Black Tea Party Activists Say Don’t Call Us Traitors

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There was mild surprise when a small contingent of black tea party bloggers and writers screamed loudly that Georgia Congressman John Lewis made up that he was spit on and called the N word as he left the Cannon office building across from the Capitol in the hours before the final vote on the health care reform bill. The black tea party activists demanded that Democrats produce the tapes to prove that Lewis was attacked.

The black tea partiers were lambasted as Uncle Toms, Oreos and worst of all, traitors. They’ve heard all this before, many times before. Some of them have turned the smears into a badge of pride, and say that more blacks should, and even quietly do, back the tea party’s avowed goal of tax cuts, small government, and defense of individual rights. Their claim is a tough sell, mostly because tea party leaders have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly by saying and doing nothing about the Confederate flags, Texas Lone Star flags, and the borderline racist signs and slogans that are waved and brandished at tea party rallies. This further feeds the deep suspicion that the tea party movement is chock full of unreconstructed bigots driven to hysteria by the mere thought of a black man in the White House.

Then there’s the GOP. Its relentless, take no prisoners, four decade war with civil rights leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus, and now Obama has further deepened fear and loathing among blacks of anyone and anything that carries the Republican stamp. The black tea party activists in almost all cases mark themselves with that stamp. But blacks and the GOP and now the tea party is not a total oxymoron.
Blacks have always been either in or on the fringe within the GOP during its metamorphosis over the last half century from the multi-racial party of Lincoln, champion of federal protections, and civil rights to a white man’s party that touts states rights, promotes racial division, and that uses championing small government, defense of constitutional freedoms and individual rights as hidden racial code words.

The motives of the blacks that have stayed loyal to the GOP are varied. Some have found the GOP a good hustle. They’ve been showered with political favors, money, and PR promotion. For others the GOP is a contrarian fad to boast that aren’t part of the nation of sheep pack that pay blind allegiance to the Democrats and President Obama. Then others sincerely buy the tea party claim that taxes and big government hurt blacks too.

The seed of their attraction to the tea party movement was planted six years ago during the presidential campaign of 2004. Bush through an adroit mix of emotional appeals, political messaging, and faith based largesse to a select few high profile black evangelicals stirred the hard feeling of many blacks toward abortion, gay rights, and their defense of family values. This paid big political dividends in the must win states of Florida and Ohio. The double-digit bump up he got in the black vote padded his comfort vote margin to bag both states and the White House.

It didn’t last. Bush’s colossal Katrina flub turned the grumbles from those blacks who defected to him during the election into a stampede away from him and the GOP. The still strong current of religious evangelicalism, and anti-gay, anti-abortion, sentiment and the targeting of government as the villain behind them, coupled with mounting economic insecurity, still struck a small chord among some blacks. The off the chart black vote for Obama didn’t entirely change that. Their vote was in part a general contempt and loathe of Bush policies, repulsion at the marginal thinly veiled race tinged appeals, and Sarah Palin, and in part a rally round the brother.
Republican National Chair Michael Steele paid some initial lip service to the need for greater diversity in the GOP but that didn’t last either. He was quickly regarded as a comic mouthpiece for the GOP’s non-stop pound of Obama. This insured that any black that uttered even a faint word of sympathy for the GOP would earn the tag of traitor.

The tea party, though, seems to be another story. It’s loose, disjointed, populist pitch with seemingly no direct tie to the GOP mainstream seems a safe haven for some blacks to vent their opposition to big government and high taxes while declaring disdain for Democrats. The record 37 blacks running as Republicans in the fall elections in majority or heavily white vote districts bank that they can rally tea party activists to their banner. That may be delusionary thinking. But the fact that they’re willing to try is their way of saying don’t call us traitors for our political beliefs. They have a point.

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).
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The GOP Would Cut Its Throat if it Denounced Racism

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan could have saved his breath when he furiously demanded that GOP leaders denounce the blatant racists among them. The loud chorus from other Democrats, civil rights leaders, and even an on line petition from an advocacy group begging the GOP to speak out against its naked bigots is a good preaching to the choir, PR gambit but it won’t change anything at the GOP top. The GOP 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 baggers is and has been an indispensable political necessity for the GOP.

