FEBRUARY 2011 l www.ebony.com 101

The date: November 3, 2010. The place: the East Room of the White House. President Obama had hastily called a news conference a day after his party lost six seats in the Sen-ate and more than 60 seats in the House of Representatives.

By his own admission, the Democrats re-ceived a good-old fashion “shellacking” during the midterm elections. He said that it “con-fi rmed what I’ve heard from folks all across America: People are frustrated—they’re deeply frustrated—with the pace of our economic re-covery and the opportunities that they hope for their children and their grandchildren ... I ran for this offi ce to tackle these challenges and give voice to the concerns of everyday people. Over the last two years, we’ve made progress. But, clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that [on Election Day]. And as president, I take responsibility for that.”

The president is right. The polls do sug-

gest that, during the fi rst two years of his ad-ministration, he failed to communicate effec-tively with the American people, particularly on such all-important pocketbook issues as jobs and taxes. Republicans controlled that message—and, as a result, now control the Congress. In the process, many conservatives have become so emboldened that they are saying and doing things reminiscent of turn-of-the-20th-century politics.

In a speech before the U.S. Senate on March 23, 1900, Sen. Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman of South Carolina defended the lynching of Blacks, who, he said, were serving in public offi ce in an attempt to “put White necks under Black heels to get revenge.”

A century and a decade later, racist under-tones from groups including the Birthers, the Tea Party and numerous red-faced U.S. con-gressmen, indicate to many that some Whites still have a palpable fear of losing power. Mob lynchings have been replaced by character as-sassinations. The Tea Party has vocally op-posed the president at every turn, and kept quiet when it could have squashed rumors with facts and denounced hate with some semblance of respect. Its message and actions have made it clear that they want him to fail, by any means necessary.

Is this what postracial America looks like? Of course, students of Black history never really bought into the notion of a color-blind society, anyway. Prejudgments based on race are too ingrained into the country’s psyche to be uprooted overnight, and racial

hatred is a brash, reassuring emotion that, if spun the right way and seasoned with fear, always trumps facts.

So how does a president—and a race—fi ght hate and win?

We examine this topic now because, frank-ly, fi guring out how to handle the haters will go far in determining Obama’s ultimate ef-fectiveness as president, and whether he gets elected to a second term.

Make no mistake: the Obama hate ma-chine will not be easy to dismantle. It will take complex applied political theory by the White House, and political activism by every Black household in America, to stand up to the hate, disrespect and falsehoods in a way that the president can’t. As former Congres-sional Black Caucus Chair Barbara Lee once said: “A good leader needs the support of the troops.”

The election of Barack Obama was an event. The change that he promised to bring is a move-ment. And movements have a way of bringing out the worst in those who fear change. It happened to Pitchfork Tillman, who, before he left the Senate fl oor, blurted out one more thing for good measure: “I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores.”

By the grace of God, we’re still here—with a Black man in the White House. How we handle the next two years will go a long way in determining our success.

—KEVIN CHAPPELL

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15 Acts of TOTAL Disrespect Shown to President Obama

he contention that the duly-elected president of the United States is

overreaching and trampling on state’s rights; a call from elected o! cials to reassess the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizen-ship to all born on U.S. soil; accusations that the president is unfair, racist and will help Blacks at the expense of Whites; the fl ying of the Confederate fl ag; the use by elected o! -cials of racist code couched as political strat-egy to exploit racial fears and paranoia and to organize a vehement and potentially violent opposition. All the above could describe tac-tics used against President Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago by Southern states fi rst intent on preserving slavery and, when that failed, committed to thwarting Reconstruction. But no such luck. Instead, these tactics are being used in the 21st century. Welcome to the New Confederacy. Other than the pe-riod of Reconstruction, it is di! cult, if not impossible, to identify a time in American history when a White-supremacist agenda infl uenced American politics as virulently and e" ectively as today.

The 2008 election of America’s fi rst Black president simultaneously a! rmed for mil-lions of Americans the possibility of tran-scending our racist history and moving for-ward in new ways, and for millions of others, opened a Pandora’s box from which their deepest racism and racial fears were released. Paramount among these fears are antiquated notions of the privileges accorded Whiteness and the loss of the uneven playing fi eld.

