Is America Ready for a Black President?

Nationwide, the latest NEWSWEEK poll suggests that race is no longer the barrier it once was to electing a president. A clear majority – 59 percent – says the country is ready to elect an African-American president. That’s up from 37 percent at the start of the decade, but it still indicates

a significant percentage of the country is either skeptical or prejudicial. (Richard Wolffe and Daren Briscoe, Newsweek, July 16, 2007)

There is no sure answer to the question posed by the title of this article. It is not “absolutely no” that it used to be in the recent past; the probability of such a denouement (a black president) is certainly there.

Barrack Obama, a black U.S. Senator from Illinois State, is running a tight race with another candidate who would have been as improbable a choice, until tecently. to head the White House, as a black man. The other candidate is Senator Hillary Clinton. America hasn’t had a female president or a black one so far.

Either of them, if elected, will make history.

Obama is ahead of all the other candidates, both Democrat and Republican who are all white, but is in close competition with Hillary. His numbers fluctuate with those of Hillary from poll to poll.

His fate will be determined largely by the way the black voters decide to cast their votes. It’s not a given that they will automatically vote for him because he is black. Among the factors that will determine this, is the question which many are seriously pondering. The question is: Is he black enough? His father was a black African from Kenya who married his white mother from Kansas. Obama has written, “That my father looked nothing like the people around me – that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk – barely registered in my mind.”

His blackness is not in question because of his lineage from his father’s side; it is from his mother’s side that can be bothersome.

Another factor that is likely to weigh heavily in favor of his rival, Hillary Clinton, is her husband’s monumental popularity among the blacks. He is so popular that many call him the first black president of America. Now he is out there in the public canvassing for his wife openly. Even if Obama wins the black vote significantly, he cannot move into the White House without a substantial support from the white voters. He has to carefully strike a delicate balance so as not to estrange his white supporters. He seems to have the political finesse for such a task.

As if his white mother was not akready a problem enough, at least for the black voters, she married an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetro, after divorcing her first husband. They moved to Jakarta in 1967 when Obama was about six year-old. There he attended a Muslim madrassa, it is said, up to the age of 10.

Although his Muslim background, his middle name is Hussain, has not entered the political scene at full blast, questions were raised nonetheless. Obama countered such irksome questions by proclaiming that he is a Christian (United Church of Christ). Although the U.S. Constitution is secular, downplaying any religious role in state affairs, the voters are human beings who are largely Christian. They are pathologically paranoid of Islam. To them Islam is radical Islam without any qualifying ifs and buts. It is still too early in the campaign and his Muslim background has not become an issue yet, it might become so in the heat of campaigning during the last critical stage near November 2008. Religion is a crucial factor in the coming elections, secularism or no secularism.

The reason his blackness is in question is also due to his inherited lineage from his mother’s side. According to Paul Harris, “Obama’s ancestors on his white mother’s side appear to have been slave owners. William Reltwiesner, an amateur genealogical researcher, has published a history of Obama’s mother’s family and discovered that her ancestors have a distinctly shadowy past,” (see my article “Election Fever and the Hype,” Naseeb.com).

His personal credentials are superb. He majored in political science with specialization in international affairs at Columbia University and received his B.A. in 1983. He entered Harvard Law School in 1988 working at Business International Corporation and directing a non-profit project assisting local churches in Chicago, in the intervening years. He became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in its entire history, in 1990. He obtained his J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1991.

He lectured in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until 2004 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He has published two books one of which is a memoir of his youth, Dreams from My Father, and the other is entitled The Audacity of Hope. He is an excellent speaker and he delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. This brought him instantaneously into political limelight and paved his way into the presidential campaign of 2008. He is no longer an obscure senator; he is one of the front runners in the election race.

His biggest hurdle is Hillary Clinton. If he beats her in the primaries, he should have relatively a smooth sailing into the White House. Hillary, though unpopular in some quarters, has one visible advantage over Obama. She has the experience of being in the White House as First Lady for eight years; she has seen how it is run from close quarters. Obama has no experience of operating any government department. He will have to learn on the go. He may be quite competent to successfully do what is needed but he has to convince the voters.

So it’s still “wait and see;” see how the whole shebang unfolds. There is a great chance that history will be made if either of the two is elected.