White conservatives say it's their turn for empowerment

latimes.com
Are Obama's policies fueling the angry protests, or is race part of the equation?
By Robin Abcarian and Kate Linthicum and Richard Fausset
September 17, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and Atlanta

Last weekend, Cindy Wilkerson, a 44-year-old former social worker, helped organize three busloads of protesters who rode from Mississippi to Washington for the big protest targeting President Obama and his policies. The passengers, all white, wore T-shirts identifying themselves without irony as "Freedom Riders."Decades ago, that phrase evoked something quite different. It was bestowed on the predominantly black and white activists who traveled to the Deep South to challenge segregation -- and were sometimes met with hostility and violence."We were riding for freedom," said Wilkerson. "For the freedom of Mississippians and all Americans. . . . The consensus is that this is not a left-wing government, but that this is more of a Marxist [government], you know?"The Age of Obama has brought many things to the American scene -- none more important than the proof that skin color is no barrier to success. But for some white Americans, it has also helped crystallize a sense of dislocation, anger and powerlessness.Some, like Wilkerson's group, have even adopted the language and techniques used by blacks, women, Latinos and gays in their civil rights struggles. But some analysts ask: Is this white victimhood? Strident TV host Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel tapped into the feeling this summer when he accused Obama of having "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."For some, it was reinforced by the sight of a New Haven, Conn., firefighter telling senators that the Latina judge Obama had nominated to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, had discriminated against him in an appellate case because he is white. Or Obama condemning the arrest of a black Harvard professor by a white police officer."White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to," wrote commentator Patrick J. Buchanan in response to Obama's speech on race during the 2008 campaign. "This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard." Among the grievances: affirmative action provisions that "advance black applicants over white applicants."Wilkerson complained that Saturday's protest did not win sufficient media coverage. "It's like we are the forgotten people," she said. She says she believes the movement is not about race -- a black man, she said, helped design the Freedom Riders T-shirt -- nor victimization, but about legitimate disagreements with Obama's policies.Ron Walters, an emeritus professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland who was a campaign manager for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1980s presidential bids, has written that today's anti-tax "tea party" protests and heated town hall rhetoric are reminiscent of the conservative resurgence of the 1970s. That movement was driven in part by racial hostility and the ability of its leaders to convince white followers that they were victims. (The years after the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act saw court-ordered integration of schools and the adoption of affirmative action programs.)"Now that's precisely what we have today," Walters said Wednesday. "In terms of many people who lost the election feeling disempowered and disenfranchised. The movement of conservatism is dethroned. People are feeling, therefore, resentful about that and determined to demonstrate that resentment in ways that intimidate people, quite frankly."

Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-white-victimhood17-2009sep17,0,2618101.story?page=2

Obama signs fair pay legislation

CNN Politics.com
January 29, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama signed a new pay-equity measure into law Thursday, effectively overturning a 2007 Supreme Court decision that made it harder to sue for pay discrimination.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, named for a former Goodyear Tire employee who sued the company for gender discrimination in 1998, is the first bill signed by Obama.
"It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign ... we are upholding one of this nation's first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness," Obama said at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
"If we stay focused, as Lilly did, and keep standing for what's right, as Lilly did, we will close that pay gap and ensure that our daughters have the same rights, the same chances, and the same freedom to pursue their dreams as our sons."
The new law removes a provision requiring employees seeking equal pay to file a complaint within 180 days of receiving their first unfair paycheck.
Under the measure, employees instead have the right to file within 180 days of their most recent paycheck.
Supporters of the Ledbetter Act have argued that, under the old standard, an employer merely needed to hide unfair pay practices for three months before being able to continue them without penalty forever.
Lilly Ledbetter was awarded $360,000 in back pay by a federal judge in Alabama, but the verdict was overturned in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in May 2007.
The court said that even though she filed her complaint within 180 days of when she first learned that she was getting paid less than comparable male employees, she had failed to file within 180 days of the first unequal paycheck.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, the Ledbetter Act proved to be a significant point of contention between Obama and Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Obama heavily emphasized what he called the plan's benefits to working women, while McCain criticized it as a boon for trial lawyers.
Obama later danced with Ledbetter at one of his inaugural balls. She also spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
"My case is over. I will never receive the pay I deserve," Ledbetter said in that speech. "But there will be a far richer reward if we secure fair pay for our children and grandchildren, so that no one will ever again experience the discrimination that I did."
All AboutLilly Ledbetter • Barack Obama



Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/29/obama.fair.pay/index.html

Record Retrospective: Obama on affirmative action

Harvard Law Record
Issue date: 10/30/08 Section: Etc.

In five days, Senator Barack Obama '91 could become the the first African-American and the second Harvard Law School graduate (after Rutherford B. Hayes, Class of 1845) to be elected President of the United States.

If Obama is elected next Tuesday, it will not be his first historic election. Obama was the first African-American to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. Obama's tenure as Law Review President was not without controversy. Indeed, an unusually low number of women were selected to be Review editors from the class of 1992, leading to considerable debate about the Law Review's selection policies and the importance of its affirmative action program, which at the time, was limited to consideration of race and physical handicap.
Obama personally responded to the controversy by writing a lengthy letter explaining both the Review's selection policy and his personal experience with affirmative action. The letter was published in Volume 91, Number 7 (November 16, 1990) of the Harvard Law Record. It is reprinted below in its entirety.
A.K.

Review President Explains Affirmative Action Policy
To the Editor:
Since the merits of the Law Review's selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues, I'd like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works.
As our Treasurer, Lisa Hay, explained in your first article on our selection policy (October 12th), all students who wish to become editors of the Law Review participate in a writing competition at the end of their first year. The entire writing competition is conducted on a double-blind basis, to ensure absolute anonymity. Each submission is graded by at least three different Review editors to help decrease the effects that any particular editor's subjective opinions may have on the final scores. ...

