Views » December 11, 2008

Obama Needs a Black Agenda

By Laura S. Washington

The first black president of the United States cannot credibly govern without a national black agenda. But don’t depend on him to front it.

For the last 22 months, Sen. Barack Obama had one priority: getting elected.

Black progressives have a different, urgent mission: to put meat on the bones of a black economic and social compact.

It’s payback time.

Obama surged into the White House because he is one of the New Blacks — coalition-minded progressives who eschew tradition and piecemeal, narrow agendas. The New Blacks don’t take their cues from the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons and Tavis Smileys.

Obama knows that if black people allow parochial and self-interested operators to nibble away at his ankles, black America will be the biggest loser.

But the conversation is long overdue.

Obama’s dodge around race was exquisitely choreographed. Practically the only black concerns he has addressed are his weak nod to affirmative action and his stump-speech admonishments to wayward black fathers and that trifling “Cousin Pookie” — a name he often referenced in his speeches to black audiences. In a March 2007 sermon at Brown Chapel in Selma, Ala., Obama declared: “If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching ‘SportsCenter’ and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics.”

Since his landmark speech in 2004 in Boston, Obama dismissed the red-state, blue-state paradigm and argued that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and a white America and a Latino America — there’s the United States of America.” It was lame, but it worked.

Still, that notion is an aspiration, not an accomplishment. Come Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, pressure groups will be tearing up the playing field to score points with the man. Black folks will be no different. Obama’s shadow base produced a monumental turnout, and that gives us major dibs.

Black progressives need to now lay out an agenda. Start with equitable educational opportunities for African Americans. Fifty-four years after Brown v. Board of Education, black schoolchildren are still relegated to the bottom of the educational opportunity barrel. Urban schools — which have a disproportionate number of black students — need more resources than their relatively meager tax bases can support.

Take another look at bugaboos like vouchers. Build more charter schools. It’s time to jettison the fraudulent No Child Left Behind initiative and replace it with a no-nonsense plan.

There is one non-negotiable item: Black America must demand that Obama cease pandering to the People of the Gun and launch a crusade for solutions to urban violence. During his campaign, dozens of Chicago-area children have been slaughtered in the streets — in Obama’s own backyard.

On the eve of the historical presidential vote, nearly 5,000 mourners filed into an Apostolic church on Chicago’s South Side to mourn the murders of three members of Oscar-winning Jennifer Hudson’s family. The youngest was 7. Hudson’s glittering talent made her famous, but it couldn’t shield her from the insidious flow of guns that is decimating our cities.

The Obama epic offers a glimmer of hope to some. On TheRoot.com, an online commentary outlet from the African-American perspective, writer Melanie Eversley posits that Obama’s victory will put beaucoup pep in the black man’s step. In “The Obama Swagger,” she wrote: “Maybe no group of Americans is more invested in the Obama phenomenon than black men who see in his success a transformation of their own public image.”

Maybe so, but on Jan. 20, tens of thousands of young black males will still be jobless, homeless or incarcerated within the prison-industrial complex. They’ve got some bigger problems than rehabilitating their public images.

Obama prevailed in the election in part because he brought a multiracial identity and global perspective that undermined America’s entrenched racial, ethnic and economic differences. He can — and must — govern beyond the base.

Still, he will step into the Oval Office courtesy of overwhelming turnouts dug out of the red hills of Georgia — and the gritty concrete of New Jersey.

Black folks are ecstatic about making history, but we can’t afford to settle for history. In 21st century America, a national black agenda is urgent and overdue. There may be a New Black at the helm, but it’s still the same old U.S. of A. 

