On May 7, 2008, at 8:26 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> That's perfectly incisive question. And the answer is that Adolph
> is not
> being at all fair here.
[Nice touch, getting Manning Marable to do the defensive work here. But this is typical Obama - water it down, try to have it both ways. But there's a lot of Cosby in this.]
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news? pid=20601103&sid=a6IOTQeXhXao&refer=us>
Obama Delivers Tough-Love Message to Black Audiences (Update2) By Julianna Goldman
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stood before a largely black audience in Beaumont, Texas, last week and delivered tough love to thunderous applause.
Riffing off the line in his standard stump speech about responsible parenting, he ad-libbed a three-minute mini-sermon: turn off the TV, get involved in homework, prepare healthy meals.
Obama, 46, who routinely says he won't ``just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear,'' is driving that point home before black audiences from South Carolina to Texas, one of four states where he's dueling with Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton in primary contests today.
You can't let children ``eat a bag of potato chips for lunch or Popeye's for breakfast,'' he said. ``I know some of you all, you get that cold Popeye's out for breakfast! I know! That's why you all laughing. I caught you out. You can't do that! Children have to have proper nutrition.''
Lois Roy and Ramona Brister punched their hands in the air and screamed their approval.
``We can't expect him to make our kids learn or behave in schools,'' said Roy, 49.
``We got to do that ourselves,'' interjected Brister, 44. ``And he told the truth about that,'' Roy said.
While the theme isn't unique to him, Illinois Senator Obama is the first black candidate with a serious chance of winning the presidency, and his credentials as a onetime community organizer raised by a single mother give his message special weight.
`Souljah Moment'
Obama's talk about problems in the black community differs from entertainer Bill Cosby's criticisms of black youth and Bill Clinton's ``Sister Souljah moment,'' when as a 1992 presidential candidate he chastised the hip-hop singer before a black audience at a meeting of the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.
``Bill Cosby's comments were gratuitous and ignored the structural issues that perpetuate black inequality,'' said Manning Marable, director of the Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University in New York.
Cosby, asked about Marable's comments, said ``that's his opinion,'' according to the entertainer's publicist David Brokaw.
Obama addresses the social problems that disproportionately affect blacks, such as jobs, health care and education, while reminding voters that government can't cure inequality if individuals don't help themselves, according to Marable, who supports his candidacy.
Obama is saying, ``I'm going to demand that government be accountable, but you have to be accountable, too,'' Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser and friend, said.
Distance
Clinton scolded Sister Souljah ``to distance himself from other liberals to show he was tough enough to basically call out Jackson in his own house,'' said Marable. When Obama takes the black community to task, ``authenticity is what shines through.''
The former president couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
Black voters have supported Obama with overwhelming margins in the Democratic primaries: 90 percent in Virginia and Wisconsin, 80 percent in South Carolina, for example. They also voted in record numbers for primaries.
``I not only need you to vote, I need cousin Pookie to vote, I need Ray Ray, we need to get some folks to show up that haven't been voting,'' Obama said in Kingstree before South Carolina's Jan. 26 primary. Almost 17 percent of the state's eligible voters turned out, up from 9.5 percent in 2004, according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington. Blacks made up more than half the state's Democratic voters.
`Pookie'
In black culture, ``Pookie'' and ``Ray Ray'' are shorthand for a type of disaffected black male, short on education and ambition.
Statistics underpin the stereotype: an unemployment rate twice as high among black men as among white men; an estimated 2 million black children living in extreme poverty; and 13 percent of black fourth- graders reading at grade level, compared with 41 percent of white fourth-graders.
Early in his campaign, Obama walked a tight line to avoid appearing the ``black candidate'' and alienating whites. After winning in overwhelmingly white states such as Idaho, North Dakota and Utah, he shows more confidence speaking off the cuff among all demographics.
Message
His message to blacks has been consistent while his delivery has changed. In a June 15, 2007, Father's Day speech in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Obama read from a prepared text, telling the mostly black audience: ``There are a lot of men out there who need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception.''
In Beaumont, caught up in the moment, he hammered at the homework issue for several minutes. ``When a child misbehaves in school, don't cuss out the teacher, do something with your child!'' he said, then added: ``All right, everybody sit down, we're having too much fun here.''
This week in Carrollton, Texas, Obama lectured his audience on sensitive issues like racial profiling and the stereotypes perpetuated by rap music.
``I listen to Jay-Z once in a while, but I have to say so much of the culture glorifies bling and violence and is disrespectful to women and we've got to counteract some of those cultural influences,'' Obama said Monday.
Answering a question at the same event about what he will do to stop racial profiling, he talked about his record in the state legislature and then said: ``Now, I just also want to point out that young people who are black and brown, it's not like you guys don't sometimes go too fast on the roads, so just because somebody pulled you over doesn't mean you're not doing something wrong.''
Obama's holding black parents to account ``might not be criticized as it might have been otherwise coming from someone else,'' said Bruce Ransom, a political science professor at Clemson University in South Carolina who specializes in black politics. It also is one that strikes ``a responsive chord from white voters who are swing voters or independents.''