Let me end by emphasizing that the Review is committed to including the widest range of viewpoints on its editorial staff, and strongly encourages 1L women and men of all backgrounds and ideological stripes to participate in this year's writing competition.
I'd also like to add one personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review's general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen's personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review. Indeed, my election last year as President of the Review would seem to indicate that at least among Review staff, and hopefully for the majority of professors at Harvard, affirmative action in no way tarnishes the accomplishments of those who are members of historically underrepresented groups.
I would therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area ia [sic] most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen's extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow undeserved. Such attributes speak less to the merits or problems of affirmative action policies, and more to the tragically deep-rooted ignorance and bias that exists in the legal community and our society at large.

Barack Obama President, Harvard Law Review Published November 16, 1990
[To read the entire story, go to:
http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/10/30/Etc/Record.Retrospective.Obama.On.Affirmative.Action-3515294.shtml

Racial amnesia may be the cure

The Boston Globe
By Anita F. Hill October 29, 2008

MANY OF US who advocate for civil rights lament the fact that the country seems to have forgotten the role race has played in the American experience. We even accuse America of suffering from racial amnesia. Yet, racial amnesia may help Barack Obama and other Democrats on Election Day.
When some Americans remember race, they are reminded of why they and their parents started voting Republican. As President Lyndon Johnson predicted, the exodus began when he supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Even as many in the country were pushing back from racist behavior, those who rejected the federal government's authority to usher in social change captured a portion of the country's political imagination. For them, the laws enacted in the 1960s represented unwarranted government interference on many fronts, and actually contributed to the racial divisions.
States throughout the South abandoned the Democratic Party. Border states and states in the Midwest followed suit, ending histories of straight Democratic Party line representation. Economic concerns played a part as well. But as Sam Gibbons, a Democrat from Florida, observed in 1994, "Republicans have been able to capitalize on [race], creating what is, in effect, an all-white party."
With some, the 1960s' concept of race's relationship to their political choices still holds sway. In 2004, George W. Bush slightly altered the party's racial profile by capturing 44 percent of the Latino vote, but many questioned whether that was an anomaly.
Not surprisingly, because my reality was different, my recollections from the 1960s differ from those who fled the party. I recall a country that rejected Jim Crow laws and committed government resources to assist underfunded and outmanned civil rights champions in overturning centuries of neglect and oppression.
The booming economy of the period played a critical role in encouraging feelings of benevolence. We could afford to put aside racial differences and spread resources like jobs and education. Still, we are yet to come to a consensus on what the reality of race was even then.
Today, as the economy continues to slide, government intervention is not only necessary, it is also desirable. In this context, many are ready to put race aside.
Nearly two generations since that initial shift in voting patterns, some racial memories are either fading or being altered. In a recent CNN poll, 7 out of 10 said that race is not a factor in their decision in the presidential election.
Obama is poised to change America's electoral map by being the first Democratic nominee in decades to win in Virginia, Iowa, and Indiana. Hispanic voters, who helped Bush capture Colorado and New Mexico, favor Obama over John McCain. Democrats in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama may take congressional seats even though Obama may not carry the states.
Regardless of one's political leaning, most would acknowledge that the country is aware of its racial and ethnic diversity, and that for most Americans the stark contrast between the "black experience" and the "white experience" no longer exists. [To read the entire editorial, go to: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/29/racial_amnesia_may_be_the_cure/]

Racism Without Racists

The New York Times
October 5, 2008

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
One of the fallacies this election season is that if Barack Obama is paying an electoral price for his skin tone, it must be because of racists.

On the contrary, the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed “racism without racists.”

The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable.

Most of the lost votes aren’t those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.

Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously.

“When we fixate on the racist individual, we’re focused on the least interesting way that race works,” said Phillip Goff, a social psychologist at U.C.L.A. who focuses his research on “racism without racists.” “Most of the way race functions is without the need for racial animus.”

For decades, experiments have shown that even many whites who earnestly believe in equal rights will recommend hiring a white job candidate more often than a person with identical credentials who is black. In the experiments, the applicant’s folder sometimes presents the person as white, sometimes as black, but everything else is the same. The white person thinks that he or she is selecting on the basis of nonracial factors like experience.

Research suggests that whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about — in other words, in ambiguous circumstances rather like an electoral campaign.

For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.

White participants recommend hiring a white applicant with borderline qualifications 76 percent of the time, while recommending an identically qualified black applicant only 45 percent of the time.[To read the entire story, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05kristof.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin ]

A losing proposition

USA Today
September 23, 2008

Republicans since Reagan have lined up to oppose affirmative action but have found little political gain in doing so. After a summer fling with the issue, McCain appears to have concluded that he need not go there.
By Peter Schmidt

When Sen. John McCain voiced support over the summer for a proposed Arizona ballot measure curtailing the use of affirmative-action preferences, some critics said he was latching onto a wedge issue long used by the GOP to split Democrats along racial lines.
In the two months since McCain's remarks to ABC's George Stephanopoulos, the senator of Arizona has been conspicuously silent on the issue. Given the politics of affirmative action, that may well be a wise decision.
(Keith Simmons, USA TODAY)
After all, it's a mistake to assume McCain stands only to gain politically by supporting such measures, which appear likely to be on the ballot in Colorado and Nebraska this November.
Affirmative action is indeed a wedge issue. But this wedge has not just divided Democrats. It has also has badly split the GOP.
Social conservatives may have cheered McCain's opposition to affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other government entities, but his stand could cost him support among other key Republican constituencies.
Many leaders of big business, for example, have long embraced affirmative action as a cost-effective tool for staving off discrimination complaints and diversifying their workforces. When the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on affirmative action in college admissions in 2003 — in two cases involving the University of Michigan — nearly 70 Fortune 500 companies signed on to friend-of-the-court briefs urging the justices to leave the university's race-conscious admissions policies intact.
Meanwhile, Republican political pragmatists have long worried that opposition to affirmative action will alienate the nation's growing Hispanic electorate and limit the GOP's appeal among women. If McCain's critics are able to use his affirmative action stand — or his increasingly tough stand on immigration — to paint him as racially insensitive, he could lose support from moderate voters.
Avoiding the affirmative-action issue probably was not an option for any presidential candidate this election year, even if the state ballot measures had not come up. The political rise of Democratic nominee Barack Obama — who opposes such ballot initiative as threatening the progress of minorities and women and "all too often designed to drive a wedge between people" — almost naturally evokes discussions of how much the nation has moved beyond its past racial divisions, and whether blacks and other minorities still need the leg up that affirmative action offers.
But in allying himself with those who seek to abolish such preferences, McCain is charging off in a direction where no recent GOP president has gotten far.
Ronald Reagan harshly criticized affirmative action, but in two terms in office, he failed to issue a single executive order ending or even restricting its use by the federal government. His administration was left gun-shy as a result of the uproar over its attempt in 1982 to restore the tax-exempt status of South Carolina's private Bob Jones University, which prohibited interracial dating. (It took just days for his administration to reverse itself.) [To read the entire story, go to: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/09/a-losing-propos.html ]

Palin, Obama & Affirmative Action

America, The National Catholic Weekly
Posted at: 2008-09-02 00:29:00.0
Author: Michael Sean Winters

The first CNN poll taken after both the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention and the surprise selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s running mate showed surprisingly little movement. The race remains essentially tied despite record viewership for Obama’s speech and the countless commentaries about how choosing Palin was a "game changer." This election is not a game and little has changed.
But, there is a deep irony in Obama’s and Palin’s inability to move their numbers and it has to do with affirmative action. The real reason Obama is lagging behind the rest of the Democratic Party in national polls is because he is black. And a large number of people, especially white, ethnic Catholics, argue that their forefathers, and foremothers, came to these shores with nothing and made a life for themselves and a future for their families. They did not need government hand-outs or affirmative action. The resentment at affirmative action was encapsulated in the famous "white hand" ad run by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms in which a white hand held a rejection letter while the voice-over intones, "You needed that job… but the company had to hire a minority." Helms won the election.
This "noble immigrants v. ignoble recipients of affirmative action" storyline is not entirely accurate for a variety of reasons. The GI Bill may not have been a hand-out but it was definitely a government hand-up. And, white, ethnic immigrants did not come with the burden of slavery weighing down their history, a history of families torn apart, a history of being robbed of all personal power and autonomy. And, once they acclimated, they also blended in. Affirmative action may have been unfair to some. It may not even have worked. But, there is a reason it corresponded to a felt societal need to repair the damage done to black Americans by slavery that was different in kind, and not just in degree, from the damage done to white ethnics by the various traumas of immigration. Most importantly for this election, the narrative fails because Barack Obama did not get into Harvard Law as a result of affirmative action: He got into Harvard Law because he is smarter than the rest of us.
So, along comes Ms. Palin. What precisely qualified her for her job? Writing in The New Republic, Marty Peretz commented, "To have dug so hard and to have come up with such circumstantial assets as being a woman and an evangelical Christian is really not much. There are millions of them, even pretty ones, which speaks to another political asset." It is this last asset, prettiness, that jumped to my mind when the CNN poll reported that 38% of those polled viewed her favorably. Not one of those questioned, I suspect, was well informed about how the Alaska Governor had handled budget negotiations with the legislature in Juneau, nor whether she hailed from the isolationist, Pat Buchanan wing of the conservative movement or the neo-conservative imperialist, Bill Kristol wing of the GOP. But, she sure is pretty.
Pretty. Born-again. Most of all, a woman. If the selection of Palin doesn’t count as affirmative action, I don’t know what does. You can picture the ad. A man’s hand putting down a cell phone. Voice-over: "You wanted that job…but they had to give it to a woman." The camera pulls back and shows a disgruntled Mitt Romney, still looking at the phone. He turns to the television which shows Palin arm and arm with McCain. "Here’s looking at you sweetheart," Mitt says bitterly, crying in his Arnold Palmer.
The polling numbers will not change much unless events intervene because the polls tell us less about Palin and Obama than they do about ourselves and our prejudices.
Michael Sean Winters
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=215611EB-5056-8928-108B9F6A78037DEC