Begun in 1865, the purpose of Recon-struction was to facilitate the transition from

slavery, to protect the rights of former slaves and build a free South, and to transition Confederate states and their citizens back into the Union. Confederate attacks on Re-construction were constant. Initiatives were destroyed by intimidation and violence di-rected toward federal forces, freed slaves and their allies. State legislatures, local elected o! cials and former slave owners, often aided by the Ku Klux Klan and other violent orga-nizations, terrorized, brutalized and killed both agents and recipients of Reconstruc-tion e" orts. Slavery had ended, but much remained the same as the defeated South held on to state legislatures, elected o! ces, land and other political and economic insti-tutions. Under attack from its inception, Re-construction o! cially ended in 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes, in a deal with Southern Democrats to ensure his presidency, removed the last of the federal troops from the South. Jim Crow came soon after.

One hundred and fi fty years after their spiritual brethren seceded from the Union in late 1860 and early 1861, the language and iconography of this New Confederacy is chillingly similar. On November 8, 1860, two days after Lincoln was elected, Sout h Carolina’s Charleston Mer-cury newspaper editorialized, “The tea has been thrown overboard. The revolution of 1860 has been initiated.” Today, those opposing the Obama administration have ap-propriated the name and sym-bolism of the Boston Tea Par-ty in an attempt to confl ate their reactionary resistance to the colonists’ struggle against oppression by the

British. Just days before President Obama was inaugurated, right-wing radio talk-show host and former OxyContin addict Rush Limbaugh proudly announced, “I hope he fails.” Shades of South Carolina and six other states seceding before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of o! ce.

The resistance initiated during the presi-dential campaign has gained strength since Obama’s election. It leaves no room for the bipartisan dialogue and cooperation the president calls for, but instead attempts to block, distort and ridicule administration initiatives in language that is condescend-ing, contemptuous and, often, simply racist.The smokescreen of states’ rights and smaller government that the Confederacy used to deny the centrality of slavery as the cause of the Civil War is echoed in the New Confed-eracy’s insistence that it is an overreaching federal government, and not Barack Obama, that they are loathe to support. Just as their predecessors were obsessed with preserving slavery and White supremacy, so this New Confederacy is fi xated on the destruction of Barack Obama to the detriment of all else. A

week before Republicans and Tea Party can-didates won control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) made their priority clear. Not unemployment. Or job creation. Or the housing crisis. Or educa-tion. Or infrastructure. Or two ongoing wars. None of the issues that concern Amer-icans across political party, age, race, gender and geography made the cut. “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term presi-dent,” McConnell told National Journal.

It can be argued that the 148 years since the Emancipation Proclamation have seen consistent attacks on the rights of Black citi-zens, both legal and extralegal, to diminish or erase the rights fought for and won during the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. What is new is that the election of a Black president seems to have opened a national vein of racist paranoia and activism. Conservatives, from Sarah Palin to GOP leadership to Tea Party demonstrators, are milking this vein like extras on HBO’s vampire saga, True Blood. The subtextual theme of the Republican/Tea Party analysis seems to be this: Good, hardworking White people are at risk of having their country sto-len from them and being victimized by the Black president who wants to create a welfare

state to benefi t you-know-who at their expense.

is to destabilize, circumvent and ultimately destroy the duly-elected legitimate govern-ment. Unlike the Confederacy of Lincoln’s time, today’s New Confederates are absent a militia and cannot secede. Instead, they seek to cripple the president from within by creat-ing a legislative stalemate and from without by staged demonstrations, accusations of in-competence and conspiracy, and the encour-agement of a group of frustrated, angry and impotent Americans who, loathe to change and despairing of solutions, are looking for someone to blame. Underneath it all is the White-privileged fear of having to compete on a level playing fi eld for the highest o! ce in the land; of following the leadership of a Black man who is clearly the educational and intellectual superior of most Americans. For those who want a good ol’ boy president with whom they’d feel comfortable having a beer, Obama’s intellectual Blackness is terrifying.

Whatever else Barack Obama has in com-mon with Abraham Lincoln, the president he so greatly admires, both took o! ce at a pivotal time in America’s history in which race played a central role. As such, history will show them both as recipients of an un-precedented level of outrage, contempt and vitriol from their opponents. For the forces of the New Confederacy, in this Second Re-construction as in the fi rst, the presidency, the state of the union and its preservation are far less important than maintaining their personal power, privilege and the racial sta-tus quo.

Jill Nelson is a New York Times best-selling author and essayist based in New York City.

Facts do not disrupt this convenient analy-sis. It is enough to obfuscate.