Despite the GOP’s narrow health care defeat, maybe even because of it, the GOP’s programmed racist public ugliness is having some success. Obama's approval ratings, always tenuous at best among white males, have plunged into free fall among them. A bare 35 percent of them say they will back Democrats in the fall mid-term elections, and less than half of white women say they will back Democrats.

The spark to reignite the GOP's traditional conservative, lower income white male loyalists, and increasingly white female supporters, has always been there. The final presidential vote gave ample warning of that. While Obama made a major breakthrough in winning a significant percent of votes from white independents and young white voters, contrary to popular perception, McCain (not Obama) won a slim majority of their vote in the final tally. Overall, Obama garnered slightly more than 40 percent of the white male vote. Among Southern and Heartland America white male voters, Obama made almost no impact. Overall McCain garnered nearly 60 percent of the white vote.

The GOP could not have been competitive during campaign 2008 without the bail out from white male voters. Much has been made since then that they are a dwindling percent of the electorate, and that Hispanics, Asian, black, young, and women voters will permanently tip the balance of political power to the Democrats in coming national elections. Blue collar white voters have shrunk from more than half of the nation's voters to less than forty percent. The assumption based solely on this slide and the increased minority population numbers and regional demographic changes is that the GOP's white vote strategy is doomed to fail. This ignores three political facts. 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 voted in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks.

The GOP leaders have long known that blue collar white male voters can be easily aroused to vote and shout loudly on the emotional wedge issues; abortion, family values, anti-gay marriage and rights, and tax cuts. For fourteen months, they whipped up their hysteria and borderline racism against health care reform. This was glaringly apparent in ferocity and bile spouted by the shock troops the GOP leaders in consort with the tea baggers brought out to harangue, harass and bully Democrat legislators on the eve of the health care vote. These are the very voters that GOP presidents and aspiring presidents, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and W. Bush, and McCain and legions of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons banked for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance.

But the GOP’s best efforts to stir and keep them stirred into frenzy wouldn’t get to first base if millions didn’t genuinely believe that Obama was the anti-Christ (new Gallup poll) and that every Democrat before him had turned government into a Frankenstein monster to tax them out of their gourd to create endless social programs that benefit minorities at the expense of hard-working whites. This is exactly how hate groups, the legion of anti-Obama Web sites and bloggers, and radio talk jocks craft the reason for the anger and alienation that many white males feel toward health care and, by extension, Obama. This translates to even more fear, rage and distrust of big government.



The GOP’s win with white vote strategy failed in 2008 only because of the rage and disgust of legions of white voters at Bush's horribly failed and flawed domestic and war policies. This was more a personal and visceral reaction to the bumbles of Bush than a radical and permanent sea change in overall white voter sentiment about Obama, the Democrats, and the GOP. Even if the GOP is, as is widely seen, an insular party of Deep South and narrow Heartland, rural and, non-college educated blue-collar whites this is not a voting demographic to mock, ridicule, sneered at, let alone dismiss, because the numbers are still huge.

The GOP driven by personal instincts, political leanings, history, demographics, and raw political need has masterfully played the race card for a half century to get its way. Asking it to stop now would be asking it to cut its own throat.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His nationally heard talk show is on KTYM-AM 1460 AM Los Angeles, Fridays 9:30 AM and KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 Los Angeles, Saturdays Noon PST.

100 Day Silliness

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



Then Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama did a prescient thing last October. He told an interviewer on a Colorado radio station that he thought the first 1000 days not the first 100 days would make the crucial difference for his presidency. Candidate Obama directly parodied the line from JFK’s inauguration address in 1961. Kennedy proclaimed the first 1000 days as the better time frame to measure how effective or bumbling an administration is. Obama and JFK were wise to cite the much longer time frame. They sought to damp down the wild public expectations that they can work quick magic and miracles in no time flat.