Caving To The Right On Affirmative Action

Center for American Progress
CIVIL RIGHTS
July 28, 2008

On ABC News's This Week yesterday, host George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about how "opponents of affirmative action" in his home state of Arizona are pushing a ballot initiative "that would do away" with the equal opportunity program. "Do you support that?" asked Stephanopoulos. "Yes, I do," replied McCain, adding that he had "not seen the details of some of these proposals," but that he's "always opposed quotas." Asked again specifically about "the one here in Arizona," McCain responded, "I support it, yes." McCain's support for the current anti-affirmative action initiative is a reversal of the stance he took in 1998 when Arizona previously considered a similar referendum. At the time, McCain said that "rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide every child in America to fulfill their expectations." Caught off-guard by McCain's reversal on equal opportunity, his own spokesman Tucker Bounds struggled to explain the contradictory stances to ABC News, saying, "I do not have a firm enough grasp on the historical and relevant context of McCain's remark in 1998 to give you the pushback that this question deserves." Later, the McCain campaign "refused to say whether it stands by the candidate's announcement that he supports the ballot initiative," instead saying in a statement that McCain "has always been opposed to government-mandated hiring quotas."WHAT MCCAIN IS BACKING: In his interview with Stephanopoulos, McCain justified his support for the Arizona initiative by saying, "I do not believe in quotas." But the effort to dismantle equal opportunity in Arizona has nothing to do with quotas, which were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court 30 years ago. The proposed amendment to the Arizona's constitution, which is being pushed by the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, seeks to "prohibit preferential treatment or discrimination" by Arizona governmental entities "based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting." "The initiative is part of a nationwide attempt by Ward Connerly to have governmental affirmative action policies eliminated." Connerly's anti-affirmative action initiatives are set to capitalize on the "tensions of race, class, and ethnicity" stirred up by anti-immigrant efforts. Connerly, who successfully outlawed affirmative action in California, is also supporting initiatives in Colorado and Nebraska. On CNN's Late Edition yesterday, McCain declined to take a position on the Colorado initiative, saying, "I'm not familiar with the referendum." The language of Connerly's Colorado amendment is essentially the same as the Arizona amendment McCain endorsed on ABC.MCCAIN'S RECORD ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: As many news outlets have pointed out, McCain's embrace of Arizona's anti-affirmative action ballot initiative stands in opposition to his record on equal opportunity. Not only has McCain previously resisted state-level efforts to dismantle affirmative action, as he did in 1998, but he has also defended such programs on the federal level. In 1998, McCain worked with Democrats to defeat an amendment that would have ended a program that sought "to give 10 percent of all Federally financed highway contracts to companies owned by minorities and women." In 1999, while speaking at the Unity convention, McCain declared, "I'm in favor of affirmative action and I support it." He reiterated this support as recently as April 2008, telling reporters in Ohio, "all of us are for affirmative action to try to give assistance to those who need it, whether it be African-American or other groups of Americans that need it." BENDING TO RIGHT-WING PRESSURE?: Throughout the election season, conservatives have been pressuring McCain to get behind their efforts to dismantle affirmative action. In June, after McCain's campaign repeatedly refused to take a position on the initiatives, Connerly told ABC News that it would help McCain politically to support the initiatives. McCain should say, "I believe that our country is at its best when it treats everybody as an equal and I have read these initiatives and they do precisely that," said Connerly. Other conservatives have been calling for McCain to back Connerly as well. In April, hardline right winger Pat Buchanan published a column wondering "where does McCain stand." Writing on the National Review's blog, Center for Equal Opportunity President Roger Clegg asked rhetorically of McCain, "[D]o you favor the ballot initiatives" and "Do you support the anti-preference plank in the 2004 Republican platform?" Reacting to McCain's ABC interview, Politico's Jonathan Martin wrote that McCain's answers on affirmative action and gay adoption are indicative of the fact that he has a "lack of interest in cultural issues," but that he knows there are positions he is "supposed to take" in order to please the conservative base. With his support of the Arizona referendum, McCain has now pleased one part of this base. Clegg responded by declaring, "Kudos to John McCain."

McCain, Obama wrangle over affirmative action

The Houston Chronicle
chron.com
July 28, 2008

CHICAGO — Presidential challengers John McCain and Barack Obama sparred over affirmative action Sunday, with McCain backing an effort to end state and locally run minority preferences and Obama saying policies that consider race need to continue.
McCain, speaking on ABC's This Week, said he backs a proposed ballot initiative in his home state of Arizona that would prohibit affirmative action policies by state and local governments.
The initiative is part of a nationwide attempt by Ward Connerly to have governmental affirmative action policies eliminated. Connerly, a conservative African-American businessman from Sacramento, Calif., who led a successful drive to ban affirmative action in California, has been trying to do the same thing in other states.
Asked Sunday whether he supported Connerly's efforts in Arizona, McCain said: "Yes, I do," adding that he had not seen the details of the proposal.
McCain's endorsement was an apparent shift on affirmative action. The Republican senator has spoken out against quota systems, but he also has backed affirmative action in certain cases. He opposed a 1998 resolution in the Arizona legislature that asked voters to eliminate most preferences based on race, gender or ethnic origin.
"Rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide every child in America to fulfill their expectations," he said at the time.
Obama, speaking at the Unity minority journalism convention in Chicago, accused McCain of flip-flopping and reminded convention attendees about McCain's 1998 remarks.
"And I think he's right," he said. "You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people."
The Illinois Democratic senator said America has made progress on race relations but argued that there is still a need for affirmative action policies in the country.
"I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so there it is not a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life," he said.
"I've also said that affirmative action is not going to be the long-term solution to the problems of race in America, because, frankly, if you've got 50 percent of African-American or Latino kids dropping out of high school, it doesn't really matter what you do in terms of affirmative action. Those kids aren't going to college."
Obama's Unity appearance coincided with his renewed efforts to appeal to minority journalists and media. A week ago, his campaign named a new "communications director for African-America media" and is also appointing similar outreach specialists at more local levels.
At Unity, organizers reminded conference participants that his appearance was being broadcast nationally and they should maintain "professional decorum."
Before Obama arrived, a panel discussed the question of journalistic objectivity, including whether journalists should clap for politicians in public.
As it happened, Obama received a standing ovation from much of the audience at the start and end of his appearance. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5910581.html

Obama's success fuels affirmative action's foes

[Note: See remarks of Senator McCain's spokesperson regarding Affirmative Action]
By CHARLES BABINGTON – Jun 28, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama's political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports.
Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools?
"The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist," said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to end what he and others consider policies of reverse discrimination. "That rationale is undercut in a major way when you look at the success of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York battled Obama to the end of the Democratic primary process.
Other critics of affirmative action agree. "Obama is further evidence that the great majority of Americans reject discrimination, reject prejudice," said Todd F. Gaziano, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Not so fast, say supporters of affirmative action. Just because Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and other minorities have reached the top of their professions does not mean that ordinary blacks, Latinos or women are free from day-to-day biases that deny them equal access to top schools or jobs, they say.
As affirmative action's power has diminished, minority enrollment has fallen at many prominent colleges, said Gary Orfield, an authority on the subject at UCLA.
"If people get the impression from Obama's success that the racial problems of this country have been solved, that would be very sad," Orfield said. "In some ways we have moved backwards" in recent years, he said.
Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said, "Exceptions don't make the rule."
"By any measure, Obama and Clinton are clearly exceptional individuals," he said. "When you really examine the masses of Americans, especially women and people of color, you still find incredible disparities," which justify the continuation of affirmative action programs.
Obama, who asks voters neither to support nor oppose him on the basis of his race, has dealt gently with affirmative action. He says his two young daughters have enjoyed great advantages, and therefore should not receive special consideration because of their race.
"On the other hand," he said in an April debate, "if there's a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that's something that should be taken into account" by people such as college admission officers.
"So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination," Obama said. "But I think that it can't be a quota system and it can't be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black, or white, or Hispanic, male or female."
Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, said McCain's commitment to equal opportunity for all Americans "means aggressively enforcing our nation's anti-discrimination laws."
"It also means rejecting affirmative action plans and quotas that give weight to one group of Americans at the expense of another," Bounds said. "Plans that result in quotas, where such plans have not been judicially created to remedy a specific, proven act of discrimination, only result in more discrimination." [To read the entire story, go to: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghfgGhRuPij-DpGKqDUXNzxxaFnAD91J1LCG0 ]

