Obama Races Away from the Issue of Race 

  

By George E. Curry

NNPA Columnist

When Barack Obama accepted his party's presidential nomination in Denver on August 28, 2008 - the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream Speech" - excitement filled the air.

Amid that jubilance, however, it struck me as odd that Obama failed to mention Dr. King by name.

speak of his dream," Obama said at the time.Seconds later, he would add:  "'We cannot walk alone,'" the preacher cried. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

When Obama was inaugurated for the second time on January 21, 2013, the day we officially celebrated as the King federal holiday, I knew - or thought I knew - that President Obama would not make that same omission again.  

I listened carefully as he said:  "We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."

Why couldn't President Obama utter Dr. King's name on the day he used the slain civil rights leader's Bible to be sworn in?  On King's birthday, why couldn't he be called more than just a preacher?

Even though Beyoncé lip-synced the National Anthem on Inauguration Day, she hasn't been accused of faking it when she sings another song - "Say My Name."

If you ain't running a game

Say my name, say my name

The problem is larger than the failure to say Dr. King's name. The problem, according to Michael Eric Dyson, is that, "This president runs from race like a Black man runs from a cop."

However, that's exactly what he has been doing.

To discuss race less than Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, all White southerners who grew up under segregation, should be embarrassing to President Obama. It should be even more of an embarrassment that Obama hasn't taken leadership on the issue as Bill Clinton did when he launched his "One America Initiative" on race. Putting aside the merits of the initiative, it demonstrated Clinton was willing to confront the issue of race.

As my friend Courtland Milloy wrote in the Washington Post, it's time to stop making excuses for Obama.

He said, "Obama should not be allowed to get away with thinking that when it comes to making his mark on the issue of race, all he had to do was become the first black president."

Unfortunately, some of the most vocal Black leaders have either been co-opted by the White House or fear a backlash from adoring Black voters.

The usually outspoken Rep. Maxine Waters [D-Calif.] told a crowd in Detroit, "If we go after the president too hard, you're going after us."

And former Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, II of Missouri admitted, "With 14 percent [black] unemployment if we had a white president we'd be marching around the White House."

If we don't get some true leadership on this issue, perhaps it will be time to march around the White House, Congress and the headquarters of some of our civil rights organizations.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA). He is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. Curry can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.

 Photo by Freddie Allen/NNPA

© New York Times.

January 20, 2013

The Rev. Greggory L. Brown, a 59-year-old pastor of a small Lutheran church, committed himself to ministry and a life pursuing social justice on April 4, 1968 - the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain by an assassin's bullet.

And four years ago, like so many African-Americans around the country, he saw Barack Obama's rise to the presidency as nothing short of a shocking validation of Dr. King's vision of a more perfect union, where the content of character trumps the color of skin. "I was so excited when he was giving that first inauguration speech," said Mr. Brown, of Oakland, Calif. "I could feel it in my bones."

On Monday, when President Obama places his hand on Dr. King's personal Bible to take a second, ceremonial oath of office, he will be symbolically linking himself to the civil rights hero. But Mr. Brown, along with other African-Americans interviewed recently, said their excitement would be laced with a new expectation, that Mr. Obama move to the forefront of his agenda the issues that Dr. King championed: civil rights and racial and economic equality.

READ MORE

 Lost in their own wilderness  

By Eugene Robinson

© Washington Post

January 28, 2013  

Republicans shouldn't worry that President Obama is trying to destroy the GOP. Why would he bother? The party's leaders are doing a pretty good job of it themselves.

As they try to understand why the party lost an election it was confident of winning - and why it keeps losing budget showdowns in Congress - Republican grandees are asking the wrong questions. Predictably, they are also coming up with the wrong answers.

READ MORE

By George E. Curry

NNPA Columnist

January 20, 2013

Just when you think leaders of the National Rifle Association can't stoop any lower, they keep managing to plunge even deeper. This time, they have strayed way over the line of respectability by using Malia and Sasha's enrollment in Sidwell Friends, a private Quaker school, to malign President Obama over his proposal to place limits on the sale of assault rifles and expand background checks.

"Are the president's kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. But he's just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security. Protection for their kids. And gun-free zones for ours."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was correct when he said in a statement:  "Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president's children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly."

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© Gadsden (Ala.) Times

Times Staff Report

January 17, 2013

James Hood, a Gadsden native and one of the first African-Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama, on a day made famous by former Gov. George Wallace's "stand in the schoolhouse door," died Thursday. He was 70.

Hood and Vivian Malone attempted to register and pay their fees on June 11, 1963, at Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa, accompanied byDeputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and federal marshals. 

By Grace Elizabeth Hale

© New York Times

January 28, 2013

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

THE opposition by the New York State chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's restrictions on sugary soda caught many Americans by surprise. But it shouldn't: though the organization argues it is standing up for consumer choice and minority business owners, who it claims would be hurt, this is also a favor for a stalwart ally - Coca-Cola alone has given generously to support N.A.A.C.P. initiatives over the years.

This is more than a story of mutual back-scratching, though. It is the latest episode in the long and often fractious history of soft drinks, prohibition laws and race.

By Rosie Mestel

© Los Angeles Times

January 25, 2013

There's new fireworks exploding around the plan by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg - a.k.a. "Nanny Bloomberg" - to ban the sale of sugar-sweetened soft drinks larger than 16 ounces from a broad array of eateries in the city.

That a lawsuit was filed by the American Beverage Assn. and other trade groups to block the city's move, due to take place in March, may come as no surprise. But nutrition advocates are upset by support that is coming from other, less-expected quarters: the New York State branch of the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation. The two groups filed a brief in support of the food industry's lawsuit on Wednesday, arguing among other things that the move would hurt minority businesses and asking the city to consider a broader approach (including exercise promotion) to fight the obesity problem that disproportionately affects African Americans and Latinos.

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 Wilmington Ten Leader Ben Chavis

© CBS News

January 28, 2013

(CBS News) CHICAGO - President Barack Obama is keeping up the pressure on Congress to pass new gun control legislation.

He met at the White House today with police officials from around the country, including: Aurora, Colo.; Oak Creek, Wisc.; and Newtown, Conn. - all the scenes of recent mass shootings.

The president called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban.

In Chicago, gun violence is taking more and more lives: 50 since Newtown.

Among the seven people murdered in Chicago this past weekend was 33-year-old Ronnie Chambers, shot dead in a parked van.

He was the last surviving child of Shirley Chambers, who now has lost all four of her children to gun violence.

Austin says: "It's time to get an early jump on your tax returns. Let my Dad help you."

"We service clients throughout the U.S."