obama’s inauguration, the Boston based research and economic justice advocacy group, United for a Fair Economy, released its sixth annual King Day report. It found that the gaping disparities in income, wealth, employment, quality and availability of housing, decent schools, and health care between blacks, minorities and whites has grown even wider. Countless government reports and studies, and the National Urban League’s 2007 State of Black America report also found that discrimination and poverty are still major barriers for millions. And it’s not just the black poor that bear the brunt of discrimination. President Bush even wondered out loud recently why there were so few black reporters covering his press conferences.
Obama has publicly bristled at the notion that the civil rights movement is outdated, or worse that he somehow supplants the ongoing work of civil rights leaders. He has repeatedly praised past civil rights leaders for their heroic battle against racial injustice.
It was not simply showy campaign symbolism when Obama pegged his Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech to the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington last August. This was a fitting tribute to the civil rights movement that challenged the nation to make King's dream of justice and equality a reality. Obama faced that challenge as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, during his stints in the Illinois legislature and in the Senate. He faces that same challenge in the White House. There’s still much to overcome.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

The What is Obama Debate Again

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Here’s the what is President-elect Barack Obama, black, bi-racial or multi-racial quiz. If he did not have one of the world’s most recognizable names and faces he would fume at being subjected to poor (or no) service in restaurants, bypassed by taxis, racial-profiled by police on street corner stops, landlords who refuse to show him an apartment, followed in stores by security guards, denied a loan for his business or home purchase due to redlining, find himself living in a resegregated neighborhood, or routinely passed over for a corporate management position.
He would not be subjected to any of these routine petty harassments and annoyances, the subtle and at time outright forms of discrimination because he checked the bi-racial designation on his census form. That’s a meaningless, feel good, paper designation that has no validity in the hard world of American race politics.
The deepest part of America's racial fault has always been and still remains the black and white divide. This has spawned legions of vile but durable racial stereotypes, fears, and antagonisms. Black males have been the special target of the negative typecasting. They've routinely been depicted as crime prone, derelict, sexual menaces, and chronic underachievers. University researchers recently found that Obama’s win didn’t appreciably change these stereotypes.

The roughly six million or 2 percent of Americans who checked the bi-racial census box may take comfort in trying to be racially precise, but most also tell of their own bitter experience in feeling the sting of racial bigotry in the streets and workplace. Obama can too and he has related his racial awakening in his best selling bare the soul autobiograhy Dreams from My Father.

Despite his occasional references to his white mother and grandmother, Obama has never seen himself as anything other than African-American. That worked for and against him during the campaign. In coutless polls and surveys, the overwhelming majority of whites said that they would vote for an African-American for president, and that compentence and qualification, not color was the only thing that mattered. Many meant it and showed it by enthusiatically cheering him on. More than a few didn’t. Despite the real and feigned color blindness, nearly sixty percent of whites still did not vote for Obama. Most based their opposition to him on Republican political loyalties, ties, regional and personal preferences. But a significant minority of white voters did not for him because he's black, and they did not hide their feelings to interviewers about that and in exit polls in the Democratic primaries and the general election. Tagging him as multi-racial or bi-racial did not soften their color resistance to him, let alone change their perception that he was black.

