Obama Might Need to Show ID in More Places than East Harlem

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


The only thing wrong with New York Congressman Charles Rangel’s quip that President Obama had better bring his ID to East Harlem is that he limited it to East Harlem. A President Obama in his trademark baseball cap, sometimes hip clothes, and sneakers, sans White House entourage and limo, strolling or driving down a dimly lit night time street in any number of poor black neighborhoods could easily be stopped. He wouldn’t have to fit the near textbook profile of a poor, young, black male. He could just as easily be rich, older, a businessman, a professional, star athlete, college professor, or as in the horrific case of NYPD officer Omar Edwards, the police officer gunned down by a white cop.

There have been countless cases where prominent black men have been stopped, frisked, shaken down, and humiliated by police officers, trailed by store clerks, and fumed in anger as taxicabs whizzed by them on busy urban streets. Edwards is hardly the first black cop to be victimized by fellow officers. In recent years, there have been more than a few cases where white cops stopped, harassed, attempted to arrest, even arrested, and shot off duty black cops.
The wishful thought was that Obama’s election buried once and for all negative racial typecasting and the perennial threat it posed to the safety and well-being of black males. It did no such thing. Immediately after Obama’s election and months before Edwards was shot dead, teams of researchers from several major universities found that many of the old stereotypes about poverty and crime and blacks remain just as frozen in time. The study found that much of the public still perceives those most likely to commit crimes are poor, jobless and black. The study did more than affirm that race and poverty and crime are firmly rammed together in the public mind. It also showed that once the stereotype is planted, it’s virtually impossible to root out. That’s hardly new either.

In 2003 Penn State University researchers conducted a landmark study on the tie between crime and public perceptions of who is most likely to commit crime. The study found that many whites are likely to associate pictures of blacks with violent crime. This was no surprise given the relentless media depictions of young blacks as dysfunctional, dope peddling, gang bangers and drive by shooters.

The bulging numbers of blacks in America’s jails and prisons seem to reinforce the perception that crime and violence in America invariably comes with a young, black male face. And it doesn’t much matter how prominent, wealthy, or celebrated the black is. The overkill frenzy feeding on the criminal hijinks of former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, O.J. Simpson, and the legions of black NFL, NBA stars, Hollywood personalities, and entertainers who run afoul of the law or are poorly behaved, and of course, everyone’s favorite stomping boy, the rappers and hip hop artists, further implants the negative image of black males. None of them are hardly poor, downtrodden, ghetto dwelling young black males.
There was, however, a mild surprise in the Penn State study. It found that even when blacks didn’t commit a specific crime; whites still misidentified the perpetrator as an African-American.

University researchers were plainly fascinated by this result. Five years later they wanted to see if that stereotype still held sway, even as Obama’s political star rose, and legions of whites said that they liked him, and would vote for him, and meant it. Researchers still found public attitudes on crime and race unchanged. The majority of whites still overwhelmingly fingered blacks as the most likely to commit crimes, even when they didn’t commit them. That’s especially important to say, since the fall back line on racial stereotypes is that to link race and crime is not to stereotype since blacks commit the majority of street crimes.

One implication for this is that Obama’s victory was more a personal triumph for him. It did not radically remap racial perceptions, let alone put an end to racial stereotyping. Another is that much of the public still sees crime and poverty through narrow racial lens.
An early newspaper account of the Edward’s shooting minced no words. It said that Edwards was mistaken for a thug. The brazen inference was that Edward’s clean cut look, police badge, and that he was doing his duty in giving chase to a criminal suspect didn’t exempt him from the young black male equals thug standard typecast. Edwards paid the price for that casting. And all Charlie Rangel was trying to say is that the casting could fit any young black who happens to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, even if he’s a president.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Rapper Murder Reinforces Thug Image of Black Males

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A few years back media outlets took shocking note of a deadly and disturbing phenomenon. A lot of rap artists were suddenly turning up dead. Dead actually is not the right way to describe their deaths. They were murdered, and their murderers in almost all cases were other rappers, or their friends, or the associates of rival rappers. The most celebrate killings were those of rap big wigs Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG. The rap victims were killed at parties, at nightclubs, in recording studios, or while sitting in their cars. One was even killed while allegedly trying to knock over a convenience store. Since then the body count has climbed even higher with the latest casualty figure being rapper Dolla given name Roderick Anthony Burton II gunned down at a shopping center in Los Angeles.

Dolla’s murder along with those of the others killed again tossed an ugly glare on a problem that has bedeviled the rap business, and a bigger problem that chronically plagues young black males. The personal feuds, jealousies rivalries, and unvarnished gangsterism that is rife among some in the rap industry has deeply planted the sordid image in the minds of many that the rap industry is synonymous with gangs, crime and violence. The Dolla killing reportedly was preceded by a gang brawl in a parking lot outside an Atlanta club. This is an all too familiar rerun of mob brawls that have been the prelude to the murders of the other rappers.