Obama is well aware that the 100 days burden weighs heavier on him than any other president in modern times. He’s young, liberal, untested, and black. There are still deep doubts, suspicions and loud grumbles from some about his competency and political savvy. The Mt. Everest stack of op-eds, news articles, pictorials, websites, chatrooms, national viewer polls and surveys, and CNN and MSNBC specials will dissect, peck apart his words and initiatives for the first 100 days, and nag everyone else to do the same. That put even more pressure on to show he’s a tough, resolute, effective leader.

Obama in his quip to the Colorado radio interviewer knew the silliness of fixating on the drop in the bucket 100 day time span to brand a president and his presidency as a stunning success or a miserable flop. A quick look at the presidency of his two immediate predecessors is enough to prove that. Clinton bombed badly in pushing Congress for a $16 billion stimulus package; he bungled the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military, and got the first flack on his health care reform plan. Yet, the Clinton presidency is regarded as one of the most successful, popular and enduring in modern times.

Then there’s the Bush presidency. He got off to a fast start. At the 100 day mark in April 2001, his approval ratings matched Obama’s. He was widely applauded for his trillion dollar tax cutting program, his "Faith-Based" and disabled Americans Initiatives, and for talking up education, health care reform and slashing the national debt. But aside from the momentary adulation he got after the 9/11 terror attack his presidency is rated as one of the worst in modern times.

The 1000 day mark that Obama, Kennedy and other presidents have cited as the more realistic time frame is not an arbitrary number. That marks the near end of a president’s first White House term. The honeymoon is over, and the president has fought major battles over his policies, initiatives, executive orders, court appointments and programs with Congress, the courts, interest groups and the media. Battles that by then have been won or lost, or fought to a draw, and there’s enough time to gauge their impact and the president’s effectiveness.

The other big problem with the whimsical 100 day fixation is that it can force a president, in this case Obama, to feel that he must move sprint out the gate to fulfill campaign promises, pass legislation, and burnish up his media and public credentials as a top leader. This carries risks; risks of acting too hastily and making missteps that invite intense criticism.

Obama’s dash to padlock Guantanamo, announce big sweeping plans for health care, financial and banking regulation reform, his much ado about nothing handshake with Hugo Chavez, his outstretch to Iran, and Cuba, and hint at dumping nuclear weapons from the world’s arsenals has drawn heat fire from the right that he’s a reckless tax and spend, debt burdening, free market wrecker, and enemy conciliator. His mixed signals on prosecuting CIA torture cases and retaining virtually intact the faith based initiative, and ladling out billions to the banks have drawn heat from the left that he’s a backslider and Beltway politician.

Obama, though, is no different than other every other president modern era. He is 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 vie for White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests. They’ll applaud him when they get their way and bash him when they don’t.

Obama did another smart thing in his first presidential interview with 60 Minutes in November. He told the interviewer that he took a close look at FDR’s first 100 days and he was struck not by the avalanche of legislation and programs that FDR rammed through Congress his first 100 days but his willingness to do things that were different and that made lasting change. This will take far more than 100 days for that to happen and for it to be remembered.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly on Fridays 9:30 to 10:00 AM in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on ktym.com and blogtalkradio.com

Obama The One Term President?

President Barack Obama had barely finished uttering the oath of office when the talk started that he would be a one term president. This political doomsday talk was chalked up to a few bored reporters looking for something contrarian to say about Obama, the deluded hopes of hard bitten, spoil sport conservatives for a failed Obama presidency, and a few naysayers among economists who repeatedly warned that economic collapse would do in a young, inexperienced president. The first two reasons to think Obama would get a quick boot can be easily shrugged off.

Tying Obama’s White House fate to public jitters over a hemorrhaging economy can’t be so easily brushed aside. Obama pretty much said as much in an interview on NBC’s Today Show two weeks after he was sworn in that if he didn’t deliver he’d be “a one term proposition.” This may not be a totally accurate prediction since in four years a foreign blow up, terrorist attack, cataclysmic natural disaster, a squabbling, headless, and discredited GOP and any of a number of other unforeseen things could make him shine. Any of them could just as easily be his ticket back to the White House. Still, the rise or fall of the economy is the only thing for now that anyone seems to think matters.

