{"id":1372,"date":"2008-08-29T12:24:17","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T16:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2008-08-29T12:35:44","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T16:35:44","slug":"hes-whipped-by-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=1372","title":{"rendered":"He’s Whipped by It."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u201cRemember
\nWho is this? <\/em>Don’t name him, and win a $1.6 million cash prize<\/em><\/p>\n

Jesse Washington, my colleague, former editor, and the recently named Associated Press race and ethnicity writer<\/a>, said it best and most succinctly: “Obama avoids race on King’s ‘Dream’ anniversary.”<\/a><\/p>\n

In the entirety of his DNC acceptance speech, notes Washington,<\/p>\n

Obama did not utter the words “black” or “African-American.” He said “McCain” 21 times, according to the transcript released beforehand. He said “American” 25 times and “promise” 32 times as he sought to create a new definition of, and a new path to, that immortal dream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But even more so, adds Washington, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech,<\/p>\n

Obama accepted the nomination Thursday night standing on the shoulders of King and thousands of others who suffered and bled to give blacks the right to vote \u2014 yet Obama did not speak King’s name. …<\/p>\n

\"\u201cI\u2019m“It looks like he’s running from history,” Dr. Cornel West [right], a professor of African-American studies and religion at Princeton University, said after the speech. “He couldn’t mention Martin, he couldn’t mention the civil rights movement<\/span>, he couldn’t mention those who sacrificed and gave so much. It’s very, very difficult to actually create a new world if you don’t acknowledge the world from which you are emerging.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three points:<\/p>\n

1. With this speech, Barack Obama’s well-documented avoidance of race<\/a>, as a policy of his campaign<\/a> despite this strategy’s ineffectiveness<\/a>, now officially borders on the obsessional.<\/p>\n

2. There’s a notion, in the sale of certain goods, of Black people being a “go-along market.”<\/strong> In other words that, for many kinds of products\u2014arguably most\u2014there is no need for white advertisers to craft messages specifically for Black people, because African-Americans will just “go along” and get the items that white people get, as marketers directly reach out to those white audiences.<\/p>\n

\"SomeoneThere’s long been a cast of this go-along marketing in the Obama campaign, as he reaches for the four-year, $400,000\/yr job. There, it apparently seems presumed that, short of, say, the candidate using the N-word in some blatantly untoward way\u2014or, better, losing his mind, and, as his opponent reportedly has, calling his wife the C-word in front of reporters<\/a>\u2014Obama can count on near-perfect Black support…despite the fact that he has yet to make a single campaign promise designed to specifically court, attract, and\/or satisfy Black voters.<\/p>\n

I won’t even get into the question of how many Black people Obama directly interacts with in his\u00a0Meet Barack Obama: A Video Tribute<\/em><\/a>. But I will say this:<\/p>\n

\"\u201cIRemember how, early on in her career, Oprah Winfrey, a huge Obama supporter, of course<\/a>, used to get criticized by Black people for the way she interacted with whites on her show?<\/a> Says Winfrey, “People would say, `Oh, she’s hugging the White people too much,’ or `She goes to the White people in the audience more’ or `She doesn’t have enough Black guests on the show.'” Ahem.<\/p>\n

(For the record, Winfrey said of last night’s speech<\/a>, ”I think it’s the most powerful thing I have ever experienced,”\u00a0 adding, ”I cried my eyelashes off.”)<\/p>\n

What is my point?<\/p>\n

I’ll say it a clearly as I can: In a perverse and odd way, Obama is not speaking to Black voters<\/em>. We are a go-along market in his presidential campaign, meaning that there is nothing that he will propose that will antagonize or dissatisfy white voters.<\/p>\n

3. As I wrote in my post on the Jeremiah Wright controversy<\/a>, you can always tell the nature of a thing by how it begins. Anyone, having seen Obama\u2019s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention\u2014and, now, the 2008 version\u2014who believes that Obama is going to carry the concerns of Black people on his shoulders into the White House clearly hasn\u2019t been paying attention to the American system of governance, especially the last 2 1\/3 centuries of it.<\/p>\n

If he can’t say Martin Luther King Jr.’s name in a speech, what makes you think he can say yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who is this? Don’t name him, and win a $1.6 million cash prize Jesse Washington, my colleague, former editor, and the recently named Associated Press race and ethnicity writer, said it best and most succinctly: “Obama avoids race on King’s ‘Dream’ anniversary.” In the entirety of his DNC acceptance speech, notes Washington, Obama did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}