The murders of the rappers have done more than batter an image of an industry branded and universally reviled as violent, self-destructive and self-indulgent. It has also reinforced the stereotypes of young black males as inherently gang attracted and violence prone. Though it is a vicious and unfair stereotype since the overwhelming majority of young black males do not engage in the gratuitous violence of some in the rap world. They have gotten the emblematic rap as being a part of that world because the gun toting rappers and their violence prone hangers ons feed off the bad actor lifestyle and play hard on the us versus them volcanic rage of some young blacks.

But black-on-black violence though exploited, glorified, and even celebrated, especially if there’s a payoff in it, is hardly an invention of rappers. The biggest buyers of and copy cat attraction of rap music and even the rapper lifestyle has been non-blacks. They are the ones who jingle the cash registers for the rap industry. But the bitter truth is that they aren’t the face of the violence in the rap world, and they aren’t the ones that much of the public would never dare finger as the ones responsible for violence and murder among young persons.

Young blacks are the ones who are fingered. And tragically in the last two decades, murder has been at or near the top of the list of the leading causes of death of black males under age 25 years. Their assailants were not white racist cops or Klan nightriders but other black males. Their death tolled has soared because far too many Americans still don’t get too excited about black violence as long as it doesn't spill over the borders of the ghettos into their suburbs.
Pent-up anger and frustration, though, among some black males is only one cause of the dangerous cycle of black-on-black violence. Some black males are engaged in a seemingly eternal desperate search for self-identity and esteem. Their tough talk, swagger, and mannerisms are defense mechanisms they use to boost their esteem. They measure their status or boost their self-worth by demonstrating their proficiency in physical fights, assaults and, yes murder.

Some blacks even make a litany of excuses, such as poverty, broken homes, and abuse, to excuse the violence. These explanations for the mindless violence that thug acting rap entrepreneurs engage in are phony and self-serving. Many of them of the rappers who have landed hard in a court docket are anything but hard-core, dysfunctional poverty cases. Yet the internal rage that propels them to commit thuggish acts still lay dangerously close to the surface.

None of this is consolation to Dolla and his family. Sean "Diddy" Combs who is certainly no stranger to controversy and has had his run ins with the law praised Dolla as a good kid. However, Combs had a cautionary note in his praiseworthy words about Dolla and that was not to take life for granted. His message was not for Dolla but for the potential targets and potential victims of those who exult the gangster violence that many in the rap business seek to make their fortune from exploiting. It’s a message that those within and without that world should heed.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Banks Bomb on Stress Tests for Minority Lending

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A buoyant Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reassured the public that the big 19, that’s the 19 giant banks and financial houses that to hear Geithner tell it the fate of Western capitalism rests on, have passed the Treasury imposed “stress” test with if not flying colors, at least steady drip colors. That wasn’t hard to do. Taxpayers greased the skids of the 19 with more than $50 billion in handouts. And the stress tests were puff ball tests that imposed neither tough nor new government enforced financial requirements or restrictions on the banks.
The debate rages just how much taxpayer cash the banks and financial houses really need, how much more they’ll need, how long they’ll need it, and will the money really ensure permanent solvency. But forgotten in the hubbub over the Geither glossed report is the painful fact that thousands of black and Latino homeowners are still left holding the financial bag for the sub prime mess that taxpayers are forced to bail the banks out of.
Two reports by Fair Finance Watch and the Center for Public Integrity on mortgage lending practices, issued on the eve of the Geithner bank stress test report, revealed that from 2005 to 2007 the 19 bailed out banks and financial houses got into hock to taxpayers to nearly one trillion dollars. They ran up the bulk of the debt through the toxic sub prime loans to mostly minority home buyers. The banks ran up the debt through holding companies, investment houses, financial and real estate subsidiaries and through stock purchases and sales.
The reports also showed that the sub prime loans did little to help revitalize grossly underserved minority communities. In fact Bank of America which holds its cup out for another $ 34 billion taxpayer hand out had one of the lousiest records in lending to minorities. The loans that it did make were far more costly than loans to whites. But B of A was hardly the sole loan bad actor. The top bank welfare recipients raked in tens of billions in profits and taxpayer handouts while engaging in scrooge like lending. When they lent they charged rates that would make loan sharks blush.
Wells Fargo charged African-Americans more than twice as much as whites for home loans. JP Morgan charged African Americans and Latinos more than twice that of whites. Citigroup, US Bancorp and Wachovia charged minorities one and half times more. Blacks and Latinos were more than one and half times more likely than whites to be denied a loan by the top banks that received taxpayer bail out cash. Income had little to do with who the lenders pitched their sub prime loans to. Race and the neighborhoods they lived in were the prime determinants. A HUD study found that upper income blacks were one-and-a-half times as likely to have a sub prime loan as persons that lived in low-income white neighborhoods.