Obama has smartly hedged his bets on judging his presidency on the speed of an economic turnaround by repeatedly damping down expectations that economic recovery is just around the bend, and that he can wave a magic wand and make the economic pain instantly disappear. Obama’s pleadings, warnings, and cautionary notes are his back door admission that Americans want and demand that he do something, and do it now to reverse the economic slide, and that there’s little margin for error, and none for failure, if he doesn’t.

Recent presidential history amply shows that the public is brutally unforgiving when the man in the White House doesn’t immediately turn things around. In a look at how six of eight presidents fared since 1948 when the economy hit the skids or appeared to skid, the scorecard for presidents winning and losing because of economic woes is a draw. Three were beaten and three beat back their challengers. It came down to whether voters really perceived that their economic plight, or rather pain, would show no sign of a cure if they kept the incumbent in office. But even more important presidents had to do one crucial thing in the face of rising unemployment, recession, inflation, and public grumbles if they wanted to stay on the job. They had to assure a majority of voters that things would and could get better for the voters if they stayed in the White House and that any likely opponent couldn't do any better.

Presidents also had to have a lot of luck. W. Bush had that in 2004. He won reelection in part because memories were still fresh of the 9/11 terror attack. Bush adroitly played the terror card and convinced enough voters that he could beat back any new terrorist threat. But hard times, plant closures, farm foreclosures, and high unemployment even then had gripped big sections of the Midwest and as Democrats gleefully noted, growth was much slower during Bush’s first term than during Clinton's second term.

Yet Bush also won in big part because overall unemployment and economic growth had slightly improved in the run up to the 2004 election. Bush used this to spin the news, even bad economic news, into a gain. He solemnly pledged there would be more economic improvement for voters if he was reelected. That didn’t work for Republican rival John McCain in the make or break wind down months to the 2008 campaign. The financial plunge in September virtually sealed his loss.

Obama relentlessly painted a stark, grim and scary picture for workers and the middle class that the crash was Bush’s doing and by extension McCain’s doing. He masterfully sold the idea that things would only get worse if McCain was elected. He directly linked the perceived failure of Bush to right the nation’s economic ship to McCain. And that McCain’s policies would result in still bigger deficits, the prospect of even greater inflation and a more intense recession. Obama made voters believe that Republican economic policy would not promote recovery and economic security but increase economic pain for millions of wage earners; put bluntly economic collapse.

Obama has literally bet the bank that that the economic stimulus will turn the economic tide. Packs of Republicans and not a few economists warn that it won’t. A few such as Rush Limbaugh even hope that it won’t.
Economic failure alone may not spell a one term presidency for Obama. But economic success, even the perception of success, will help insure that Obama won’t be another Jimmy Carter.

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

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

How Obama Won

Reviewed by David Hurley

As a student of Success University, I spent a lot of my time last year thinking about "the principles of success"... Meanwhile, one of the biggest "success stories" of our time was being played out... There is today no greater exemplar of "success mentality" than the man who is about to be inaugurated as America's first black president.

But how, exactly, did Obama do it?

Political analyst, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, has the answer in his new book, launched today, and appropriately titled, How Obama Won.

How Obama Won unravels the key issues, the big events, the process behind the politicing, the pressures and controversies that affected Obama's presidential campaign.

Hutchinson reveals how Barack Obama responded to the challenges he faced on his historic journey to the White House through the ups and downs of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Purchase a copy here, in e-book or print versions.

Here are some of the questions that How Obama Won addresses:

What impact did race and gender have on the campaign? What was the thinking behind the campaign strategy? Who were the key players behind the campaign? How have the Democratic and Republicans parties changed?

What impact did blacks, whites, Hispanics, women, young people, blue collar workers have on the result? What was the role of corporate and special interests in the election?

