Barack Obama is the Superior Choice for African-American Voters Theodore Cross For the first time in the history of our country, a black man has a credible chance of becoming president of the United States. After the long nightmare years of slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, and enduring race discrimination, one would expect that, in the upcoming presidential primary contest, Illinois Senator Barack Obama would be the overwhelming choice of black American voters. Not so! National polls show that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are drawing about equal shares of the black vote. The standard explanation is that Hillary Clinton is the inherited winner of solid numbers of black voters because of the tremendous popularity of her husband among African Americans. We all remember how President Bill Clinton campaigned in black neighborhoods and churches, showed compassion and deep concerns for poor blacks, and sought out the opinions, advice, and even the forgiveness of black leaders. His remarkable ability to relate to African Americans, a quality missing among almost all white politicians, earned President Clinton both loyalty and affection among many millions of African Americans. In fact, he was so admired in the African-American community that in 1998 Princeton professor and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison called him “our first black president.” But Bill Clinton’s success in winning the affection of African Americans is only part of the story. Senator Hillary Clinton in her own right has turned out to be an appealing candidate for black voters. In her so-called Team Hillary, she has assembled highly effective organizations of dedicated supporters in black communities throughout the nation. Her campaign’s legal counsel is the widely admired African-American lawyer Cheryl Mills, the former White House deputy counsel who defended Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. In key states where the black vote is large, and possibly critical in primary outcomes, she has recruited skilled and experienced African-American advisory groups. At the grass roots, Team Hillary has placed scores of faithful bands of African-American campaign workers scattered about in key parts of the country. Keywords: African Americans, blacks, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, race, ethnic minorities, discrimination, racism, president, primaries, Democratic, president, Chris Rock, Apollo Theater, New York, South Carolina, Manning, speech, civil rights, reverend Wille Barrow, church, Trinity United Church of Christ, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Senator Clinton has won a number of flat-out endorsements from influential African Americans. Her supporters include Philadelphia Mayor John Street, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, author and poet Maya Angelou, composer and recording mogul Quincy Jones, and Robert L. Johnson, founder of the influential Black Entertainment Television network. Already she has the important backing of at least seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus. In the style of President Bill Clinton before her, she makes regular appearances at black churches where she pays homage to black civil rights pioneers. She artfully uses Bible references and religious imagery to endear herself to black congregations. Last spring Hillary Clinton won glowing praise from the black press when she joined dozens of America’s most famous black leaders in singing “We Shall Overcome” at the sacred shrine of black America, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Successfully sidestepping charges of pandering to black voters, she deftly shifts to a southern drawl as she sings the popular black hymn: “I don’t feel no ways tired. We got to stay awake. We have a march to finish.” In her campaign to lock up black support, there are no qualms about playing the race card. Senator Clinton scored with black voters when she declared in a June debate at Howard University that the country would be more worried about HIV/AIDS if the disease were disproportionately affecting whites instead of blacks. The powerful political impact of her statement was not diminished by the circumstance that her facts were incorrect. The annual federal budget for HIV research is $3 billion. This is more than the nation’s entire appropriation for research on either heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or breast cancer. But Clinton’s assertion that racism drives white-controlled government decisions on the allocations of disease research stoked anti-white anger and won her acclaim among black voters. Probably no one at the Howard University event, black or white, was aware of the fact that in August 2006 Hillary Clinton was the only one of 20 senators of the Republican-controlled Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee to vote to gut a plan that would have redirected more AIDS funds to heavily black communities in the South. Her vote prompted the National Black Chamber of Commerce to publish full-page newspaper advertisements denouncing Clinton as being “two-faced” on the issue.
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