Yet, the sideshow debate still rages over whether Obama is the black president or the bi-racial president. The debate is even more nonsensical since science has long since debunked the notion of a pure racial type. In America, race has never been a scientific or genealogical designation, but a political and social designation. Anyone with the faintest trace of African ancestry was and still is considered black and treated accordingly.
Blacks were ecstatic over Obama's candidacy and his presidential win. They were unabashed in saying that they backed him with passion and fervor because he is black. Many would not have cheered him with the same passion if he touted himself as a mixed race candidate. The thrill and pride for them was that a black man could beat the racial odds and climb to the political top; substituting bi-racial for black would not have had the same meaning or significance to blacks. The talk about Obama being anything other than black infuriates many blacks. Their anger is legitimate. If Obama doesn’t run from his black identity then the bi-racial card appears as a naked effort to snatch Obama’s history making victory from them. It’s also an implicit denial that an African-American can have the right stuff, that is the smarts, talent and ability to excel in any arena.
The second that Obama announced that he would run for president in February 2007, much of the press and the public fixated on one question, "Is America ready for a black president?" The question was never, "Is America ready for a mixed-race president?" The answer was that Obama if elected would be America's first black president. It was almost never that he would be America’s first mixed-race president.
That didn’t change on Election Night. Obama’s victory was still hailed as a giant step forward for black and white relations in America, not mixed race relations. That may or may not be the case. The nagging racial sleights and indignities that many African-Americans suffer are tormenting reminders that race still does matter, and matter a lot to many Americans.
Calling Obama the first black president is the accurate, and honest, way to fix his place in American political history. It’s one that he wouldn’t or really can’t dispute.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Not Black President Obama, Just President Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The instant that Barack Obama tossed his hat in the presidential rink nearly two years ago the twin mantra was that he could be the first black to be president and if that happened America had finally kicked its race syndrome. The twin mantra has been repeated ad infinitum, and it’s dead wrong about Obama and the presidency. The early hint that race was overblown and over obsessed came from Obama. He didn’t talk about it. For good reason, he was not running as a black presidential aspirant. He was running as a presidential aspirant. He had to make that crucial distinction for personal and political purposes.

The ritual preface of the word “black” in front of any and every achievement or breakthrough that an African-American makes is insulting, condescending and minimizes their achievement. It maintains and reinforces the very racial separation that much of America claims it is trying to get past. Dumping the historic burden of race on blacks measures an individual’s success or failure by a group standard. That’s a burden whites don’t have. They succeed or fail solely as individuals.

Obama’s personal history--his bi-racial parents, his upbringing, his education, and his relative youth-- defies racial pigeonholing. He was influenced by but not shaped by the rigid race grounded civil rights struggles of the 1960s as older whites and blacks were.

The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped anyway. Obama would have had no hope of bagging the presidency if there had been the slightest hint that he embraced the race tinged politics of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism.

He could not have raised record amounts of campaign cash. He would not have been fawned over by legions of Hollywood celebrities, corporate and union leaders. He would not have netted the endorsements of Colin Powell and packs of former Reagan and Bush Sr. administration stalwarts, and prepped by W. Bush political guru Karl Rove on how to beat Hillary Clinton. The media would never have given him the top heavy favorable coverage, endorsements, nor relentlessly hammered Republican rival John McCain. If the media had so chosen, it could have torpedoed Obama’s campaign by playing up his connection with his race focused former pastor Jeremiah Wright. It bought his protest of racial bewilderment at the Wright race revelations, and dropped the matter.

Obama had to cling closely to the centrist blueprint Bill Clinton laid out for Democrats to win elections, and to govern after he won.

It meant during the campaign and will mean at least in the early days of his presidency emphasis on strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, mild tax reform for the middle-class, a cautious plan for affordable health care and for dealing with the sub-prime lending crisis, and a gentile reproach of Wall Street.

The old axiom that you can tell a president-elect by his staff and cabinet picks will very much apply to Obama. A cast of governors, senators and ex senators, former Clinton and Democratic party operatives, and even a few token Republican mavericks have been floated for Obama’s staff and cabinet picks such as Al Gore, Tom Dachle, Tim Kaine, John Kerry, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker, Chuck Hagel, Robert F, Kennedy, Tom Vilsack, and yes Arnold Schwarzenegger. The list reads like a who’s who of the Beltway and Heartland America establishment.

Obama’s cautious, center-governing non-racial, likely staff and cabinet cast and policies is plainly designed to blunt the standard Republican rap that Democrats, especially one branded a liberal Democrat, inherently pander to special interests, i.e. minorities, are pro expansive government, and anti-business. They will be watching hawk like for any sign of that from Obama.

As president Obama will be pulled and tugged at by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, moderate and conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all will vie to get White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests.