Paterson, at N.A.A.C.P., Warns of Racism’s Power

The New York Times
July 18, 2008
By JEREMY W. PETERS

CINCINNATI — David A. Paterson, in his first major speech to a national audience since becoming governor of New York, said on Thursday that even as black Americans rejoice about the possibility that Senator Barack Obama could become president, they cannot lose sight of the serious social and economic ills that plague their community and should remain mindful of the racism that still exists.
“The gap between the haves and have-nots right in our own community is wider than it has ever been before,” Mr. Paterson told a crowd of thousands at the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual convention here.
“No matter how prosperous we are, no matter how well heeled we may be, no matter how ambitious and successful we have been, we still can be cast under the same net regardless of our circumstances.”
Mr. Paterson, who is New York’s first black governor and only the third black man since Reconstruction to lead a state, addressed the convention as the intersection between race and politics in the United States appears especially fraught. Recent polls have shown that whites and blacks hold very different views of Mr. Obama, and that despite the senator’s candidacy, blacks do not believe that race relations have significantly improved.
Addressing those fissures in his speech, the governor said that he was not sure whether Americans would be able to put their differences aside in this election and support Mr. Obama.
“Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all of our history to embrace an African-American man who has the right policies?” he said. “We will find out.” [To view the whole story, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/nyregion/18paterson.html?th&emc=th ]

Might Obama’s Success Undercut Affirmative Action?

Diverse Issues in Higher Education

by Associated Press
Jul 2, 2008, 22:55
WASHINGTON
Barack Obama’s political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy he supports.
Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a Black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools?
“The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist,” said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to end what he and others consider policies of reverse discrimination. “That rationale is undercut in a major way when you look at the success of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York battled Obama to the end of the Democratic primary process.
Other critics of affirmative action agree. “Obama is further evidence that the great majority of Americans reject discrimination, reject prejudice,” said Todd F. Gaziano, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Not so fast, say supporters of affirmative action. Just because Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and other minorities have reached the top of their professions does not mean that ordinary Blacks, Hispanics or women are free from day-to-day biases that deny them equal access to top schools or jobs, they say.
As affirmative action’s power has diminished, minority enrollment has fallen at many prominent colleges, said Dr. Gary Orfield, an authority on the subject at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“If people get the impression from Obama’s success that the racial problems of this country have been solved, that would be very sad,” Orfield said. “In some ways we have moved backwards” in recent years, he said.
Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said, “Exceptions don’t make the rule.”
“By any measure, Obama and Clinton are clearly exceptional individuals,” he said. “When you really examine the masses of Americans, especially women and people of color, you still find incredible disparities,” which justify the continuation of affirmative action programs.
Obama, who asks voters neither to support nor oppose him on the basis of his race, has dealt gently with affirmative action. He says his two young daughters have enjoyed great advantages and therefore should not receive special consideration because of their race.
“On the other hand,” he said in an April debate, “if there’s a young White person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that’s something that should be taken into account” by people such as college admission officers.
“So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination,”' Obama said. “But I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is Black, or White, or Hispanic, male or female.”
Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, said McCain’s commitment to equal opportunity “means aggressively enforcing our nation’s anti-discrimination laws.”
“It also means rejecting affirmative action plans and quotas that give weight to one group of Americans at the expense of another,” Bounds said. “Plans that result in quotas, where such plans have not been judicially created to remedy a specific, proven act of discrimination, only result in more discrimination.”
Affirmative action, a term coined in the early 1960s, is a loosely defined set of policies meant to help rectify discrimination based on race, religion, sex or national origin. It quickly proved controversial, especially in the public arena, as some White males alleged they were losing government jobs and public university admissions to less qualified minorities and women.
The Supreme Court ruled 30 years ago that universities could use race as one factor in choosing applicants, but it banned quotas. Subsequent court decisions placed more restrictions on affirmative action, and Connerly and others launched ballot initiatives that virtually crippled it in some states.
In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, pushed by Connerly. It bars all government institutions from giving preferential treatment to people based on race or gender, and particularly affects college admissions and government contracts. Similar measures passed in Michigan and Washington state. Connerly hopes to have versions on the ballots this fall in Colorado, Nebraska and Arizona.
The erosion of affirmative action is forcing colleges and other institutions to seek new ways of pursuing diversity, with mixed results.
“What had been a national policy is being dismantled, state by state,” University of Washington President Mark A. Emmert wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last year. He said his campus has learned that it still can “ensure diversity and access to higher education, particularly by taking socio-economic factors into account.”
While Emmert laments the erosion of affirmative action, others say it is overdue. It’s great if Obama’s success hastens the process, they say, but previous achievements by Blacks in business, government, entertainment and other fields already have undermined the argument that racial discrimination is rampant. [To read the entire story, go to: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11365.shtml ]