And, finally, what does the result mean to America and the world?

In How Obama Won Hutchinson explains that "race" was not such a key factor in Obama's victory and the war in Iraq and terrorism were not the most prominent concerns of the voters.

What struck me as clever about Obama's "Change is coming to America" message was that merely by winning the election Obama had indeed "changed America" - even if his policies do not actually bring fundamental change to American society... Now we know that a black candidate can become president; in that sense everything has changed (and nothing has changed).

Earl Ofari Hutchinson assesses whether Obama's honeymoon will be short lived or not.

The massive problems he faces with the recession, the financial crisis, conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan are compounded by the high hopes he has whipped up among the American public for "change"...

In How Obama Won Hutchinson explains what Obama needs to do in order to avoid massive disappointment.

David Hurley is an author, entrpreneur and publisher of numerous articles on internet marketing success strategies.

How Obama Won is available in both book and e-book form. Find out more, and listen to Nikki Leigh chat with Earl Ofari Hutchinson about the book here:
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).

Why McCain and Obama Won’t Talk about Race, but Should

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made one speech in March to damp down
the furor over his relationship with his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. He made another speech at the NAACP convention in July. Other than those two speeches he has not uttered another word about racial issues since. Republican rival John McCain spoke at the same NAACP convention. Shortly after that, he issued a terse statement backing the Ward Connerly concocted anti-affirmative action initiative on the November ballot in Arizona and two other states. Other than that he has not uttered a single word about racial issues since. The audience for McCain and Obama’s speeches at the NAACP convention were mostly blacks. That reinforced the notion that racial issues are by, and for, blacks, with no broad policy implications for all Americans as issues such as health care, jobs and the economy, terrorism and Iraq.

About the only talk about race during the campaign has been the interminable Hydra headed question of: Can Obama make history by being the first African American president? And if he doesn’t will race sink him? That’s hardly the candid, free wheeling, in-depth talk about the problems that impact the lives of millions of black, Latino Asian, and American Indian voters. Minority voters make up about one quarter of American voters and they deserve to hear what the candidates have to say about racial matters, and more importantly what their administration plans to do about them.
Obama and McCain’s racial blind spot has been ritual blindness in all candidates in recent America presidential races. Racial issues have seeped into presidential debates only when they ignite public anger and division. In a 1988 debate, Bush Sr. hammered Democratic contender Michael Dukakis as being a card carrying ACLU’er, a milksop on crime, and tossed in the Willie Horton hit to drive home the point. In one of their debates in 2000, Bush and Democratic challenger, Al Gore clashed over affirmative action.

Race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the campaign trail for the past two decades for a simple reason. No president or presidential challenger, especially a Democratic challenger, will risk being tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems. In stark contrast, Obama, let alone McCain, would never worry about being accused of pandering to Christian Evangelicals by talking incessantly about gay marriage and abortion.
The double standard on race is troublesome to Team Obama. The team knows that race is a minefield that can blow up at any time and the explosion can fatally harm their candidate. Even something seemingly incidental such as the media and public’s outlandish gossipy obsession with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin poses a risk. In this case, her presence alone in the race has hurt. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll days after her entrance found that McCain was now beating oout Obama among white women. The month before Palin came along he was tied with him among the women.

But polls, white voter wariness over race, and Obama and McCain’s nervous eye on them can’t magically make racial issues disappear. In each of it’s annual State of Black America reports the past decade the National Urban League found that blacks are less likely to own their own homes, die earlier, are far more likely to be jailed disproportionately and receive longer sentences, receive less or poorer quality health care and earn far less than whites. They attend failing public schools, and are more likely the victims of racially motivated hate crimes than any other group.
The report also found rampant discrimination and gaping economic disparities between Latinos and whites. In the past decade, the income, and education performance gaps between blacks and Latinos and whites have only marginally closed, or actually widened. Discrimination remains the major cause of the disparities.