With this Second Reconstruction come attempts to co-opt history. In the past year, two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and the aforementioned Mc-Connell, have suggested that a reassessment of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the United States and was passed in 1866 to prevent Southern states from denying citizenship to freed slaves, is in order. Tea Party-backed Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky asserts that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 interferes with pri-vate businesses’ First Amendment right to discriminate. Huh? Where’s that in the Con-stitution? Then there’s Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s 2010 designation of April as Confederate History Month to promote tourism and celebrate the contributions of Confederate soldiers. The proclamation made no mention of slavery in connection with the Civil War. McDonnell also requires nonviolent felons who seek restoration of their right to vote write him a letter about the circumstances of the crime, their family life and their post-incarceration contribution to society. Shades of the discriminatory “lit-eracy tests” required of Blacks attempting to register to vote in the Jim Crow South, tests banned, incidentally by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (Only Virginia and Kentucky still require action by the governor to restore voting rights.)

The campaign to ensure the failure of Barack Obama and his administration is a broad one, led by members of the Re-publican Party; those who identify with

the Tea Party movement; a group of wealthy, largely anonymous

funders; and a powerful, lu-crative and entrenched right-wing media. Their agenda, like that of their forbearers,

BY KEVIN CHAPPELL

January 16, 2009: Conservative radio talk show host Rush Lim-baugh: “I hope Obama fails. Somebody’s gotta say it.”

May 20, 2009: On ESPN’s Jim Rome Show, comedian Jay Mohr says being married to Michelle Obama “has to be like being married to Elton Brand. She is a big dude.”

May 25, 2009: Nevada’s Republican governor Jim Gibbons turns down an invitation from the White House to briefl y greet President Obama at the airport in Las Vegas. Citing com-ments by Obama saying

July 28, 2009: Fox News Commentator Glenn Beck calls Presi-dent Obama “a racist,” saying that he is a person with “a deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture . .. I’m not saying he doesn’t

like White people. He has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

that companies that received bailouts should not be wasting money on Vegas vacations, Gibbons says: “I am not interested in a handshake and a hello from President Obama, I am interested in an apology.”

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BY JILL NELSON

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Since the election of America’s first Black president, “Tea Party” Republicans have shouted racial epithets at civil rights legend Congressman John Lewis during the health care debate; hurled homophobic insults at Rep. Barney Frank, the first openly gay member of the Congress; and attempted to spread fear among my constituents during my midterm campaign because I am Muslim. I fought back against their hate and won.

President Obama also has had to endure “accusations” that he is a Muslim (and the pernicious implication that being a Muslim is bad) and charges that he is not American-born. His image has been defaced with a Hitler moustache. Yes, the towering achieve-ment of electing an African-American to the presidency of the United States, a nation that formerly held Africans in slavery, has evoked deep fears in sections of the populace. Pan-dering politicians, and certain wealthy indi-viduals, have whipped these fears into a fren-zy of hatred. We have a full-blown backlash, and it has come with the threat of violence.

The health-care debate, for example, fea-tured signs proclaiming, “We came unarmed. This time.” and calls from U.S. Senate can-didates for “Second Amendment (gun) rem-edies” to solve America’s problems.

The chasm between fact and fiction in the

It has been well documented how African-American communities are disproportion-ately impacted during recessionary times. When America catches a cold, Black America catches the flu. This recession is no di"erent. Until now, however, minorities and low-in-come borrowers have never been blamed for actually creating the downturn. And never has an American president, who came aboard well after the start of an economic downturn, been blamed for its impact.

But as we enter 2011, these two errant—if not dangerous—streams of thought have tak-en hold. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, conservative pundits and ac-tivists continue to overtly and covertly push the notion that minority and low-income borrowers caused the subprime mortgage

crisis that led to the recession, and that spending under

the Obama adminis-

How Obama, minorities and low-income Americans are scapegoats for the economic downturnBY VALERIE WILSON

With the right strategy, truth can trump hateBY CONGRESSMAN KEITH ELLISON

current political climate is disturbing. This di-vide is the product of an intentional and con-certed propaganda campaign to misinform and distract voters with a constant barrage of doomsday scenarios. The agenda is simple: To benefit a tiny minority of wealthy individu-als. Here’s a good example of what I mean: A Bloomberg National poll conducted days be-fore the 2010 midterm elections found that, by a two-to-one margin, likely voters thought taxes had gone up, the economy had shrunk and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (a program largely credited with saving the entire U.S. financial system) would never be recovered.

The facts, of course, are exactly the op-posite. The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress cut taxes for middle-class Americans, oversaw an economy that has grown for the past four quarters and will likely turn a profit on the dollars invested in rescuing the American financial system.

