Obama’s tough sell

WASHINGTON – US political darling Barack Obama has received enthusiastic support for a possible 2008 presidential bid – except from fellow African-Americans, a group many had believed would be among his staunchest backers.

Obama announced Tuesday that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, allowing him to begin raising campaign funds and openly court support in his bid to become the first black US president. But in sharp contrast to the effusive reception he has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, noting that while they share skin colour with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history.”Obama did not – does not – share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves,” African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch wrote in November, in an article entitled “Barack Obama – Not Black Like Me.”Radio host George Wilson, whose nationally-broadcast talk show tests the opinions of a cross-section of African-American listeners, said response to the Illinois senator so far has been “lukewarm.””He’s not getting as much of an enthusiastic send-off from black people as he is from whites,” Wilson said.”There’s a feeling that if white folks like him so much he must not be good for us.For some blacks, it’s a turn-off.”Obama draws enormous, mostly white crowds, even though the first presidential primary election is still more than a year away, and is seen as a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.But Crouch said that the first-term US senator – the bi-racial progeny of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother – does not share with most American blacks the painful legacy of slavery, repressive segregation laws and civil rights struggles.”While he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own – nor has he lived the life of a black American,” Crouch wrote in his New York Daily News column.”If we then end up with him as our first black president, he will have come into the White House through a side door,” the columnist wrote.Political analyst Ron Walters said that Obama, whose Harvard law school pedigree rounds out his half-European ancestry, is a black man whom many whites find reassuring.Nampa-AFPBut in sharp contrast to the effusive reception he has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, noting that while they share skin colour with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history.”Obama did not – does not – share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves,” African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch wrote in November, in an article entitled “Barack Obama – Not Black Like Me.”Radio host George Wilson, whose nationally-broadcast talk show tests the opinions of a cross-section of African-American listeners, said response to the Illinois senator so far has been “lukewarm.””He’s not getting as much of an enthusiastic send-off from black people as he is from whites,” Wilson said.”There’s a feeling that if white folks like him so much he must not be good for us.For some blacks, it’s a turn-off.”Obama draws enormous, mostly white crowds, even though the first presidential primary election is still more than a year away, and is seen as a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.But Crouch said that the first-term US senator – the bi-racial progeny of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother – does not share with most American blacks the painful legacy of slavery, repressive segregation laws and civil rights struggles.”While he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own – nor has he lived the life of a black American,” Crouch wrote in his New York Daily News column.”If we then end up with him as our first black president, he will have come into the White House through a side door,” the columnist wrote.Political analyst Ron Walters said that Obama, whose Harvard law school pedigree rounds out his half-European ancestry, is a black man whom many whites find reassuring.Nampa-AFP