Shunting race to the back burner of presidential campaigns invariably means that presidents shunt them to the backburner of their legislative agenda. Yet, presidents have not been able to tap dance around racial problems. Reagan's administration was embroiled in affirmative action battles. Bush Sr.'s administration was tormented by urban riots following the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Clinton's administration was saddled with conflicts over affirmative action, police violence and racial profiling. W. Bush's administration has been confronted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, voting rights, reparations, and affirmative action battles, gang violence, and failing inner city public schools. By ignoring, or downplaying these issues until they burst into flashpoints of national debate and conflict, presidents have been ill prepared to craft meaningful legislation and programs to deal with them.
In the closing weeks of the campaign McCain and Obama will repeatedly tell how their administration will deal with problems from the Iraq War to the economy. They should also tell how their administration will deal with the crisis problems that slam minorities and the poor. One or the other will have to confront those problems in the White House.

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).

Forget Apologizing to Obama Jackson Should Apologize to Blacks for His N Word Hypocrisy
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On November 26, 2006 at a press conference in Los Angeles guess who said this: "We will challenge and urge all artists and comics to stop using this (n) word. What other group is subjected to such a degrading terminology?"
And then guess who called for this action: We will go after TV networks, film companies and comedians and demand that they stop using the word. We will boycott sales of the DVDs of Seinfeld’s seventh season TV show. The speaker of course was Jesse Jackson. The offender who dared utter the dreaded N word was comedian Michael Richards.
Now we hear that Jesse did a Richards like imitation with the N word in his infamous unguarded open mic dig at Obama on Fox.
Jackson’s pound of Richards and saber rattle of the entertainment business was strong stuff. In fact it was vintage Jackson; a denunciation of the N word, railing against the entertainment industry and entertainers for their racial insensitivity, and, of course, a threatened boycott. Jesse was riding tall on his moral and racial high horse at the time and had thousands revved up to go after Richards and anyone else who used the N word.
The problem is that the “anyone else” Jackson had in mind was not simply, a white bit part comedian, and some off color comics and filmmakers, but any and every black that used the word. Jesse would settle for nothing less than a total ban by blacks on the N word.

Jackson’s press conference tirade against the N word was hardly the first time he had hit the warpath against the word. He had spent years lecturing, hectoring, and admonishing blacks to dump the word from their vocabulary.
So that makes his N word slur even more unpardonable than if it come from a rapper or comic. They’re trying to make a buck off of using the word as cutesy shock value so at least there’s logic, commercial and twisted, but logic nonetheless to their spew of it. In Jackson’s case that doesn’t apply.
He committed two serious offenses in casually and recklessly using the word. Though he didn’t call Obama the word, by knocking him (“cut off his n…ts”) and tossing in the word to describe blacks who Obama allegedly offended, Obama by inference became an N… too. Jackson’s bigger offense was his tar of blacks with the word. If a white celebrity, personality or politician slandered and disrespected blacks with the word, guess who would be the first person to charge the barricades demanding their head and then that they banned in Boston for perpetuity. The chances are pretty good that Jackson would have gotten their head and the ban. But in this case, the famed personality that offended with the word is not a white notable but Jackson.
So what should we do about him? He’s already apologized to Obama, and since Obama wasn’t the target of Jackson’s loose lip slur, Jackson should immediately apologize to blacks for not only trashing them, but also apologize for his hypocrisy. That’s not all. Since Jackson called for a boycott of the DVD’s of the Seinfeld show for Richards N word offense, then turn about is fair play. In this case, listeners to Jackson’s national radio show should consider a brief tune out of the show to show that the N word no matter whether it drips from the lips of a tired white comedian, gangster rapper, blue room black comedian, radio shock jock, or a one time civil rights icon, is just as offensive.
Jesse has taken a much deserved hit for his intemperate personal rap of Obama. Now he should take an even bigger hit for his far worse racial rap of blacks and in the process himself.

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).

