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He leapt the tallest barrier. What does it mean for black America?[/size]
[size=-1]By Jonetta Rose Barras
Sunday, November 9, 2008; B01[/size]
African Americans have just entered the no-excuses zone.
We finally have one of our own in the
White House. With
Barack Obama's ascension to the highest office in the United States, most African Americans feel that we have arrived as fully equal citizens.
But we need to recognize that with Obama's victory come challenges -- and that many of those challenges will be put to the black community itself.
Obama isn't like the leaders who have traditionally spoken for black America. As president, he's unlikely to embrace the confrontational identity politics that have defined black activism for so long. He won't tolerate an African American brand of racism or a culture of violence. Nor is he likely to be patient with the long-standing narrative of victimhood that has defined black America to itself and to the mainstream for more than a century.
Obama is already constructing a new black political and cultural narrative -- gathering together the best of the past, including the coalition politics that characterized the early civil rights movement and an image of strong black males that doesn't involve bling-bling or hip-hop misogyny. He has decried the low-hanging pants fashion so popular with young black men, blasted rapper
Ludacris for offensive song lyrics and called on fathers to take responsibility for their families.
Are African Americans ready to accept all this and respond positively? Are they ready for a truly post-racial America?
The answer isn't clear. Just a few days after Obama's stunning win, black America is already divided over what his election means, arguing about what it should expect from a "black president" -- and about whether his first obligation is to black America or to all America. It's an argument that reflects the continuing cleft within the community, between those who hew to the race-based politics advanced chiefly by the black power movement of the 1970s and '80s and the so-called millennial or race-neutral generation, which appreciates but isn't imprisoned by African American history.
The first group wants Obama to acknowledge that injustice still confronts black Americans. They want him to address the "black agenda" while creating an Afrocentric White House. "We hope there will be more attention than with previous presidents to issues pertinent to black people," says juvenile justice expert and social commentator Michael Francis.
E. Ethelbert Miller, chairman of the Institute for Public Policy, believes that "black nationalists," the disciples of identity politics, will measure Obama by the number of African Americans he appoints to his Cabinet. The new president "may have to pull out
Maya Angelou for another poem," says Miller, referring to the African American poet's appearance at
Bill Clinton's first inauguration. For his attention and service to the black community, Clinton -- a white president -- is, ironically, cited as the example Obama must aspire to emulate.
"There was considerable criticism of the Obama camp for its apparent lack of concrete outreach to the black community" during the campaign, said one black leader. "Now that he is president, those criticisms will morph into demands."
But the second group says that there are important universal issues that must take priority: the global financial crisis, relief for homeowners, potential vacancies on the Supreme Court. "I think some of the demands are unrealistic," says New York City-based finance expert Brooke Stephens, who believes that
African Americans are forgetting that Obama "is not there just for us."
One thing seems clear: Domestic issues such as health care, resolving the mortgage crisis and creating jobs in a recession will seem piddling compared with the treacherous task Obama faces of traversing the rickety bridge between mainstream America and the various factions of black America.
But Obama is a different kind of leader. More than a decade ago, I began tracking the rise of new black leaders, noting their slow but deliberate walk away from racial politics. Obama's election follows that of U.S. Reps. Artur Davis of Alabama and Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Newark Mayor Corey Booker -- all part of the race-neutral leadership class. These savvy, sophisticated political leaders are comfortable in corporate boardrooms and on urban street corners. They understand the nuances of race and racism but refuse to wear them as albatrosses around their necks. They are innovators, exploring new and better ways of serving the disenfranchised and bringing various people together to improve our communities. They embody the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s insistence that people should be judged by the content of their character. Obama's arrival in the White House underscores the reality that the post-civil rights era is in full swing in American politics.
But some African Americans don't get it. Despite measurable advances over the past 30 years, they still perceive themselves as beleaguered, as the once and present victims of discrimination, struggling to keep pace with their white counterparts.
This portrait of a currently besieged people is mostly fiction -- although it regained some currency during the campaign.
The racial comments that were slung about, along with other experiences permanently lodged in the psyche of some African Americans, partly inspire the catalog of demands that awaits Obama.