When you’re struggling to put food on the table and keep from losing the home that your family lives in, it gets hard to think about much else. Sadly, during tough times, it becomes easy to look around for someone to blame. Although general unease and uncertainty are pervasive, and people do not recognize legit-imate signs of progress, more blame is directed at commu-nities that suf-

fer disproportionally. The unemployment rate has hovered around 10 percent on aver-age for the nation for the past two years, but the Latino and African-American commu-nities had jobless rates of nearly twice that and for longer periods of time.

America’s political history is fraught with examples of one group or another being tar-geted and used as a scapegoat for partisan political purposes; think of the controversy surrounding John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism when he ran for president. But our history also tells us that we do not achieve equality by mudslinging, fearmongering or demonizing our fellow citizens.

In the wake of the midterm election re-sults, it can be hard to remember that we must organize, strategize and continue to fight for what is right.

We must remember that the politics of hope and generosity are still within our reach and will ultimately lead to a better future for all Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr. said that, while long, the arc of the moral universe bends to-ward justice. We must also remember that the arc does not bend on its own. We are the force that bends the arc, and this is the source of our purpose and our strength.

Keith Ellison is a three-term congressman repre-senting Minnesota’s 5th District. He is one of two Muslims in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Not since the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement has America seen a more virulent wave of fear and intolerance after a progressive paradigmatic shift.

tration has slowed the recovery by creating out-of-control deficits while generating little benefit to taxpayers. Neither could be further from the truth.

According to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, although minorities and low-in-come borrowers received a disproportionate share of subprime loans—Black borrowers were more than twice as likely to receive sub-prime loans than White borrowers—the vast majority of subprime loans went to White and upper-income borrowers. In 2006, non-His-panic Whites had more subprime rate loans than all minorities combined. Furthermore, some 60 percent of subprime rate loans were originated in largely White census tracts, and the number of 90-day-plus delinquency rates of lower-income neighborhoods accounted for only about one-fifth of all households—a number much too small to be a major con-tributor to the national foreclosure crisis.

Enter President Obama. Despite the fact that he and his administration have taken a lot of heat over the bank bailout known as Troubled Asset Relief Program, this program was actually created by his predecessor. Presi-

dent George W. Bush had already committed

nearly $300 billion to the bailout before Presi-dent Obama ever took o!ce. Either way, it is well documented that the money prevented a total economic collapse, and, according to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, 90 per-cent of it will be returned to taxpayers. Although the midterms have been cast as a referendum on deficit spending, it is mis-guided to point to the $787 billion stimulus as the cause. While it did add to the deficit, the recent sustained growth in federal deficit spending can be more accurately attributed to the unfunded Bush administration tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the Bush-era spending in-creases tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghani-stan, as well as the expansion of entitlements such as the Medicare prescription drug pro-gram and the significant loss of federal rev-enues tied to the current recession.

It has been estimated that only 7.6 percent of the increase in the deficit can be attributed to the president’s stimulus package. And it can be argued that a single-digit increase in the deficit was a small price to pay for the esti-mated 2.7 million to 3.7 million jobs created by the stimulus package. In fact, a number of notable economists have suggested that the size of the stimulus was not large enough.

But in making the case that irresponsible minority or low-income homebuyers cre-ated the subprime crisis or that the policies of President Obama are responsible for the na-tion’s record deficits and slow recovery, why let the facts get in the way? There’s no doubt that the metrics by which his critics would have us to measure the success of the Obama administration seem to be a perpetually mov-ing target. But in the end, only two questions need to be answered: Where did he start, and where did he finish?

Valerie Wilson is an economist and the vice-president of research at the National Urban League Policy Institute.

August 26, 2009: The White House an-nounces that President Obama will give a back-to-school speech to the nation’s students. The announcement spurred protests from angry par-ents and school admin-

September 9, 2009: South Carolina Repub-lican Congressman Joe Wilson shouts “You lie!” as President Obama gave a speech on health care during a joint ses-sion of Congress.

March 17, 2010: Fox News anchor Bret Baier interrupts Presi-dent Obama 23 times during a 20-minute Oval Office interview.

April 15, 2010: Signs at Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C., depict President Obama dressed as The Joker, Hitler, a witch doctor and even a monkey.

June 22, 2010: Rolling Stone magazine publishes an article in which Gen.Stanley McChrystal, the top com-mander in Afghanistan, described President Obama as unprepared on issues related to the war.