New Yorker Depicted Obama Horribly Wrong, but Got It Horribly Right about the Slanders
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

New Yorker Magazine’s under fire cover illustrator Barry Blitt says his infuriating cover was intended only to show that the incessant rumor that Obama is a closet terrorist is preposterous and ridiculous fear mongering. Team Obama’s rage at the inflammatory cover was beyond ballistic and nearly everyone with eyes and an opinion about it, and that included Republican rival John McCain, expressed the same ballistic anger at the New Yorker. But Blitt’s point that the ridiculous rumor mongering, gossip, slurs, and flat out falsities about Obama’s religion, patriotism, birth, and, of course race, are deep and widespread is horribly true. Even more frightening is that those slanders may touch a nerve in an unknown but frighteningly large number of voters. That danger was there from the start and there were packs of website ready to deepen that danger.

Obama had barely finished his announcement on the steps of the State Capitol at Springfield, Illinois in February, 2007 that he was in the hunt for presidency when the site Barack Exposed popped up on every search engine. The website was a put up job by Human Events, a fringe, ultraconservative outfit. It promised to expose the "truth" about Obama, from his alleged role in corruption scandals to doubletalk on the issues, and of course the signature hit item, his patriotism. At the time, it was rightly laughed off as a typical smear and slander by one of the pack of ultra-conservative hit squads.

The laughter didn’t last long. Obama’s breakout win in the Iowa Caucus in January instantly marked him as the potential Democrat's presidential go-to guy. It also set off alarm bells among the blog hit squads. Here’s a check list of the biggest, best known, and most virulent Obama dirt dealer sites that sprouted up after Iowa:
AntiObama.net AgainstObama.com AudacityOfHypocrisy.com BlockBarack.com ChicagoAgainstObama.com DontVoteObama.net DrNObama.comExposeObama.comInvestigateBarackObama.blogspot.com JustSayNoDeal.com MeetBarackObama.com No-bama.blogspot.com NobamaNetwork.comNobamaZone.comNoExperienceNoChange.org NoQuarterUSA.net ObamaBlog08.com Obama-Wire.comObamaism.Blogspot.com ObamaNation.comObamaTruth.org ObamaWho.wordpress.com ObamaWTF.blogspot.com Obamology.blogspot.com SavagePolitics.com SlickBarry.com Stop-Obama.org TheRealBarackObama.wordpress.com

The anti-Obama bile, complete with the scurrilous and phony doctored photos of Obama as a Muslim terrorist is the staple on many of the sites, and is repeated as a sickening mantra by the Obama character maligners. Obama’s White House bid has virtually breathed new life into the unabashedly white supremacist group Stormfront’s site (stormfront.org). The group claims to get about 40,000 hits a day

Google belatedly realized that its engine was rapidly becoming a top conduit for spreading the anti-Obama rumor mongering hate and shut down several of the more blatant anti-Obama sites. It sternly warned that any site that engaged in lathering Obama with vicious personal slurs would be promptly shut down. This drew some mild criticism that Google was stifling free speech, but the right to propagate malicious slander and lies hardly qualifies as a free speech protection, let alone legitimate political criticism.

There were early warning signals of the on-line ugliness that could come. Talk show gasser Rush Limbaugh took the first real swipe when he derisively sneered at Obama as the Magic Negro. Limbaugh kind of sort of backed away from it. But the message was that Obama was not exempt from a racial dig. That was much evident in the short-lived furor over Obama's former Southside Chicago church, and the controversial outbursts of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

The inference was that Obama's guilt by membership and friendship with him made him a closet radical and a race baiter. But long before the Wright controversy broke in the national media, more than a few of the above mentioned anti-Obama sites had a field day lambasting him and Wright.


The nitpicking continued on the most trivial things such as his chain smoking, his admitted flirt with drugs, and pokes at his wife, Michelle as outspoken, bossy and domineering, and America hating. This slander against her has been almost as popular on the sites as knocking Obama as unpatriotic and inferring he’s a closet Muslim terrorist.

The great danger is that the lies and maliciousness the Obama slander sites busily fan could or has had some resonance with some voters, especially the much fought over independents. They make up about one quarter of American electorate, and the overwhelming majority of them are white, and centrist to conservative in their views.