Sub prime lending at times took on elements of loan racketeering; a racket that hurt and still hurts tens of thousands of would be black and Latino homeowners. The lender’s bait and switch tactics, the deliberately garbled contracts, deceptive and faulty lending, questionable accounting practices, and charged hidden fees, all with the connivance of sleepy-eyed see-no-evil oversight of federal regulators, are well known and documented. Their snake oil loan peddling wreaked havoc with thousands of mostly poor, strapped homeowners.
The recent reports on the lending practices of the top banks, though, make clear, that they continued to rake in big profits from the loans, even while padding their bottom line with taxpayer dollars. The banks and holding companies can suffer huge losses from their sub prime loans but still make money, lots of it. HSBC Holding, for instance, reported losses of $10 billion from bad loans in 2007 but it still reported a 5 percent rise in its profits.
Sub prime lending albeit highly profitable for a brief time was not a crushing risk for the banks when the loans went sour. The banks offset their losses through tax write offs, increased loan and service fees and charges, lower saver interest rates, and stock sales and swaps. They have one more trump card to cleanse their toxic debt: the taxpayer’s pocketbook.
They have played that card magnificently. The great flaw in all this is that banks are still largely left to self-police themselves. They determine how much they’ll lend, and to who. They will continue to make loans to minority home buyers, they are required to do that under the terms of the much maligned Community Reinvestment Act, and many of those borrowers will continue to pay dearly for those loans. That’s a stress test that the banks won’t have to take, let alone pass.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Another Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Teens

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Four years ago the US Supreme Court took a big step toward righting a galling wrong. It joined nearly every other nation on the globe and banned teen executions. Now it should take the next big step and dump all laws that let states lock up juvenile offenders for the rest of their life. And there are lots of them. In a report last year, Human Rights Watch found that more than 2000 juvenile offenders are serving life without possibility of parole sentences. The U.S. locks up more juveniles for life without the possibility of parole than all nations combined.

The Court will rule on two Florida cases where juvenile offenders got no parole life sentences. The two cases point up the often appalling legal and racial inequities in the juvenile no parole sentencing. The two men committed crimes when they were 17 years old. The crimes were violent crimes; a rape and an armed home invasion robbery. But in both cases, the evidence, testimony and witness identification were muddled and contradictory. They were still convicted and have spent more than a decade in prison.

As is the case with the death penalty, the no-parole sentences are far from race neutral. In the Florida case, both men are African American. Black teens are ten times more likely to receive a no-parole life sentence than white youths. They are even more likely to get those sentences when their victims are white. This was the case in the Florida convictions, and they are often tried by all-white or majority white juries. Those same juries seldom consider their age as a mitigating factor.

A significant number of juveniles sentenced to no-parole sentences did not actually commit murder but were participants in a robbery or were at the scene of the crime when the death occurred as in the Florida cases. The majority of the teens slapped with the draconian sentence had no prior convictions, and a substantial number were aged 15 or under.

Judges and juries say that violence is violence no matter the age of the perpetrator, and that punishment must be severe to deter crime. Prosecutors and courts in the 40 states that convict and impose no-parole life sentences on juvenile offenders -- with California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, and Florida leading the pack -- have repeatedly rejected challenges that teen no-parole sentences are a violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Though murder rates have plunged to near record lows, the public is still scared of violent crime, especially young persons who commit violence. Lawmakers are loath to do anything that will bring public heat on them that they are soft on crime. This is still considered the kiss of death for political careers.

Yet most experts agree that children don't have the same maturity, judgment, or emotional development as adults. In a report on juveniles and the death penalty, Amnesty International found that a number of child offenders sentenced to death suffered severe physical or sexual abuse. Many others were alcohol or drug impaired, or suffered from acute mental illness or brain damage. Nearly all were below average intelligence.

Despite Hollywood sensationalism and media-driven myths about rampaging youth, most experts insist that children are not natural-born predators. If given proper treatment, counseling, skills training and education, most can be turned into productive adults.

An irony in the Supreme Court's 2005 ban on executing teen killers was that the ban actually worked against no-parole reform efforts. Since states could no longer execute juvenile offenders, then the legal thinking was that it was far more humane to sentence them to life sentences. Victims' rights advocacy groups claim that taking away the option of no- parole sentences for juveniles will weaken crime deterrents. This makes it even tougher to make the case that counseling, treatment, and education is the more effective way to redeem young people who commit crimes than harsh sentencing -- but it is.

And there’s the gnawing question of race. The racial gap between black and white juvenile offenders is vast and troubling. The rush to toss the key on black juveniles has had terrible consequences in black communities. It has increased poverty, fractured families, and further criminalized a generation of young black men.