"He needs to talk more about the race question and the relationship between blacks and whites, especially racism," says Francis. Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Center at the
University of Maryland, argues that Obama must address the gap in health care between African Americans and whites. Poverty, support for small businesses, economic development, the three-strikes law and the "incarceration crisis" that has staggering rates of black males inhabiting the nation's prisons are other pressing issues. The Community Reinvestment Act has to be rewritten, and Obama must reconsider the usefulness of enterprise zones as a tool for redeveloping inner-city neighborhoods. "There's a complex of things," says Walters.
This litany reads like the first and subsequent iterations of the
National Urban League's annual "State of Black America" report or chapters in
Tavis Smiley's "Covenant With Black America." Add the wish that Obama strengthen affirmative action expressed by radio executive Gloria Minott, and the debate is circa 1975.
"Aren't black people affected by gravity," says Miller, meaning that no matter what the government does, these same demands are ever-present. Walters and others would probably disagree and could no doubt offer many reasons for the list's permanence. But to me, it seems that these issues are continually recycled, repackaged and presented as new and original. Yet they're as predictable as John McCain's war narrative, and like that story, they lose their power when repeated too often.
It's not entirely clear yet how Obama will deal with all this. He has pledged to create an Office of Urban Policy in the White House.
As a former community organizer who worked on Chicago's South Side, he knows the problems in black America, but he isn't likely to treat African Americans as victims. And a predominantly black Cabinet or staff doesn't seem to be in the offing, either. He has already selected Rep.
Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton adviser, as his chief of staff.
But even if Obama reaches the Clinton bar -- appointing a significant number of blacks, increasing black employment and generally improving black prosperity -- it may not be enough. He may find himself in the same place as other black leaders of his class. Consider former Washington mayor
Anthony A. Williams, who delivered services to low-income blacks far beyond what his predecessors had provided: a record number of affordable housing units, new supermarkets and retail shopping areas and health insurance for thousands. Yet he was nearly castrated by a segment of the black community. At one point, he was accused of trying to further enslave African Americans because he wanted to move the city's only public university to a predominantly black neighborhood. His governing approach didn't comport with that of "traditional black leaders" of the 1960s and '70s.
Obama, too, "will have his detractors," says Democratic pollster Ronald Lester. "A lot of those people will never be happy."
But "we cannot move back into the black power movement," adds Miller. "Obama represents a transformation of the American landscape."
And that's the point. If African Americans want to be taken seriously, they have to get with the program. Obama's election isn't just about a black president. It's about a new America. The days of confrontational identity politics have come to an end. The era of coalition politics and collaboration has arrived. Besides, Obama could never be a Rev. Jesse Jackson or
Al Sharpton -- something even they acknowledge.
"He ran the last leg of a 60-year tag race," Jackson told me. "The wall is down now. Barack must build the bridge for the next generation."
Meanwhile, many are buoyed by the possibility that he will change black America's view of itself. Stephens hopes that his example will restore the "criterion of excellence in education" that her parents' generation embraced.
"We need to change the thinking of some kids that the only way they can make it is by singing, dancing and shooting hoops," she says.
Adds Minott: "It's about time we have a different meaning of what it means to be a black man and a black father."
But "it's not just the black male, it's the family," says Miller. "He's giving us the whole image. Obama is a healing balm."
These are lofty thoughts about what an Obama presidency might do for African Americans.
But a major shift can't occur unless African Americans -- actually all Americans -- submit to the changing dynamics. Instead of demanding another discussion about racism or clocking when the incarceration crisis appears on the radar, black Americans should work to sustain what Obama's campaign set in motion. They should seek to hold together his coalition -- reaching out to non-African Americans -- and use it to drive a progressive agenda. Not a black agenda, but a human agenda.
Not long ago, African American author
Charles Johnson noted that blacks have been too invested "in the pre-21st-century black American narrative," and that we need
"new and better stories, new concepts and new vocabularies and grammar based not on the past but on the dangerous, exciting and unexplored present."
That present has now arrived. Jesse Jackson, one of the principal authors of the pre-21st-century narrative, understands this. Obama, he told me, "has removed the roof. If Barack can be president, then there ain't nothing we can't do."
Obama's real contribution is allowing blacks to see ourselves as victors. That's more valuable to black advancement than any item on a pre-fabricated list of demands. Can I get an "Amen"?
