Greg Carr, chair of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, said
Obama’s reelection “accentuates” the historic nature of his presidency
for the African American community because it validated his time in
office.
”What may have had a sense of an insurgent victory four years ago now
has more of a national consensus flavor,” he said. “With the first
inauguration there was almost a sense that … we did it against
improbable odds, but now it’s the norm of sorts.”
But Obama is still taking the Oath of Office amid criticism that
there is not enough diversity among his Cabinet and White House staff.
It’s the latest round in attacks that Obama hasn’t done enough for the
black community. His campaign was forced to launch a drive to hire black
staff, some African American leaders felt that he paid too little
attention to black unemployment rates in his first term, and others
worried that he spoke too infrequently about major civil rights issues.
Often, the complaints came from black elected officials.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a veteran of the Civil Rights movement and
the highest-ranking African American in Congress, said Obama posted a
record in his first term that addressed the concerns of African American
voters, whether it was a settlement for black farmers, money in the
2009 economic stimulus law directed to poorer communities, or a health
care overhaul that will provide insurance for poor folks regardless of
the color of their skin.
“When you look at the president’s overall
record, nobody would call health care a program for the ‘black
community,’ but let me tell you something, that was huge for the black
community,” Clyburn said in a telephone interview.
The proof, Clyburn said, was in the false
prognostications that the president would be beset by lower African
American turnout in his second campaign than in his first. “Black people
were never disappointed. A lot of black leaders were expressing
disappointment with certain things that we may have thought should have
been addressed, but the black voter was never disappointed in Barack
Obama and he knew that and I knew that.”
Rev. Ronald Braxton, senior pastor at D.C.’s Metropolitan AME Church,
said the continued faith in Obama among the African American community
was apparent when they waited hours in long lines to vote on Nov. 6.
”Look at the long lines of African Americans waiting to vote,” he
said. “Day and night you couldn’t get to the polling places … it was all
across the country. I think that speaks to the optimism of African
Americans when it comes to this president.”
On a more philosophical note, Harvard professor Tommie Shelby wrote
in the winter 2011 edition of the journal Daedalus that Obama’s
deal-making didn’t live up to the moral convictions of King’s teaching.
If Obama’s aim is to improve the lives of minorities rather than
establishing racial justice, Shelby wrote, that has merit.
“However, if Obama’s racial philosophy is to be understood as an
updated version of King’s vision – a recalibration to the racial
realities of our time–then it leaves much to be desired. Judged
alongside King’s transformative vision of racial equality and
integration, Obama’s philosophy is morally deficient and uninspiring,”
Shelby argued, contending that “it does not keep faith with King’s
precept: to use means as pure as our ends.”
Obama’s own reckoning with King’s legacy — and with issues of
importance to African Americans — has been delicate, if not difficult.
In a YouTube video explaining what this inauguration means to him,
Obama mentions King and President Lincoln as the two people he admires
“probably more than anybody in American history.”
“For me to have the opportunity to be sworn in using the Bibles of
these two men that I admire so deeply, on the 150th anniversary of the
Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on
Washington, is I think fitting,” he says. “Because their actions, the
movements they represent, are the only reason it’s possible for me to be
inaugurated.”
During the 2008 campaign, his references to the Civil Rights leader
were clear enough to encourage those who wanted to see him as the
embodiment of King’s dream and subtle enough to bring peril to anyone
who accused of him of exploiting King’s work for his own gain.
On
the night he lost the New Hampshire primary in 2008, Obama obliquely
compared his political organization to King’s social movement.
“It was the call of workers who organized, women who
reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new
frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way
to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality,” he said
that night, touching off a nasty dust-up with then-rival Hillary
Clinton, who noted to her detriment that it was President Lyndon
Johnson, not King, who signed civil rights bills.
At his convention speech in Denver that August, delivered on the 45th
anniversary of the March on Washington, Obama quoted King, referring to
him not by name but as “the preacher.”
“‘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,’” Obama said. “At this moment, in this election, we must pledge
once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that
American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without
wavering, to the hope that we confess.”
As president, he has been more direct in trying to harness the power
of King’s words and deeds. As he has done in the past, he called on
Americans to use this year’s King holiday as a day of service, and he
invokes King by name from time to time. The opportunity to place his
hand on King’s bible, which will sit atop a copy that belonged to
Abraham Lincoln, adds a tangible connection to the thread that so many
Americans see running from Lincoln to King to Obama.
“As an ordained minister, I feel that these two bibles represent the
stride for freedom,” said Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King,
in a statement provided by the presidential inauguration committee. “One
represents emancipation; the other represents inclusion into the fabric
of the American experience — the freedom to participate in government,
the freedom to peacefully coexist, and the freedom to prosper in life.”
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