No matter what their age, those who commit crimes -- especially murder -- must be punished, but the punishment should not only fit the crime, it should also fit the age of the person that committed it, and the circumstances that drove them to commit their offenses. If a juvenile offender with the right help can turn their life around, they deserve that chance, and judges should be able to give it to them.

The Supreme Court in its decision to ban juvenile executions called teen executions "shameful." They recognized that the practice cannot, and should not, be justified on moral or legal grounds, and that it was past time to put a stop to teen executions. The court should recognize the same with the no parole sentence for teens and outlaw it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Michael Steele the Magically Disappearing Negro

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele must have been struck by terminal amnesia. He yukked at and agreed with the swipe a radio caller took at President Obama. The caller called him “the magic negro.” That’s the goofy, tired, worn, ditty that tags Obama as a black man with the supposedly impregnable Teflon shield that renders him immune to any and all criticism, adversity, or just plain bad political luck.

A few weeks back a GOP big shot lambasted then RNC chairman Chip Saltzman for releasing the CD that parodied Obama as the magic negro. The GOP big shot that did the lambasting was Steele. In the short weeks Steele’s been the RNC chief the parade of Steele contradictions, gaffes, shoot from the lip quips, political mugging, media hamming and grandstanding, and alleged financial hijinks, combined with his seemingly insatiable knack for pissing off one and all, and especially one in all in his own GOP, could fill up a mini-telephone book.

The squeals for Steele’s hide by red faced GOP grousers have gotten so loud that even long defrocked GOP bloviator Newt Gingrich had to come to Steele’s rescue. But even that rescue effort seemed more a case of Gingrich using the Steele flap to ax grind with GOP foes than a heart felt bail out of Steele.

Then there’s Limbaugh. Steele first picked a fight with the talk show kingpin, next did a quick mea culpa, and since then has taken pains to zip his lip on the near hourly verbal inanities that gush from the mouth of the GOP’s de facto air waves guru.

Steele’s greatest offense though tells much of why he and the GOP are in what far right-side former Georgia congressman Bob Barr calls deep trouble. He forgot what got him the RNC chair. Steele campaigned hard for the top spot on the promise that he’d be the poor man’s Obama of the GOP. In his acceptance speech Steele prattled on about making the GOP a party of inclusiveness. This is the word that the GOP has forgotten how to say, spell, let alone put into any semblance of practice since Bush loudly declared that it was going to be the party's watchword in 2000, and then just as publicly did everything he could to make sure that it wasn’t.

Steele crunched the numbers and saw that the country’s political and demographic landscape has radically changed in the past decade and will likely change even more in the next decade. There are more minority, women, gay, young, urban, college educated voters than ever and there are fewer white, rural, non college educated, aged, white male votes than ever. It didn’t take a math wizard to figure that if the GOP stays stuck on trying to win national elections with the same bunch that brought victory in years past it will be well on its way to being a party that can hold future conventions in an airport telephone booth.

But numbers and political realities are one thing, the heat Steele took from GOP hardliners who like things just the way they are, and think that the way to shore up the floodwaters is to keep sticking there fingers in the hole in the dike is another. Steele got the message, dutifully added his finger to the the other GOP dike hole pluggers, then made like Limbuagh and made wild sounds about how the GOP moderates were ruining the party, and vowed retribution against them. He ranted about staying true to the GOP’s less government, less foreign policy engagement with foes, less regulations, more free market remedies, tough defense, and bashing Obama. So much for the GOP’s march under General Steele to a new political millenium.

So under Steele’s watch the GOP (and Steele) has supplied legions of comics with a storehouse of laughingstock fodder, degenerated into endless carping and fingerpointing, lost one and soon another Senate seat, and reduced itself to a toothless, fangless political impotency. Under Steele’s watch polls now show that barely one out of five voters now say they have any hard allegiance to the GOP, and that might be overstating the numbers.

Steele guffawed at a radio caller’s magic negro crack about Obama. But so far the only magic that Steele has worked is to create even more chaos in the GOP. That kind of magic may soon make Steele the disappearing negro.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

100 Day Silliness

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



Then Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama did a prescient thing last October. He told an interviewer on a Colorado radio station that he thought the first 1000 days not the first 100 days would make the crucial difference for his presidency. Candidate Obama directly parodied the line from JFK’s inauguration address in 1961. Kennedy proclaimed the first 1000 days as the better time frame to measure how effective or bumbling an administration is. Obama and JFK were wise to cite the much longer time frame. They sought to damp down the wild public expectations that they can work quick magic and miracles in no time flat.

Obama is well aware that the 100 days burden weighs heavier on him than any other president in modern times. He’s young, liberal, untested, and black. There are still deep doubts, suspicions and loud grumbles from some about his competency and political savvy. The Mt. Everest stack of op-eds, news articles, pictorials, websites, chatrooms, national viewer polls and surveys, and CNN and MSNBC specials will dissect, peck apart his words and initiatives for the first 100 days, and nag everyone else to do the same. That put even more pressure on to show he’s a tough, resolute, effective leader.

Obama in his quip to the Colorado radio interviewer knew the silliness of fixating on the drop in the bucket 100 day time span to brand a president and his presidency as a stunning success or a miserable flop. A quick look at the presidency of his two immediate predecessors is enough to prove that. Clinton bombed badly in pushing Congress for a $16 billion stimulus package; he bungled the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military, and got the first flack on his health care reform plan. Yet, the Clinton presidency is regarded as one of the most successful, popular and enduring in modern times.

Then there’s the Bush presidency. He got off to a fast start. At the 100 day mark in April 2001, his approval ratings matched Obama’s. He was widely applauded for his trillion dollar tax cutting program, his "Faith-Based" and disabled Americans Initiatives, and for talking up education, health care reform and slashing the national debt. But aside from the momentary adulation he got after the 9/11 terror attack his presidency is rated as one of the worst in modern times.

The 1000 day mark that Obama, Kennedy and other presidents have cited as the more realistic time frame is not an arbitrary number. That marks the near end of a president’s first White House term. The honeymoon is over, and the president has fought major battles over his policies, initiatives, executive orders, court appointments and programs with Congress, the courts, interest groups and the media. Battles that by then have been won or lost, or fought to a draw, and there’s enough time to gauge their impact and the president’s effectiveness.

The other big problem with the whimsical 100 day fixation is that it can force a president, in this case Obama, to feel that he must move sprint out the gate to fulfill campaign promises, pass legislation, and burnish up his media and public credentials as a top leader. This carries risks; risks of acting too hastily and making missteps that invite intense criticism.

Obama’s dash to padlock Guantanamo, announce big sweeping plans for health care, financial and banking regulation reform, his much ado about nothing handshake with Hugo Chavez, his outstretch to Iran, and Cuba, and hint at dumping nuclear weapons from the world’s arsenals has drawn heat fire from the right that he’s a reckless tax and spend, debt burdening, free market wrecker, and enemy conciliator. His mixed signals on prosecuting CIA torture cases and retaining virtually intact the faith based initiative, and ladling out billions to the banks have drawn heat from the left that he’s a backslider and Beltway politician.

Obama, though, is no different than other every other president modern era. He is pulled and tugged at by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, moderate and conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all vie for White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests. They’ll applaud him when they get their way and bash him when they don’t.

Obama did another smart thing in his first presidential interview with 60 Minutes in November. He told the interviewer that he took a close look at FDR’s first 100 days and he was struck not by the avalanche of legislation and programs that FDR rammed through Congress his first 100 days but his willingness to do things that were different and that made lasting change. This will take far more than 100 days for that to happen and for it to be remembered.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly on Fridays 9:30 to 10:00 AM in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on ktym.com and blogtalkradio.com

Navy Seal Sharpshooters Can’t End the Somali Crisis

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The only reason that Somalia is in the news these days is the spectacular desperation and criminality of the Somali pirates, an American sea captain held hostage by them, and Hollywood image sharp shooting by American Navy Seal commandoes to free him. This news will quickly fade but the reasons the Somali pirates exist and make news in the first place won’t fade. In the past year nearly forty ships have been hijacked off the coast of Somalia and millions have been paid out in ransom.
But the Somali pirates are not the modern day’s sea going Robin Hoods that some have tried to portray them as who rob from the rich, booty laden European and Asian ships and turn their riches over to their impoverished kin and villagers on the shore. They aren’t motivated as some Somali pirate mouthpieces have hinted, and backed up by some writers, as a kind of unofficial Coast Guard protecting their sea waters from plundering fisherman, and trying to halt illegal chemical and radioactive waste dumping off their coast.
A Somali pirate leader candidly told interviewers in Kenya last October after hijacking a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition that their sole motivation was to grab the ransom money.
It’s more than a money grab though that drives the pirates. It’s the never ending Somali crisis. The UN has described the security situation in Somalia as the worst the country has experienced since the early 1990s, while the UN's Food Security and Analysis Unit (FSAU) has described the level of human suffering and deprivation in Somalia as "shocking".

In the best of economic days Somalia still ranked near rock bottom on every economic and social scale of the world’s poorest countries. The same month that the Ukrainian ship was hijacked 52 non government organizations doing relief and humanitarian work in the country implored the UN to intervene in the crisis.
There is good reason for the urgent appeal. More than 3 million Somalis, or about half the country’s population, are in desperate need of emergency aid. This is a near one hundred percent increase in the aid stricken numbers from the start of 2008. The reasons for the desperation are well known; a devastating drought, record-high food prices, and a horrific and expanding war by gangster militia bands. The fighting in 2008 drove hundreds of thousands from their homes in the cities. The war fleeing refugees pushed the total of displaced persons to a staggering 1.1 million. The greatest impact of the suffering as always has fallen on the children. One in six children under five, or approximately 180,000 children, is acutely malnourished in South and Central Somalia.

Somalis are not the only ones who are in mortal danger from the raging violence. In 2008, 24 aid workers were killed and scores of others were kidnapped while carrying out their work. There were more than 100 reported security incidents directly targeting aid agencies. The majority of the aid workers are Somali nationals, but European workers have also been the victims.
The non government organizations did not simply beg the UN to intervene in the country’s crisis. They also lambasted international agencies for not doing more to protect civilians and aid workers alike.

The piracy escapades have made things worse in a couple of other ways. They have taken the glare off the dire conditions in the country since much of the Western press has fixated on the sensationalism of the piracy acts and President Obama’s response to it. Worse, the sea violence and the threat posed to shipping could disrupt the always precarious flow of food and medical supplies to the 1 million and daily increasing displaced persons in the country.
Several international donor groups have appealed to European and American donor groups to increase pressure on governments to formulate a plan to insure that the piracy doesn’t stop the flow of the aid.
A year ago, the Navy announced plans to build dozens of new smaller, more mobile combat ships to better chase down the pirates near the shore and maybe even hit their on shore bases. However the recent announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, of defense budget cuts, puts that up in the air. Even if the ships are built that wouldn’t do much to stop the piracy. There are always hundreds more desperate, impoverished and violence scarred young men who would happily take the place of the pirates who American combat forces knock out.
Meanwhile, President Obama’s tough talk to frontally combat piracy is welcome and applauded by all. But the far bigger problem remains the never ending crisis of a broken, war torn nation that pushes thousands of men to high sea gangsterism. Navy Seal sharpshooters can’t do much to end that crisis.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

An Honorary Degree for Kermit The Frog But Not President Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

It’s not clear if Arizona State University President Michael Crow had any say in the decision not to grant President Obama, the school’s commencement speaker, an honorary degree. But one thing’s for sure the dumbest thing that school officials said in telling why they won’t grant an honorary degreee to President Obama was not that he didn’t have a credible body of work and thus supposedly was unfit for the honorary degree. It was that the commencement committee may not have even considered him for the degree in the first place. Here are the names of the wise ones on ASU’s Honorary Degrees Committee who snubbed President Obama for the honorary degreee.

Laurie Chassin, Psychology, 2010 (Chair) Christine Wilkinson, Senior Vice President and Secretary of the University, 2010 (Co-Chair) Roger Adelson, History, 2009 Bill Miller, Applied Biological Sciences, 2009 Joan Brett, Graduate College, 2010 Claudia Brown, Art, 2010 Chris Callahan, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, 2010 Philip Christensen, Earth and Space Exploration, 2010 Luis Gomez-Mejia, Management, 2010 Jewell Parker Rhodes, Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing, 2010 Paul Patterson, Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness, 2010 Sander van der Leeuw, Human Evolution and Social Change, 2010 Linda Vaughan, Nutrition, 2010 Gary Waissi, ASU Global Engagement, 2010

The university vice provost and dean of the Graduate College; and the president of the ASU Foundation also are ex-officio members of the committee.

The committee members hail from all over the university map and they made no mention in the flurry of press announcements they put out variously explaining and defending the snub the exact criteria they used to determine why Obama didn’t cut the academic muster. That would be tough anyway. The whole thing is either ludicrous or farcical depending on how charitable one wants to be. By any measure--organization, political mastery, historic trend setting, his education and legal writings, research and instruction, and intellect—President Obama’s merits speak for themselves. And ASU officials pretty much acknowledged that by inviting him to give the commencement address in the first place.
The reason for the degree snub then can’t be lack of merit or a lack of a body of work. It’s something else and that something else speaks to the politics and money behind who gets an honorary degree and why they get it. In years past ASU has laddled them out to a laundry list of such academic wizards as a movie director, oil computer and microchip executives, and newpaper publishers. Universities, and that includes ASU, routinely hand out honorary degrees to a check list of fat cat contributors and donors. Universities have even been known to award them to politicians who have never taken pen to paper. This was the case in 2001 when Yale University awarded an honorary degree to George W. Bush. He was barely one year into his presidency. The sum of Bush’s academic accomplishment from Yale was a degree in history in 1968.

ASU also honored its favored political son, Barry M. Goldwater, with an honorary degree in 1961. It didn’t hurt that Goldwater was the state’s most influential US senator and could steer a lot of federal cash to the university. But a Goldwater honorary degree at least in that respect made some sense. Not sure if the same could be said for the recipient of the honorary degree from Long Island’s Southampton College in 1996. The academic marvel that year was a Sesame Street Muppet Kermit the Frog.
Then again maybe Kermit was more deserving than Bush since Kermit had used his celebrity to spread positive messages about environmental protection in public service announcements for the National Wildlife Federation, National Parks Service, the Better World Society, and other groups.
At least that’s what University officials said in defending Kermit’s honorary degree.

Then there are the universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University Stanford University, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Virginia. They play it close to the vest, maintain their level of real academic integrity and cut out the honorary degree sham.
ASU obviously isn’t on that elite list of academic non-honorary degree game players. And President Obama is not Bush or Kermit the Frog. So here’s how ASU President Crow can erase an embarassment. Ignore the Honor’s Committee’s blindspot toward or deliberate egg of the President, and bestow on him the award that he richly deserves, an honorary degree.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Tribute to a Last Living Link to a Painful Past

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The faint smile on Mrs. Gertrude Baines face midway through my tribute remarks to her was literally a smile for the ages. I, and a small group of well wishers, admirers, hospital staff, and reporters that gathered to pay a birthday tribute to Mrs. Baines on April 6 were witnesses to history; a living, breathing history filled with much pain and promise. At 115 years of age, Mrs. Bates, an African-American, had once more earned the proud and breath stopping distinction of being the world’s oldest person.
The Guinness Book of Records bestowed that title on her after a painstaking sift through stacks of official birth records. Along the way, it had discounted the claims from many worldwide of being the world’s oldest. An official from Guinness presented her with a proclamation at the birthday tribute that acknowledged her age feat.
I did not, however, give my remarks honoring Mrs. Baines to the assembled group solely because she had attained that amazing age, but rather for what she represents. At her world record shattering age and despite being permanently confined to a convalescent hospital, Mrs. Baines is still a strong role model for health and positive living. She also has a passion for the fight for justice. She is a member and solid supporter of the Main Gospel Church in Los Angeles, pastored by Warren J. Smith, who is one of the city’s top activist African-American ministers.
Smith is also a member of this writer’s education and public issues group, the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. The church has worked closely with the Roundtable in campaigns against gang and drug violence, police misconduct, job and housing discrimination, for juvenile justice reform, and political empowerment. In November, Mrs. Baines spoke proudly of how she had voted for and cheered on President Barack Obama. She considered this one of her proudest moments.
But Mrs. Baines also represents something even deeper and more profound. Her father was born into slavery in 1856. She is the daughter of a slave. She is one of the few last surviving links to the horror of slavery which is still a divisive, contentious and bitter part of the African-American past. Mrs. Baines’s life has spanned the near century of legal Jim Crow segregation, political disfranchisement, and racial brutality that followed slavery. Her life is a towering living reminder of and testament to the resilience, fortitude and courage of the many African-Americans who despite the odds overcame that terrible legacy and have done so much to enrich the social tapestry of America.
I was proud to say this directly to Mrs. Baines at her 115th birthday celebration. I was grateful when Mrs. Baines repaid me with her smile. Mrs. Baines truly lives as the eternal Mother Spirit of a people who have come so far against so much. She is a last living link to a painful part of the African-American past.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Madonna Deserves Cheers Not Jeers for Casting Light on Africa’s Orphan Misery

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
First an outfit called Save the Children UK butted in and denounced Madonna for adopting Malawi orphan David Banda in 2006. Now another bunch has jumped into the adoption fray and branded her a”bully” for her plans to adopt another Malawi orphan. The Human Rights Consultative Committee pretty much rehashed the same tired complaint as Save the Children UK did three years back and that’s that Madonna is using her wealth and star power to end around Malawi’s adoption procedures.

Madonna ignored Save the Children UK in 2006 with their silly bellyache and she’ll likely do the same with the Consultative Committee. The figures tell the grim tale of why she should. According to UN estimates half of the 1 million Malwaian children with one or no parents are orphaned by AIDS. More than 13 percent of Malawi’s 13 million are poor, dirt poor, and not surprisingly the majority of them are women.

Malawi is hardly an aberration. More than 12 million children have lost one parent or are orphans in African nations. And given the still rampant disease, warfare and poverty that plague many of these countries, the number of orphans or near-orphans will soar to nearly 20 million next year. Apart from a string of cramped, desperately under-funded and in many cases unsafe orphanages in sub-Saharan Africa, many of these children are doomed to live out their childhood years in a caretaker existence.

That’s only the start of Africa’s orphan misery. Africa's orphans are still mostly unwanted anywhere else in the world, and that includes the United States. In 2005, more than 20,000 immigrant visas were issued to orphan children whom Americans adopted from other nations. Ethiopia, with a paltry 441 orphans taken in by Americans, was the only African country that cracked the top-10 list. Liberia and Nigeria were the only other African nations among the top-20 nations, with 182 and 82orphans taken in by Americans.