HUGH B. PRICE: The Obama victory: giving affirmative action its due

Brookings Institution
Posted on Tue, Jun. 24, 2008

Voters of varying ethnic and economic backgrounds have put an African-American one election away from smashing the loftiest glass ceiling in American society. Predictably, Barack Obama's capture of the Democratic Party nomination for president has triggered a flurry of post-mortems about why this point of inflexion in our nation's history has occurred.
Pundits and pollsters have explanations aplenty. Some say the decline in urban violence has tamped down white anxiety about black people. More and more young voters these days judge candidates on their merits, it's said, instead of their race, gender or sexual preference, for that matter. Racially incendiary political campaigns and ads supposedly are passe.
There is much to be said for these theories. But another explanation rings out that politicians and experts ignore, or perhaps hesitate to utter, because the phrase is as so radioactive politically and legally. I refer, of course, to affirmative action.
I recently attended my 45th reunion at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Four other black classmates entered with me in September 1963 (three of us graduated). In that pre-affirmative action era, we comprised a scant 2 percent of the freshman class. The make-up of the other classes was about the same. As a leading bastion of male education, Amherst accepted no women back then. I vividly recall from prospecting for dates that the women's colleges in the Pioneer Valley weren't any more diverse ethnically.
In those days, the majority of fraternities at my college refused to accept black students. Since the frats served as the hub of most campus social life, I hardly got to know most of my classmates. Last month's reunion made up for a half century of lost opportunity as we discovered the vast commonalities among us in terms of professional aspirations and setbacks, family experiences and joys, physical ailments and laments over deceased classmates.
Two generations of American voters have come of age since I stood with roughly 200,000 people on the Washington Mall on August 28, 1963, straining to hear Rev. Martin Luther King's soul-stirring speech that punctuated the March on Washington. If anything, his words that day resonate even more today in light of the Obama victory. As King intoned, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Since 1963, millions of Americans have studied together and lived together on college and university campuses that are vastly more integrated than they were in my day. We have worked alongside one another in teams in large companies, small businesses, municipal agencies, hospitals and community organizations. As members of the military, we have fought side-by-side in battles and served in close synchronization onboard aircraft carriers. Our colleagues, co-workers and bosses now come in all races, genders and sexual persuasions. We've grown accustomed to seeing someone in addition to white males get elected, pilot spacecraft and smash glass ceilings in every realm of American life.
The growing acceptance of diversity that fueled Senator Obama's victory did not occur by accident or osmosis. It wasn't the result of immaculate reconciliation. No, it took years of conscious and conscientious affirmative action by the gatekeepers of opportunity-in college admissions, in hiring and promotion, in the allocation of business opportunity-to systematically expose two generations of Americans to one another and gradually teach a gratifyingly large proportion of the population to understand and trust, respect and rely upon one another.
As we strive this election season to rise above ethnicity, let us give this powerful-and patently successful-engine of social and racial progress its due. Affirmative action unquestionably has made our robustly diverse nation a more perfect union.
Hugh B. Price is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former president and CEO of the National Urban League. http://www.bnd.com/285/story/378174.html

Will Affirmative Action Roil '08 Race?

ABC News
Obama Against Connerly Initiatives; McCain Still Mum

By TEDDY DAVIS, TAHMAN BRADLEY, and GREGORY WALLACE
June 20, 2008—

Democrat Barack Obama opposes three state ballot measures which would end affirmative action in Colorado, Arizona, and Nebraska. Republican John McCain, by contrast, continues to take no position, according to a campaign spokesperson.
The McCain campaign's reluctance to take a stance after multiple requests from ABC News has led Ward Connerly, the proponent of the measures, to say that the presumptive Republican nominee is missing an opportunity to draw a sharp contrast with his Democratic rival.
"If (McCain) came out and said, 'I believe that our country is at its best when it treats everybody as an equal' . . . and I have read these initiatives and they do precisely that. . . . He puts Sen. Obama in one hell of a spot," Connerly told ABC News.
"Senator Obama has to be careful, as he opposes our initiatives, that he not be seen as an anti-white male kind of candidate," said Connerly. "White males typically vote, probably 70/30 in favor of these initiatives. If Sen. Obama isn't careful, he can get saddled with the impression, the image, of being an angry black man, despite the soothing rhetoric that he uses."
Connerly, who has led efforts which ended race- and gender-based affirmative action in California and Michigan, contributed $500 to Obama's campaign on Feb. 28. He made this donation even though the Illinois Democrat lent his voice to a 2006 radio ad seeking to defeat Connerly's ballot measure in the Wolverine State.
"I really thought that Senator Obama in his heart of hearts would like to get beyond race. He's a multiracial guy," said Connerly, who himself is multi-racial. "Multiracial people understand race in a far more nuanced way than those who are quote 'mono-racial.'"
Obama lost Connerly's backing on June 10 when the Illinois Democrat came out against Connerly's Civil Rights Initiatives in DeWayne Wickham's U.S.A. Today column. [To read the entire story, go to: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=5213420&page=1 ]

Barack Obama Comes Out Against Ward Connerly's Latest Campaigns

The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 11, 2008

Ward Connerly—the former University of California regent, prominent affirmative action critic, and Republican activist—announced back in February that he had donated $500 to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign. In a subsequent Washington Post article, he said he had given Mr. Obama the money to honor him “for trying to take race out of the body politic.” He said the campaigns of Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton show that there is no longer a need for affirmative-action preferences “to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism.”
Senator Obama, however, had already showed that he disagreed with Mr. Connerly on affirmative action, having appeared in a 2006 radio advertisement opposing Proposal 2, the Michigan ballot measure banning the use of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies. (The measure passed overwhelmingly that fall.)
An article published in USA Today this week suggests that neither Mr. Connerly’s praise and donation nor the passage of time have done much to change Mr. Obama’s views. A spokeswoman for his campaign told DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for the newspaper, that Mr. Obama opposes Mr. Connerly’s efforts to get measures similar to Proposal 2 passed in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska this fall.
The spokeswoman, Candice Tolliver, is quoted as saying: “Sen. Obama believes in a country in which opportunity is available to all Americans, regardless of their race, gender or economic status. That’s why he opposes these ballot initiatives, which would roll back opportunity for millions of Americans and cripple efforts to break down historic barriers to the progress of qualified women and minorities.” http://chronicle.com/blogs/election/2186/barack-obama-comes-out-against-ward-connerlys-latest-campaigns