The fear that the rumors could hurt prompted Obama and the campaign to take the unprecedented step of putting up an anti-smear website to counter the lies. It also prompted Obama in January to do a teleconference call with Jewish reporters to refute the rumors that he was a Muslim.

New Yorker Magazine’s editors may well as the claim depicted Obama and Michelle as flag hating, unpatriotic, violent terrorists to show the absolute vileness and absurdity of the rampant slanders. But the magazine which is the nation’s staid, bastion of highbrow culture and thinking inadvertently or deliberately imprinted the damaging slanders in the thoughts of an even more unknown number of voters. The same as the legion of dirt dealing Obama blogs have done.

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).

Why Jackson Has an Obama Problem
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A plainly irritated Jesse Jackson obviously didn’t mean that he would cut Obama’s n…ts off. The crude, salty street talk was simply an unguarded moment’s outburst from a frustrated Jackson at Obama’s recent political somersaults. Jackson, of course, took much deserved heat from his son Jesse Jr. and just about everyone else who has an opinion on him, his language and Obama.

But what is lost in the leap to beat up on Jackson is this: Is he right to be frustrated by Obama, and is there anything new about his frustration with him?
Jackson has always had a mix of puzzlement, wariness, and frustration with and toward Obama from the moment he announced that he would run for the presidency. Jackson and the other old guard civil rights leaders and old line black Democrats didn’t know what to make of Obama.

Jackson took a long wait and see before endorsing him. And even then the endorsement was more of a kind of, sort of endorsement than a ringing declaration of Obama’s possible presidential assets. The ubiquitous Jackson; that is the Jackson who prided himself for two decades on being any and everywhere there was a civil rights or political battle to be fought and commented on was suddenly the disappeared Jackson whenever the subject was Obama and his much touted historic breakthrough for African-Americans. There were brief Jackson sightings here and there but always it was to make a veiled knock of Obama. Jackson rapped him for not speaking out on the Jena 6 racial case in Louisiana and coupled it with a public muse about whether he was black enough. The customary denials and apologies followed when Jackson took some flak for the knock.

But Jackson’s Obama problem is not solely the pique of an aging, and increasingly bypassed civil rights icon, who has had his day, and is envious of Obama for stealing the media and public limelight. The problem is the profound gap between Jackson and Obama over how civil rights and racial battles should be fought in America.
Obama doesn’t look, talk, or act like a black leader or civil rights activist should look, talk and act. He does not march, picket or protest racial wrongs and injustices in the streets. How could he? He wasn’t around in the 1960s when Jackson and company did. He talks political and racial moderation, conciliation, healing and harmony. But even more galling than the notion that he hasn’t paid his civil rights dues, is that he also talks about being multi-racial. This sent up the red flag that Obama’s adherence and allegiance to blackness is deeply suspect.

Jackson and the old guard civil rights leaders could never hope for the rush by corporate donors to bankroll Obama’s campaign, the swooning embrace he got from Democratic Party regulars, the rapturous tout he got from blacks, and the starry eyed celebrity adulation he got from whites and other non-blacks. So it was no surprise that Obama’s rap of black men and his cheering of Bush’s faith based initiative was the last draw. It confirmed Jackson’s worst fear about Obama, and that is that he’s a deal making, Beltway Democrat who will say and do anything to get elected, even if that means tossing racial ideals as Jackson defines them under the bus.

The great irony in this is that Jackson for a brief time was looked up to with the same starry eyed swoon by many blacks and whites, was the unbridled darling of the media establishment, and could command his fair share of dollars from corporations and wealthy philanthropists. There was even a time even when the cry of “run Jesse run” for president bounced off the lips of thousands.
There was sheer delight when Jackson instantly heated up a crowd with a timely slogan, catchy rhyme, or well-timed phrase and he had the instant ear of presidents and heads of state.

Those days are long gone and Jesse is left with fast fading memories, and the frustration of having to look with a jaundice eye at a guy who’s doing what he once hoped to achieve, but doing it in a way that he could or would never do.

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).