Gazette

Obama's success proof nation far from color blind

August 24, 2008 5:52 PM

By ED JONES, GUEST COLUMNIST

Just in my lifetime, we have gone from being a country where no black man or woman ever could hope to be president, to a country that is now on the verge of electing a president simply because he is black.

I can think of only two things that distinguished Barack Obama from most of his Democratic Party rivals during this year's presidential primaries: He actually has less political experience than most of them do, and he happens to have black skin.

Neither one is a qualification, yet black and white Democrats alike have abandoned the other presidential hopefuls and have embraced him.

Just what is it that black voters, like me, are supposed to see in him? He has no special message for black people. Skin color is pretty much the only thing we have in common.

Born in Hawaii, raised partly overseas, he is a Harvard-trained lawyer and onetime professor whose father was a graduate student from Kenya. He was raised by his white mother, who spent her life in academia. He is an example of our country's rich diversity, and that's great, but that is hardly the "black experience" I am familiar with.

I am not questioning his "blackness." As a conservative Republican, I have had to put up with enough of that myself. Yet, as a descendent of sharecroppers and slaves; as someone who grew up in the Old South of Jim Crow laws, separate drinking fountains and segregated schools, I fail to see how Obama's life experience resembles my own - or how it is supposed to inspire me.

How about his qualifications in general? Here is a man who has held one federal ofice for only a short time since his previous post in the Illinois legislature. Before that he was a community organizer. He can point to no major legislative accomplishments. As a law professor, he published no works of scholarship.

Aside from some hair-splitting diffierences, his positions on the issues are more or less the same as Hillary Clinton's or John Edwards'; pretty standard policies of the Democratic Party. He is a good speaker, but so are they.

I will say publicly what I hear a lot of other people saying privately: If Obama were white - in fact, if he simply had inherited more of his mother's physical characteristics - I believe this political novice would have been an also-ran, left in the dust of the campaign trail.

So, why are so many young people wearing his image on their T-shirts, like he was some sort of rock star?

Why do so many black people line up behind him as if he were one of the heroes of the civil rights era? Why do so many of the predominantly white national media treat him like he is already president?

Could it be a combination of black solidarity and, yes, white guilt? That would be a sad comment for both races.

We black people do not have nor need "black leaders." The civil rights movement empowered black citizens to participate in the political mainstream alongside all Americans.

That gives us the opportunity to choose the best leader, not a leader of a particular race.

As for white guilt: There is no one alive who is old enough to have owned a slave, and few if any people who are still in power had anything to do with the old days of segregation. White people owe us nothing but a fair chance.

Yes, it will be a profound moment in American history when it elects its first black president. That doesn't mean we should elect someone president just because he or she is black.

I devoted a lot of my time and effort when I held public oflce tfifighting for colorblindness under the law. Things like jobs, housing and of course our civil rights should not be denied - or granted - based on race. That is also the approach we should use when electing our political leaders.

I have faith that our great nation eventually will become a colorblind society, but we are not there yet. The phenomenon of Barack Obama is evidence that we still have a long way to go.