An Obama White House will of course be a historic and symbolic first. However, it will be a White House that keeps a firm, cautious and conciliatory eye on mid-America public opinion, and corporate and defense industry interests in making policy decisions and determining priorities. All other occupants of the White House have done that. Obama would and could not have attained the White House if he didn’t do the same. This has nothing to do with race, or the nonsense of being tagged a black president, first or not. It has everything to do with the requirement of White House governance.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Why Race Won’t Hurt Obama on November 4th

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Republican presidential contender John McCain got one thing right about Democratic rival Barack Obama. He told Larry King that he didn’t think race would be much of an issue in the final vote. As McCain put it only “a tiny, tiny, minority” will vote against Obama because he’s black. McCain was not just campaign bloviating to puff up his oft touted credential as a play it straight on race guy. The notion that because millions of whites passionately back Obama race is permanently off America’s table is more hope and prayer than reality.

Still despite endless and obsessive speculation that race could derail Obama in his slog to the White House it won’t and it probably never would have. Start with McCain and Obama; McCain made the personal and pragmatic choice not to make race an issue either directly or indirectly through code words, snide hints, and racial guilt by association attacks. When the Jeremiah Wright flap cropped up, he could have hammered Obama as a stealth race baiter. He turned thumbs down on that. Later when VP mate Sarah Palin and some others in his campaign were etching to unload on Obama-Wright again, he still said no.

That decision was not totally due to honor and noble intent. A too frontal racial attack would have brought instant screams of foul from Democrats, and millions of voters who demanded that the campaign be a clean, issues focused campaign. McCain read the political leaves correctly and saw the political peril in flipping the race card. The occasions that he slipped and rapped Obama as a socialist and a terrorist fellow traveler brought universal condemnation that he was going negative or worse running a dirty campaign.
Obama helped things even more. The firm message in his signature slogan of hope and change, campaign literature, TV ads, rallies, in pitches to contributors, his core of advisors, and major endorsers was that the Obama presidential campaign and an Obama presidency would be broad, non-racial and issues driven. Anything else would have instantly stirred horrifying visions to many of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. His candidacy would have been DOA.

But McCain and Obama’s best efforts to make race a non issue in the campaign would have fallen short without the sea change shift in public attitudes. The decade since the Rodney King beating, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the urban riots, has been a period of relative racial peace in America. During that time polls consistently showed that more whites than ever are genuinely convinced that America is a color-blind society, equal opportunity is a reality, and blacks and whites if not exactly attaining complete social and economic equality, are closer than ever to that goal. Though the figures on income, education and health care still show a colossal gap between poor blacks and whites, the perception nonetheless is that racism is an ugly and nasty byproduct of a long by-gone past.

The passage by huge margins of anti-affirmative action measures in California, Michigan, and Washington, was not simply a case of whites engaging in racial denial or a cover for hidden bias. Many white voters backed the initiatives because they honestly believed that color should never be in the equation in hiring and education, and that race is divisive.
It’s is easy to see why they believe that. "Whites only" signs and redneck Southern cops unleashing police dogs, turning fire hoses on and beating hapless black demonstrators have long been forgotten. Americans turn on their TVs and see legions of black newscasters and talk show hosts, topped by TV's richest and most popular celebrity, Oprah Winfrey.

They see mega-rich black entertainers and athletes pampered and fawned over by a doting media and an adoring public. They see TV commercials that picture blacks living in trendy integrated suburban homes, sending their kids to integrated schools and driving expensive cars. They see blacks such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor Condoleezza Rice in high-profile policy-making positions in the Bush administration. They see dozens of blacks in Congress, many more in state legislatures and city halls. They see blacks heading corporations and universities. And those blacks who incessantly scream racism about their plight are roundly reviled for feeding racial paranoia.
There is even some talk that the so-called Bradley Effect, the penchant for whites to lie to pollsters about their true racial feelings and vote against a black candidate, may actually turn into a reverse Bradley Effect this election. That’s that many whites will vote for Obama because he’s black. That notion is just as dubious as the Bradley Effect. But to even raise the possibility tells much about changing times and attitudes.

