Barack Obama's caginess on race

Juan Williams points out a complicated truth about Barack Obama:

[I]t is incredible that on any issue of racial consequence Mr. Obama has become a stealth candidate. It is arguably smart politics not to focus on potentially controversial racial issues when you are a black man running in an election with an electorate that is more than 75% white. But how is it possible that Mr. Obama, as he rises to claim the mantle of Dr. King before 75,000 people and a national TV audience of millions here tonight, remains a mystery on the most important civil rights issues of our day?

Mr. Obama is nowhere man when it comes time to speak out on reforming big city public schools, with their criminally high dropout rates for minority children. He apparently refuses to do it for fear that supporting vouchers or doing anything to strengthen charter schools will alienate vote-rich unions. His rare references to the critical argument over affirmative action -- an issue that is on several state ballots this fall -- give both opponents and supporters reason to think he might be on their side. He has had little if anything to say about the persistent 25% poverty rate in black America.

The only speech Mr. Obama has given on race came after his minister's racist rants became public. In that celebrated talk he defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while at the same time distancing himself from the rants. That quick escape did not work, because Rev. Wright continued to spew vitriol -- threatening the campaign with questions about whether Mr. Obama subscribed to the same angry, anti-American views. It was only rational for voters to ask how he could have kept silent in the face of the minister's sermons over 20 years.

Time and again, the man who draws so openly on King's legacy refuses to sacrifice an iota of possible political support by taking a principled stand on matters of racial justice that King said are matters of right and wrong. Instead, Obama makes cryptic or general comments that leave his position on important racial issues ambiguous or unknown.

Is it because he's afraid of discomfiting whites? Maybe not, says Williams:

The uneasy truth may be that Mr. Obama is not worried about alienating white voters with his stands on race. It is more likely that he fears having to speak the truth about the poor -- who are disproportionately black and Latino -- needing to take more responsibility for family breakdown, bad schools, thug-life culture and high poverty rates.

A 2007 Pew poll found that nearly 40% of blacks said the poor have become so divorced from middle-class values that they are a separate race. [Emphasis mine -- RD.] Mr. Obama has to know this tension exists. When he spoke in a black church about the need for black men to be good fathers it may have angered the Jesse Jacksons of the world. But it was a rare moment when he was willing to reveal himself and speak on an important racial issue. It did him no political harm; it may have helped him.

I'm not sure if Obama's caginess on race is a political decision -- by keeping things unclear, he allows people to project their own hopes onto him -- or a reflection of his own muddled thinking. Whatever Obama says, do we have any evidence that he will do anything on race-related government policy (affirmative action, set-asides, etc.) different from what any other contemporary Democratic politicians, white or black, would have done? Or does do? I've not seen any, though seriously, if any readers can point to it, please do.

My point is that Obama is trying to benefit politically from his race without having to take the hard positions that could shatter the feelgood aura many whites have about him as a racial healer. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel good -- not to feel great -- about tonight's historical moment: 45 years to the day after MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, a black man accepts the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. It's a great moment for America. But after the glow fades, where does Obama stand on controversial issues that are inextricably linked to racial politics -- the issues Juan Williams raises? Right-mindedness will only go so far this fall.

One thing that I don't like about Obama is how his broadmindedness takes the form of saying nice, respectful things about the conservative position on a controversial issue, but taking the most conventionally liberal position. He's going to end up doing the same thing on race, you watch. He could be a transformational figure, but I think the way he handled the Rev. Wright situation earlier this year revealed that his basic instinct toward confronting racial controversies is therapeutic, not substantive.