The Right Shade of Black

By RANDALL KENNEDY

From the outset of his campaign, Barack Obama has had to deal with doubts about his loyalty to African Americans. Skeptics point to his ancestry (his mother was white), his upbringing (he was raised in Hawaii, far afield from a cohesive black community) and, most of all, his large cadre of enthusiastic white supporters.

Obama appeals to white voters because of his eloquent optimism and gentle charisma but also because whites contrast him favorably with black leaders who are perceived as incessantly focusing on racism. A problem, though, is that strong white support in and of itself is enough to trigger suspicion on the part of some black onlookers. "Why," they ask, "do white folks like that Negro so much? Is he a sellout?"

Obama himself acknowledged this problem in a speech last August to the National Association of Black Journalists. But pressure is mounting on Obama to accentuate his blackness and show that he has not forsaken his adopted racial roots. Some will claim that it is good politics for him to do so because the South Carolina primary features a Democratic Party electorate that is 50% African American. Another source of pressure comes from old-school civil rights activists suddenly facing eclipse, such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

As an African American, I hope Obama will withstand that pressure. First, although some activists and commentators do question whether Obama is "black enough," they are far from representative. Most black voters see Obama as unmistakably black, regardless of whom they prefer, and are thrilled to see an African American vying as a serious contender for the presidency. When Jackson and Sharpton ran, they did so symbolically. They were not genuinely campaigning for the presidency of the U.S. They were instead campaigning to become the HNIC (head Negro in charge) of black America. Obama, by contrast, is genuinely seeking to capture the White House. Most blacks recognize that a realistic effort to win the presidency imposes pragmatic constraints that symbolic candidates are free to ignore.

Second, displaying commitment to racial loyalty would, for Obama, unjustifiably jeopardize key white support. Astonishing numbers of whites have been drawn to Obama's effort to forge a new alliance of voters that transcends race. When Senator Hillary Clinton accused Obama of deliberately racializing her ill-chosen remarks on Martin Luther King Jr., L.B.J. and civil rights legislation, she implicitly suggested that the Obama camp had indulged in racial opportunism--victim-mongering of the Jackson-Sharpton variety. An important slice of the white vote that Obama attracts is made up of people who are keenly attentive to such charges. They would quickly abandon him if convinced that, contrary to his rhetoric, he too was engaged in the old routines of accusatory racial gamesmanship.

Obama has promised a new kind of politics that eschews conventional racial posturing. Delivering on that promise is crucial to his success. Doing so will require the courage to risk disappointing those who have become accustomed to formulaic gestures of racial loyalty. That is a daunting challenge but one Obama must show the audacity to meet.

Kennedy, a Harvard Law professor, is author of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal