Guardian | ...but presented to it after he had made his way through the mostly
white elites. His political ties to the black community are not organic
but symbolic. His arrival in the political class is hailed as the
progress of a community when in fact it is the advancement of an
individual.
"[Obama] is being consumed as the embodiment of color
blindness," Angela Davis, professor of history of consciousness at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, told me in late 2007.
"It's the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race
into account. That's what makes him conceivable as a presidential
candidate. He's become the model of diversity in this period … a model
of diversity as the difference that makes no difference. The change that
brings no change."
That is why criticisms of him for "not doing
enough for his own people" both miss and devalue the point. The demand
to close the racial gaps bequeathed by centuries of discrimination is
not a sectional interest but a national one. Demands for equality and
racial justice should be made to any president of whatever race or
party.
Obama should do more for black people – not because he is
black but because black people are the citizens suffering most. Black
people have every right to make demands on Obama – not because they're
black but because they gave him a greater percentage of their votes than
any other group, and he owes his presidency to them. Like any
president, he should be constantly pressured to put the issue of racial
injustice front and centre and if black people aren't going to apply
that pressure then nobody else will.
But in fact precisely the
opposite has been happening. With Obama in the White House African
Americans representatives have been backpedalling. Black politicians,
too, have held their fire.
"With 14% unemployment, if we had a
white president we'd be marching around the White House," said the
chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Emmanuel Cleaver. "The
president knows we are going to act in deference to him in a way we
wouldn't to someone white." That's pathetic and counterproductive. These
are the very people who are now showing up with empty hands and trying
to galvanise the black community to go to the polls.
Their
reticence is partly explained by the fear of a backlash. "If we go after
the president too hard, you're going after us," Maxine Waters, a
California Democrat in the House, told a largely black audience in
Detroit last year. But then that's what leadership is about. Explaining
to those audiences that there are large numbers of people lobbying for
Obama's attention, including people with huge amounts of money and
power. If the black community wants it they must demand it.
Some
have spoken out. In August after a month-long round of job fairs
organised by the CBC across the nation John Conyers, the longest serving
black American in Congress said.
"We want [Obama] to know from this day forward that we've had it. We
want him to come out on our side and advocate, and not to watch and wait
… We're suffering." Unfortunately it was followed by little in the way
of action.
In the absence of that pressure Obama has felt little
need to focus his attention on the problem, even rhetorically. In his
first two years in office he talked about race less than any Democratic
president since 1961. In all of his state of the union speeches he
mentioned poverty
just three times: last year's was the first since 1948 to not mention
poverty or the poor at all. When he did talk about it it was to preach better parenting, healthy meals and greater discipline.
At a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in September he told his former colleagues:
"Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it
off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying." Compare that to the
meeting he had with bankers not long after he was elected when they
thought he was going to impose serious regulation. "I'm the only thing
standing between you and the pitchforks. I'm not out there to go after
you," he told them. "I'm protecting you."
This would not be the
first time that the black Americans have shown great loyalty to a
Democratic president who did not return the favour. Bill Clinton is
still revered even though when he ran in 1992 he made a special trip
back to Arkansas to oversee the execution
of Ricky Ray Rector – a black, lobotomised inmate so mentally
incapacitated that when given his last meal, he opted to save the
dessert for after the execution. When in power he signed off on a
welfare reform that would prove devastating to large numbers of black
families, especially women. He presided over an economic boom Obama does
not even have that.