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• Reader Comments

  Too frequently in our America we insist on the color of issues.  I disagree, Laura Washington.  The first black president of the United States cannot credibly govern without a national agenda that furthers the welfare, education, and futures of all Americans.  The first black president of the United States must first and foremost lead us all, and implement policies that benefit us all.  For too long in this country, under the auspices of the rampant Bush administration, only the needs of the wealthy and big business have concerned our “leaders”.  It is time for long and careful look at the basic needs of all Americans, including the black community.
    Having said that, I acknowledge special and different pressures within the community, as well as significant issues and barriers to well being.  And yet I am bothered by your attitude-we got up from our couches and voted, and now we’re due something.  How can it be Payback Time when the man hasn’t even assumed office?  And yes, we expect, all of us, the change he promised.  But I find your attitude troubling, and too normal for the black community.  You exercised a basic right-you voted.  That is terrific, and yes, you voted in record numbers.  And now, you want to know, already and immediately, what’s in it for me?  I did a little something, and now you, Mr. President, had better do a lot.  For me.  Gimme, gimme.
    Maybe it’s time for the black community to continue to get up off it’s collective couches and exercise their rights to participate in larger society.  Maybe with a little more practice getting up off that couch, it wouldn’t seem so monumental anymore, but rather a daily act of life.
    Democracy requires participation, even when we don’t feel like it.  If the black community has refused to participate in the process en mass before, then I’m glad that’s changed.  But please don’t mistake the simple exercise of a civil right as being a monumental accomplishment that requires nothing more from you.  Please don’t assume that’s all there was to it.  Democracy is a daily process.  And it ain’t always about what’s in it for you.

  Posted by Gloria58 on Dec 11, 2008 at 8:00 PM

  I’m quite ambivalent about Obama having a “black” agenda.  I’d like to see him have an urban agenda, and a health care agenda, etc., but these aren’t exclusively “black.”  And while I agree that urban violence needs to be addressed head on, including closing down the loopholes for gun access, etc, I feel confident that that’s something he’s already got on his list of “to-do’s.”  From the perspective of specifically “black” issues my list of pressing issues are probably quite different from most..  I tend to want nationality designation other than “African American” (clearly ambiguous, and missing the point that a specific subset of those so named are specifically born from the legacy of slavery in America) and inclusive measures like national recognition for the “Negro National Anthem.” 

  Those kinds of aspirations are more fully realized in my reparations proposal, now undergoing voting at Change.org: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/genuine_reparations_to_heal_the_legacy_of_slave ery

  If anyone values the idea, please vote for it.  And if you think it sucks, please post here or at my web site (http://obamaproject.windonwater.net) about why.  I’ve got notifications on and will read all followup comments.

  Posted by T Bond on Dec 11, 2008 at 8:33 PM

  Thank you, Sister, for your correct and clear voice and analysis, for reminding Negroes et al that there must and will be a black agenda, despite the efforts of “post-racialists” to erase our people and undermine our ongoing agenda for freedom in America.

  Elaine Brown

  Posted by Elaine Brown on Dec 11, 2008 at 9:13 PM

  .maybe we can get an hispanic america too…..and an asian america, brown america, indian america… and each one should be treated so differently from the rest that a ” - america” suffix is actually justified. of course that would mean more dividing than uniting. hmmm.

  Posted by zefram Cuchin on Dec 11, 2008 at 9:37 PM

  I don’t think most of the white race, particularly the baby boomers, who marched, and died, for voter registration in the south, who have in one way or another worked every day of their lives to further the cause of their black brethren, should be described as “post-racialist”.  I, personally, find that offensive.  No one that I know of wishes to erase your people, which coincidentally, given my fathers bloodlines, and my nephews’  bloodlines, are also my people.  No one has taken greater pride in the words of Sojourner Truth than this light skinned, blue eyed feminist.  And no one took more encouragement from the trials and words of Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. than this lonely child, growing up in a desolate northern eastern wasteland, hoping to become this woman.  When we define ourselves as a people, let us remember the best and brightest black leaders, who did not seek special treatment, or more excuses, but simply same for same rights.  And to ask more of society, and less of oneself, is simply not going to fly.  Yes, there is still racism, and no one calls it more clearly when she sees than me.  And I also see a lot of lazy excuses being offered for a lack of personal effort.  I also voted for this president, and he would not have been elected without white votes.  Please remember that, when you rally to divide the races, as you have done with this remark, Elaine.  That would be only the tip of my personal iceberg of civil rights work.  Your heroes are mine, and please do not suggest otherwise.  Take pride in their dark skin, and do not refuse the admiration of all for them.
    Zefram, you have nailed it.  Either we are one nation, indivisible, or we are not.  We cannot have separation of race as a deciding factor in national policy any longer.  We cannot afford it.  We all need to step up and realize, either we all make it, or we all…..don’t.  You choose.

  Posted by Gloria58 on Dec 11, 2008 at 11:28 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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