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Today: August 11, 2007 at 7:21:19 PDT

'Is he black enough (Senator Barak Obama)?' It's not a simple question

Sen. Barack Obama is the first black American with a realistic chance at becoming president, and that fact has created a number of racially edgy moments during the campaign.

Obama's presidential rival, Sen. Joe Biden, called Obama "clean" and "articulate," which set off a national discussion of the term "articulate" as a patronizing way to describe a black man.

Then NBC News' Tim Russert asked Obama on the most "Establishment" news program of all, "Meet the Press," to defend some comments made by black actor Harry Belafonte, who implied that Obama would be held to a preposterous standard: Account for the behavior and statements of all black people everywhere.

But perhaps the most racially uncomfortable question of all arrived this year from Obama's fellow black citizens, and still seems to hang in the political air: Is he black enough?

Indeed, at a convention of black journalists at Bally's, that very question was the subject of a roundtable discussion. In an appearance at the convention Friday, Obama dealt with the subject head-on, first leavening the discussion with humor: "I'm sorry I'm a little bit late. But you guys keep on asking whether I'm black enough."

The packed Bally's ballroom broke up in laughter.

The question, though, is a serious one because the answer might help explain a perplexing fact of the Obama campaign: In a Washington Post poll earlier this year, 44 percent of blacks favored Obama, while 33 percent were for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Although Obama had made significant gains in the poll, his support among blacks still seemed surprisingly low.

Observers of African-American attitudes have hypothesized that some black voters aren't convinced Obama, raised by a white mother, identifies sufficiently with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. The assumption here is that he doesn't truly understand the experience of growing up like some other blacks in an impoverished, urban, mostly segregated environment.

That attitude leads to another set of questions about the meaning of black identity in a country with a history of painful racial exclusion and violent terror. There are those, however, who believe the question of whether he's sufficiently black is largely irrelevant.

Lorenzo Morris is the chairman of the political science department at Howard University and believes black voters don't believe Obama is electable.

Black voters, in his estimation, are quite savvy and know that Obama, being new to politics, doesn't have a strong infrastructure in state parties across the country. They fear he's the new Howard Dean, Morris said, referring to the fl ash-in-the-pan 2004 candidacy of the former Vermont governor.

Moreover, he said, black voters are plenty comfortable with Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as candidates who will represent their interests and advance a progressive agenda on issues such as urban renewal, health care, jobs and civil rights.

Melinda Chateauvert, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Maryland, said black women in particular may think Clinton, as a woman who has balanced work and a sometimes highly tumultuous family life, can understand their concerns more than Obama does.

(Then there's Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has always been beloved in the black community, with the author Toni Morrison going so far as to call him the "first black president.")

Of course, the entire notion that black voters are a monolith and can somehow be expected to automatically support a black candidate is just shy of offensive anyway.

At a house party for Clinton in Las Vegas on Thursday, Rekaya Gibson and Rova Williams said they like and admire Obama, but said they support Clinton because she has more experience.

When asked about the opportunity to back the first black president, Williams, a retiree, brushed the question aside and turned back to Clinton: "I feel no kinship, but every now and then we are sent leaders, and we shouldn't pass these people by."

Former Sen. Joe Neal, Nevada's first black state senator, is supporting Edwards, he said, because he senses Edwards is the man for the moment, the leader who can return the country to a more Rooseveltian standing. As for backing a black candidate, he said, "I'm not about feeling good. I want something done."

For Lorenzo Martin, the publisher of the Chicago Standard, a group of black-oriented community weeklies in Obama's hometown of Chicago, Obama's blackness is not the issue. "I don't think being black is the question," Martin said. "Obviously he's black." The real issue, he said, is whether he surrounds himself with black advisers, and whether he advances a progressive urban agenda. The jury is still out, he said.

Chateauvert said the question of Obama's blackness is real and contributing to the skepticism among black voters.

Unlike previous black leaders, he doesn't come from the tradition of civil rights leaders who came out of the black clergy, she said.

Instead, Obama went to Harvard Law School, where he was the fi rst black president of the prestigious law review, and then was a community organizer. Part of his problem is that he was born after the civil rights movement had matured, which means he doesn't have the close ties to a movement that other leaders have experienced.

Chateauvert said Obama is suffering collateral damage from the rivalry between blacks here because of slavery and more recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. (Obama's father was a Kenyan goatherder.) She said some American-born blacks have failed to empathize with the great struggles of immigrants, who themselves are dealing with the legacy of colonialism, tyranny and underdevelopment in Africa and places such as Haiti.

She also said his support in the white community may raise questions among some blacks about his commitment to affi rmative action, minority contracting and other important issues in the black community.

All of these separate issues add up to something, Chateauvert said, although she had trouble naming it and wouldn't call it distrust.

Obama confronted all of these issues head-on at the close of his presentation before black journalists Friday.

"This is a puzzling question, and it's been perpetuated through our press, and we should ask ourselves why that is."

He said it can't be his physical appearance or his background as a community activist, civil rights lawyer or legislator who worked hard on issues important to urban blacks, such as racial pro- filing, jobs and health care.

"What it really lays bare is that we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks, then there must be something wrong with you."

Then there's his Harvard problem, he added. He appealed to the journalists in the room, many of whom were also educated at elite universities, to empathize with him on that score.

And then he closed by addressing the survey data referenced by Morris, the Howard University political scientist, who said blacks probably think Obama will never win the support of the Democratic establishment: "Part of it has to do with fear. We don't want to get too excited about our prospects because we'll get let down in the end," Obama said. "Well, my attitude is, let's try it."

Source: Las Vegas Sun

J. Patrick Coolican can be reached at 259-8814 or

at patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com