Obama and Clinton on Affirmative Action

Inside Higher Education
April 17, 2008

Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton expressed support for affirmative action in higher education in their Pennsylvania primary debate Wednesday night, but with broader definitions of who should benefit. Obama reiterated his view that economic factors — not just race and ethnicity — should count. Obama said that “the basic principle that should guide discussions not just on affirmative action but how we are admitting young people to college generally is, how do we make sure that we’re providing ladders of opportunity for people?” Asked about minority children like his own, who grow up in relatively advantaged circumstances, Obama said: “So if they look at my child and they say, you know, Malia and Sasha, they’ve had a pretty good deal, then that shouldn’t be factored in. On the other hand, if there’s a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that’s something that should be taken into account. So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination, but I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black or white or Hispanic, male or female.” Clinton, asked if she supported such a view, said: “I think we’ve got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds — whoever they are.” But she then shifted away from affirmative action to list of her education positions. “That’s why I’m a strong supporter of early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten,” Clinton said. “That’s why I’m against No Child Left Behind as it is currently operating.... That’s why I’m in favor of much more college aid, not these outrageous predatory student loan rates that are charging people I’ve met, across Pennsylvania, 20, 25, 28 percent interest rates. Let’s make college affordable again. See, I think we have to look at what we’re trying to achieve here somewhat differently. We do have a real gap. We have a gap in achievement. We have a gap in income. But we don’t have a potential gap.” http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/17/qt

Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth

By Tim Wise
March 18, 2008

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.
Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.
But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an "angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.
But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.
Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" on 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America" because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?
Well actually, no he didn't.
Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.
He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."
But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."
And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing "God Damn America." He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do. [To read the entire statement, go to: http://www.timwise.org/ ]

Affirmative action foes point to Obama

The Boston Globe
Say candidate is proof effort no longer needed

By Joseph Williams and Matt Negrin, Globe Staff And Globe Correspondent March 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - Leading opponents of affirmative action are increasingly seizing on Illinois Senator Barack Obama's historic run for the presidency as proof that race-based remedies for past discrimination are no longer necessary.
Influential Republicans and a growing number of policy specialists at conservative organizations, including the Goldwater Institute, Project 21, and the Manhattan Institute, are citing the fact that large numbers of white voters are supporting Obama, who leads in the race for Democratic delegates, as evidence that affirmative action has run its course.
Ward Connerly, a black conservative who is leading a national effort to ban racial preferences, vowed to use Obama's success as evidence for anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives his organization is promoting in five states. Connerly, who helped dismantle affirmative action policies in California universities and public hiring in the 1990s, said he has donated $500 to Obama's campaign.
"I've been saying for a number of years that the American people are not institutionally racist," and Obama's strong support among white voters proves it, said Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, an organization that backs proposals to end affirmative action in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. "It underscores my position . . . that affirmative action is an idea whose time has passed.
"The whole argument in favor of race preferences is that there is 'institutional racism' and 'institutional sexism' in American life, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field," he said. "How can you say there is institutional racism when people in Nebraska vote for a guy who is a self-identified black man?"
In interviews, many other affirmative action opponents expressed similar sentiments. But affirmative action proponents say Obama's campaign, which has tried to transcend race, is proof that the system is working and should not be dismantled.
"I think blacks who have opportunities can make it . . . but we know that many black kids do not have the opportunities that Barack Obama had," said Cynthia Brown, education policy director for the Center for American Progress in Washington. "But we have many, many black kids who didn't have that and were born into families who couldn't provide those experiences and couldn't attend the schools that Obama did and took advantage of."
Obama, who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, has said he is firmly behind efforts to expand diversity, particularly in higher education. However, he has implied that such programs should be reexamined, and perhaps be more closely tied to class instead of race.
Asked if his young children would be candidates for affirmative action when they reach college, Obama said their middle-class upbringing should disqualify them.
"I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any [college] admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged," Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "We should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed."
Obama's acknowledgement - that some white students may deserve preferences, while some black students might not - undercuts the notion that the effects of past racial discrimination are still a bar to opportunity for most black people. [To read the entire article, go to: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/18/affirmative_action_foes_point_to_obama/]

Race, gender still matter

Although subtle, Clinton, Obama fight stereotypes, U-M panel says

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
BY DAVE GERSHMAN
The Ann Arbor News

If Sen. Barack Obama becomes the first black man elected president of the United States, it won't be a sign that Americans have moved beyond race, a University of Michigan professor said Monday during a campus discussion of race and gender in presidential politics.
Vince Hutchings, an associate professor of political science at U-M, said Obama's success is helped by his unwillingness to talk about race, which Hutchings called "this thing that divides us the most.'' Black Americans still lag behind whites in indexes of income, wealth and education, indications that racial equality has not been achieved, he said.
By downplaying race, Obama, a Democrat, has fashioned a unique appeal as a candidate, generating support with white voters. Meanwhile, he is able to still generate significant support among black Americans by implying the importance of race without necessarily verbalizing it, said Hutchings.
"His comments with respect to, 'There is no black America, or white America, just the United States of America,' that's a very appealing message - to white Americans, because they're already predisposed to believe it,'' said Hutchings.
Hutchings' comments were part of a panel discussion sponsored by U-M's Institute for Research on Women and Gender and by the Center for Political Studies. The discussion, held at Lane Hall, focused on how Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton are navigating the issues of race and gender, and the stereotypes held by voters, even if those stereotypes are subtle.
For pollsters, it's tough to tease out information voters may not want to share about themselves, panelists said. And voters don't always tell the truth in exit polls, and their answers can be tailored to what they believe the pollster wants them to say.
"It's not whether or not people care about race,'' said Nicholas Valentino, a professor from the University of Texas at Austin, "but whether we can ever ask them and get them to tell us whether race is really important, whether they even know. And if they do know, what are they going to tell us, and the same, though slightly less, for gender.''
Clinton is in a particular bind when it comes to battling stereotypes while still trying to mount a presidential campaign, Valentino said.
"Clinton is stuck between multiple negative gender stereotypes,'' he said. "If she's too tough, then she's not feminine. If she's not tough enough, then she's not competent, so she really has to walk a tightrope.'' [To read the entire article, go to: http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-26/1205246437149060.xml&coll=2 ]

