The Daily Background
| Before Black audiences, Clinton can sometimes say what Obama can’t
by Arlen Parsa
The Post has a good op-ed today discussing why Obama has to walk on a tightrope in his appeal to African American voters. The writer uses the example of the recent PBS debates, geared towards an African American audience:
During the debate, black Americans in the audience sat, hands poised, yearning to applaud a black candidate able to articulate our passions and sense of injustice. We wanted to hear that he understood and loved us — not in the general, “we the people” sense but in the specific. Yet we know that with each utterance about injustice, each puff of anger or frustration about racism, we lose the very thing we seek: a viable black candidate. The closer Obama comes to us, the further he would be from winning the nomination and the presidency.
[…]
There is no better example than Clinton’s comment about the disproportionate effect HIV has on black communities. She said that if “HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.” For Obama to have said the same words in the same fiery manner could have been political suicide. By forfeit, Clinton essentially becomes the black candidate; it’s not a space America would allow Obama to fill.
True, it certainly would have been. Pretty ironic though, isn’t it? It’s easier for a White candidate to accuse White people of racism, than it is for an African American candidate.