July 12, 2010: Members of a North Iowa Tea Party erect a billboard depicting President Barack Obama underneath the words “Democratic Socialism;” Adolf Hitler appears un-der “National Socialism”;

and Vladimir Lenin under “Marxist Socialism.”

istrators, many of whom pressured local school boards across the country to not air the televised speech. Conservatives said the speech was the White House attempting to “indoctrinate” children.

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In the late ’80s, there was a great ad cam-paign that revolutionized the marketing world. It was for Honda, and it was simply, “The Honda sells itself.” The auto giant was producing cars of such self-evident quality, the only thing that made sense was to buy them. With products that good, you didn’t need a lot of persuasion to convince people. And indeed, the Honda became one of the best-selling brands in America.

Unfortunately, there is no Honda in poli-tics. When it comes to persuading an always-skeptical American public, a politician has to tirelessly inform and sell a message. A mes-sage is more than a list of facts. Real mes-saging is laying out priorities and policies, a forward-thinking view of the world. It’s mak-ing a case for your perspective, your vision, and where it makes sense to go.

For the past two years, Democrats have failed to build a populist economic narra-tive that looked like the work they were do-ing. Let’s face it: No sane economist without a partisan ax to grind is going to argue against the need for the government to stimulate the economy to avoid a deeper economic slide. In fact, most argue that without the stimulus package passed by Democrats, the country would have fallen into another Great De-pression.

Although it made common economic sense, it didn’t sell it-

self and most people didn’t—and still don’t—understand what was in the stimulus package. Democrats failed to sell and create a unifying narrative while the GOP was singularly fo-cused only on defi ning what Democrats were doing as growing government and raising taxes. And let’s be clear: Republicans are very good salesmen. Indeed, it has been a stun-ning turnaround. In 2008, Americans felt Democrats understood their economic pain more than Republicans, and Democrats won voters most concerned with the economy by better than 10 points on the way to the im-probable election of a Black president. In this past midterm election however, according to exit polls, Democrats lost voters most con-cerned with the economy by 11 points, which explains the loss of the House of Representatives.

My smarter friends in the academic social science world say that people tend to under-stand and follow things better in the form of a story. Good messages usually tell a story or lay out a vision. They tells us where we are, set the scene and defi ne the antagonist. Something like this: “It’s a dark and stormy night, and greedy powerful corporate spe-cial-interest barbarians are at the gates with higher health-care costs, pink slips and fore-closure notices. The middle class is on the brink of falling.”

It draws a picture of the protagonist (those leaders who aren’t in bed with the greedy and powerful special interests but instead are fi ghting hard to disarm them, make them play fair and by the rules, and leveling the playing fi eld to em-power work-ing people to

fend o" gouging and exploitation) and lays out a vision for a resolution (economic popu-lism—power to the people so that they can defend themselves from greedy corporations, oil giants and HMOs, and build better lives for themselves and their families by their own ini-tiatives and hard work. The underlying theme is, government can’t solve all your problems, but it does have a role in protecting its citizens and promoting the common good).

A good example of this was Bill Clinton’s policy in the ’90s of “building a bridge to the 21st century.” Can’t you still see it? Can’t you still feel it?During the past two years, Democrats did

not drive a viable economic narrative that res-onated and spoke to the populist economic anxiety of moderate independent voters, who aren’t so much angry as fl at-out scared that they are losing economically to others. Some-where along the way, as President Obama was trying to steer the ship of state away from the rocks of economic depression, the messaging fell overboard. It wasn’t about character or toughness. His actions kept the country out of a Great Depression and he did what every president since Harry Truman had wanted despite the enormous political obstacles: He reformed health care. He has stood with his convictions instead of political calculations, and that’s the very defi nition of toughness and leadership. As we look to 2012, however, we will need more salesmanship to pull out Election Day victories.

Cornell Belcher is one of the country’s top poll-sters and president of the Washington, D.C.-based Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies.

In his initial term as president, Barack Obama has had to contend with an opposi-tion Republican Party that was almost trai-torous in its ambitious antics to thwart his programs and policies, actions detrimental not only to him but to the country. To wish failure upon a presidency is to want the na-tion to su" er, for the two are inseparable.

Without question, a trusting Obama left himself wide open to much of the thunder on the right. He depended too much on the Re-publicans’ word that they would be the truly loyal opposition in the traditional sense, and when they weren’t, he was much too slow to adjust his strategy.

They are entirely within their rights as the opposition to prefer their own policies over those of the administration. But the nastiness and viciousness of Republicans are way out of bounds and dangerous in today’s fragile democracy.