I'm a black woman. This is my dream

By Patricia Williams
The Observer UK
Sunday 13 January 2008

The two Democrat candidates have gone through fire to get this far; now they deserve to go further.
The political history of the United States has been crafted by its greatest orators. From Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, the most influential Presidents have anchored their appeal in the democracy of the eloquently spoken word. As the election of November 2008 draws closer, we usher out George W Bush, the most spectacularly dismal exception to that rule. Of course, there are many attributes other than oratory I'll be looking for in candidates running for highest office: he or she must not think war is a 'cakewalk', must be alarmed about global warming, must not think torture is a handy little tool. Nevertheless, I will be listening hard for any future President's ability to string words into unmuddied, coherent thought. I'll be listening for ideas that have been worked through sufficiently to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I'm looking for intelligence. Someone who has real ideas, something more than missiles wrapped in folksy homilies.
Too many people see Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's appeal as rooted in 'identity politics'. It is the cheap political equation of the moment. He's supposed to walk away with the black vote, she's supposed to have women all sewn up. But the diversity of their constituencies and the complexity of their platforms have defied simplistic expectations.
There's a cliché in the American civil rights community: if you're a member of a stigmatised group, you have to be twice as good as everyone else to accomplish half as much. Clinton and Obama have been tested by fire; neither rose to this level of national importance because anyone gave them a pass.
Hillary Clinton was among the first generation of women to attend law school in any numbers. She's about four years older than me and the barriers were enormous back then. Her first political work, as a student advocate for women's rights and minority admissions, opened the door a little wider for people like me. When I arrived at law school, there was still much moaning that women were 'taking over', even though we constituted 8 per cent of law students.
Today, women make up 50 per cent of most law school classes. It took enormous fortitude to succeed in that atmosphere. Indeed, Hillary has stood up to and overcome an onslaught. As Senator Clinton campaigned in Iowa, it was to the snarky drone of shock jock Rush Limbaugh babbling about how no one wants to watch a middle-aged woman grow old. Her detailed and thoughtful ideas for a universal healthcare system have been derided as the dangerous, communist ravings of a radical feminist. The New York Times's Maureen Dowd called Clinton a 'dominatrix ... control freak' who 'whips' her opponents into line.
Not that there's any consistency to prejudice of this sort. There was quite the kerfuffle when someone asked her how she was doing after her loss in Iowa and a tremble shook her voice. If Clinton-haters have got their jollies from painting her as steely and remote, in the mere mist of an eye she became too soft, wavering, choked up, broken down. Headlines implied that Clinton had lost it. Yet look at the video: she speaks of her plans for the country with eloquent emotion and great composure, her voice soft but strong. There were no tears. There was nothing undignified about it.
Meanwhile, Obama walks a fine line of both being 'not black enough' and pandering to 'special interests'. The accusation that he is 'inexperienced' is a cipher for deeper cultural anxieties about race.
Senator Obama is a presidential candidate of profound decency and great eloquence. He was president of the Harvard Law Review, a position that requires not just the highest grades, but also the unanimous acclaim of a band of viciously competitive students and a famously divided faculty.
American identity is best defined as the experience of the willing diaspora, the break by choice that is the heart of the immigrant myth. It is that narrative from which most African-Americans have been exiled. Hence it is precisely his place in that narrative that makes Obama so attractive, so intriguing and yet so strange. Obama's late father migrated from Kenya to the US; his mother was from Kansas. He's managed to fuse the immigrant myth of rapid upward mobility, until then almost exclusively white and European, on to the figure of a black man. Yet there are many for whom his appeal rests not on what he is - smart, full of fresh vision - but on what they imagine he isn't. He's not a whiner. He doesn't hate white people. He doesn't wear his hair like Al Sharpton.
Senator Joseph Biden, like Bush another exemplar of crude oratorical inelegance, expressed it as follows: 'I mean, you got the first sort of mainstream African-American who's articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man.' Such faint, condescending praise.
In the coming months, I expect to see much confusion as the importance of gender, the visibility of race and the commitment to pretend none of it matters is sorted out. The American public is reeling with images of Hillary, our first viable female candidate for President, floating on the endorsements of a raft of black religious leaders, and Obama, our first viable black candidate for President, flanked by a pride of Oprah-watching, white 'soccer moms'. Add a sprinkling of Bill Clinton, popularly caricatured as our 'first black President'. Fold in Michelle Obama, popularly caricatured as an outspoken career woman who doesn't like to stay home and bake cookies any more than Hillary. Turn the pressure cooker to high.
As the right's Rovean spinmeisters kick into action, wrapping both Obama and Clinton in sticky webs of hybridised stereotypes, she will be cast as too 'mannish', he too 'boyish'. She'll be too familiar, he too foreign.
Yet I pray that we Americans can resist the vicious, vacuous, mudslinging mire of malapropisms from which the Bush presidency loped to power. This is an extraordinary moment in American history: we have our first serious black and female presidential candidates and they are, indeed, twice as good as their nearest contenders. I hope that the two of them, in whatever order, will become running mates by November. They must not fall prey to those who would love to see them played against each other in the scramble to be top dog. --------
Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University and a regular columnist for the Nation.

Thanks to Marshall Rose for sharing this commentary. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2240139,00.html