If Obama wins and that seems likely, race will be, as McCain says, only a tiny, tiny factor. That’s a tribute to him, Obama and the millions of America voters that were determined to make sure that race did not hurt Obama on November 4th

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Why Some Racists like Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson




Not long after Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama tossed his hat in the presidential rink back in February 2007, an odd, even bizarre thing happened. A hodgepodge of avowedly racist groups burned up internet sites not with rage, but glee. They were giddy at the thought that Obama might win.

Their rationale was that an African-American in the White House would prove their point that blacks were out to dominate whites and that whites would be so disgusted that they would unite in righteous and very racist anger. That in turn would trigger their long swooned over racist fantasy of a race war. This was dismissed for what it was, namely the ranting of the racist lunatic fringe. But that doesn’t mean that many whites who harbor hidden or even conscious racial animus won’t also back Obama albeit for their own reasons. A mid-September survey found about one quarter of whites hold negative views of blacks that are top heavy with the old shop worn stereotypes. The respondents said that blacks use race as a crutch, are not as industrious as whites, oppose interracial marriage, and are terrified of black crime (Obama mildly chided his white grandmother in his so-called race speech back in March for saying she feared black men). Yet nearly a quarter of them claim they’ll vote for Obama.

The standard explanation for this seeming racial schizoid view is that whites are so hammered by financial hardship that the economy trumps race and that Obama can do more to help them out of their financial hole than Republican rival John McCain. Others like him because his race neutral campaign is a soothing departure from the perceived race baiting antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Still others like him because his racially exotic background supposedly doesn’t fit that of the typical African American.

There is truth in these reasons cited to explain Obama’s appeal to some racial bigots. But there’s another reason that hasn’t been cited. That’s the long, checkered, and tortured history of racial exceptionalism. That’s the penchant for some whites to make artificial distinctions between supposedly good and bad blacks. That’s apparent in the unthinking offensive, insulting, and just plain dumb crack made to some articulate, well-educated blacks in business and the professions that they are “different than other blacks or not like other blacks.”

Racial exceptionalism also stems from the ingrained, but terribly misplaced, belief that blacks are perennially disgruntled, hostile, and rebellious, and are always on the lookout for any real or perceived racial slight, and etch to pick a fight over it.

An African-American who doesn’t fit that type is touted, praised, even anointed by some as the reasoned voice of black America. A century ago the mantle of the reasoned, exceptional African-American was bestowed on famed educator, Booker T. Washington. He was showered with foundation and corporate largesse. In the 1920s and 30s, NAACP leaders always found a ready welcome at the White House. They were praised in the press and bankrolled by some industrialists. In the 1960s Urban League President Whitney Young, NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, and Martin Luther King Jr. before he fell out of favor with the Lyndon Johnson White House after his too vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and turn to economic radicalism, were lionized for their reason and racial moderation.

In the 1980s, Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. actively cultivated and promoted a bevy of younger GOP friendly academics, black business leaders, and black conservatives. Reagan and Bush Sr. plainly saw them as a leadership alternative to the black Democrats and the old guard civil rights leaders. The black conservatives were appointed to government posts, bagged foundation grants, were feted by conservative think tanks, and their columns were routinely published in major newspapers. They were continually cited by writers and reporters as a breath of fresh air among African-Americans mostly for their willingness to break ranks with and to blister Jackson, Sharpton, and the civil rights establishment.

Obama hardly fits the mold of a black conservative, but neither is he the ultra-liberal Democrat that some conservative opponents routinely paint him as. Even before his rocket launch to the threshold of the presidency, he was considered a moderate, centrist Democrat, a consummate party insider, and a rising Beltway establishment politician. Without that stamp of mainstream approval, his White House bid would have never got to political first base.

Obama bristles publicly at the notion that he’s in competition with or a critic of civil rights leaders, or that he is immune from racial jabs. He has repeatedly praised past civil rights leaders for their heroic battle against racial injustice. That’s good, but that doesn’t erase the nagging penchant to elevate some blacks above the racial fray, and declare them the exception. That includes some white bigots who say they’ll back Obama.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).