To be sure, Obama unnecessarily brought a lot of it on himself. From day one, he went out of his way to include Republicans in the governing process. Softening some of his own positions, the president angered and alien-ated important segments of his supporters by backing o" a stronger health-reform bill, dragging his feet on shutting down the prison at Guantanamo, poor timing on the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and preventing inves-tigations into possible war crimes committed during the Bush administration. These were huge miscalculations.

Many of his actions were seen as indeci-sive, which was quite a blow to a man known for his way with words. Suddenly, Obama seemed to lose the power of his voice, allow-ing the Republicans to take away his message and to defi ne him and his policies.

He thereby allowed Republicans, soundly defeated in the 2008 elections, to regain their confi dence, feeling they could kick the presi-dent around at will, that he would cave easily on just about any issue.

To save the nation from another depres-sion was not a mistake. The economy had to be rescued; big bank bailouts and help to other fi nancial institutions and preventing the total collapse of the automobile industry were necessary. But the other side of the crisis was ignored: addressing the growing jobless problem and providing assistance to Ameri-cans losing their homes. The president and his team of economic advisors, mostly from Ivy League backgrounds, proved they were not tuned in to the su" ering of poorer Amer-icans, whose numbers were being joined by more White middle-class and working people not used to that kind of treatment. Voters punished the Democrats severely in the 2010 midterm elections.

Looking ahead to 2012, Obama must be as e" ective a president as he was a cam-paigner. Enough with the idea that he’d settle for being a one-termer. His most loyal support group, African-Americans, doesn’t want to hear such talk. My sincere belief is there will not be another Black president for the rest of the century, or at least for most of it, if Obama fails. He will need a sta" that is sharper, quicker and more on target than in the past, to not only solve problems but, most importantly, to anticipate them.

Perhaps Obama will have to adopt the “Give ’em hell, Harry,” take-no-prisoners stance of 1948 Harry Truman. Clearly, much has got to change and soon.

Paul Delaney is a veteran reporter and a for-mer editor at the New York Times.

Communication—not brute strength—is the keyto Obama’s successBY CORNELL BELCHER

BY PAUL DELANEY

The president’s got to get tough with the GOP

The TakeawaySupport the messenger, own the messageBY RINKU SEN

America’s tumble into an atmosphere of hate refl ects a desperate backlash against enormous progress that culminated in the election of the fi rst African-American president.

Our job now is to continue that legacy by gaining control of the race debate in this new climate.

Although President Obama is the touchstone for racist talk, don’t think for one minute that it doesn’t affect you. If he is personally attacked based on falsehoods, if his offi ce is disrespected based on the color of his skin, it affects all people of color.

While that type of racism is intentional and blatant, it distracts from the kinds of discrimination that aren’t visible to the naked eye. The essential strategy of the Glenn Becks and Pat Buchanans of the world is to frame racism as individual bias with no relationship to the rules or institutions that shape access to op-portunity. If you are distracted by the street-level rule breakers, you are likely to forget about the need to improve institu-tions such as our public schools, hospitals and police departments.

Our challenge, then, is to confront bias and decode subtler messages: Gov-ernment is too big; socialism is rampant; American culture is being overrun. Subtle racism is still racism. We cannot be afraid to call it like we see it, nor be afraid to insert our collective voices directly into policy debate. We can’t reshape a debate in which we don’t take part. We have the intelligence. We have the moral high ground. And we have far more resources than we can imagine. Now it’s time for us to own the conversation—to decide who gets to talk, what language they use, and what’s important for the nation to discuss.

Rinku Sen is president and executive director of the Applied Research Center and author of Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing.

September 29, 2010: Maine’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Paul LePage, tells a group of fi shermen at a GOP forum that he won’t be afraid to tell Obama to “go to hell.” In November, Le-Page is voted into offi ce.

October 13, 2010: Obama opponents in Colorado erect a billboard depicting the president as an Islamist suicide bomber, a gay man and a Mexican bandit under a “Vote DemocRAT” slogan.

October 25, 2010: Rhode Island’s Demo-cratic gubernatorial candidate, Frank Caprio, tells a local radio station that President Obama “can take his endorse-ment and really shove it” after the president

October 26, 2010: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell con-fesses: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

November 18, 2010: GOP leadership says that they are too busy to accept Obama’s invitation to a bipartisan meeting due to “sched-uling confl icts.” Themeeting doesn’t happen until December 1.

failed to endorse Caprio during a swing through the state.11 12 13 14 15

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