Madonna has raised millions through her Raise Malawi Organization to fight poverty and disease in the country. She’s made plans to build a school for young women there, and done more than any other celebrity too raise attention to the plight of Malawian orphans and women. Madonna could easily have been like the legion of air head stars whose idea of helping the poor is an annual photo-op mug shoot at a high profile, star studded, red carpet gala. Instead she put her money and name behind tackling one of the world’s toughest problems and that’s providing a better life for Africa’s dispossessed children. For that she’s piteously ragged on, sniped at, and backbitten, by every media chasing hound, and a handful of sanctimonious orphan relief groups. Why?

One reason for that is loudly and publicly stated. The other is unstated, and more contemptible.

Human rights and child protection groups claim that Madonna tossed her money and celebrity weight around to bend Malawi's adoption laws and fast-track the adoption, and that the adoption is another celebrity publicity stunt. Both are falsehoods. She observed the rules in 2006 with the adoption of Banda, and Malawi's courts have granted her an interim adoption order. She also kicked in a lot of dollars to boost orphanage services in the country. As one of the world's best-known superstars, with legions of paparazzi jumping at the chance to record her every cough, Madonna hardly needs to snatch an African child to grab some camera action.

The unstated, and more contemptible, reason that certain groups and individuals are upset about the adoption is the archaic notion that a white person, especially a wealthy white celebrity, is culturally clueless when it comes to raising a black child. Or worse, that they'll whitewash the child's black identity and tout white values (whatever they are).

What makes this notion even more dumb is that the crisis is not just one in which African babies are shunned in America -- African-American orphans are too. There are more than a half-million children in foster care homes in America. Nearly 40 percent of them are African-Americans. They stay in foster care homes on average a year longer than white children.

There is absolutely no hard evidence that the race of the adopting parent has much to do with whether an adopted child matures into a healthy, emotionally secure adult. The key is that the home must be loving, nurturing and financially stable. There is also little evidence that black children raised by white parents suffer permanent racial or cultural identity amnesia. Race and racism are still alive enough and in enough places in American society to insure that black children can't and won't forget that they're black. We need look no further than the man who sits behind the desk in the Oval office for proof of that.

Madonna did a huge service by using her star power not to exploit but to cast light on Malawi and Africa's orphan misery. You go Madonna.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and streamed nationally on blogtalkradio.com

An Apology for Profiling Ryan Moats (and any other Black) is never enough

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Maybe Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle forgot this:

Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 2.131,

“A peace officer may not engage in racial profiling. Law enforcement-initiated action based on an individual's race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than on the individual's behavior or on information identifying the individual as having engaged in criminal activity.”

After the ordeal straight out of Hell that Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats went through the chief may have had a memory lapse. Moats who is African-American gets word that his wife’s mother is near death at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas (a Dallas suburb). He and his wife rush to the hospital to be at her side in her final hours. But Dallas police officer Robert Powell (white) has other ideas. He corrals Moats, his wife and another female passenger in the medical center parking lot and in what can only be described as a surreal scene, pulls his gun on them, waves it around at Moats, his wife, and orders them to stand down. He then turns two tone deaf ears to Moats’s frantic efforts to explain that his mother-in-law is inside dying. Instead he mouths off at him. Moats won’t say it he’s got too much class for that, but no matter how profusely the Dallas chief apologizes, which to his credit he did, Moats and his wife were racially profiled.

The bone head stop of Moat’s did more than give Dallas police a black eye and cause city official to scramble for damage control. It also cast suspicion on just how serious police agencies are in wiping out racial profiling. They all swear to the heavens that their officers don’t profile. They have to; they’ve taken to much heat for it. In fact, the Texas statute that forbids racial profiling mandates that all Texas police departments file annual stats on motorist stops—by race. Dallas patted itself on the back in a city report in 2008 for seriously addressing all areas of concern about racial profiling and evaluating department procedures to insure that it doesn’t happen. But the Moats stop proves that what the department puts on paper and what happens in the streets means it still has a long way to go to achieve its stated goal of providing “public service that is effective and fair.”

Powell in his weak kneed half hearted defense, wailed that he thought he was following procedure, and just doing his job. In a twisted way he’s probably right, and that’s even more reason to doubt that Dallas and indeed other departments are really doing all they say they are to root out racial profiling.

Even by the jaded and dumb action of far too many cops who still think good law enforcement is pulling every twenty something young black male that they eyeball on the streets over, Moats’s ordeal was extreme.

Moats should slap the Dallas and its police department with Mt. Everest dollar size lawsuit. That won’t bring back his mother-in-law or erase the pain of knowing that the moments he spent being hectored by Powell were moments that he should have been at his mother-in-law’s bedside. But Dallas still must pay, and pay dearly for that. An apology for what he went through is simply not enough.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Oakland Police Massacre Casts Ugly Glare on Ex-Felon Desperation

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


A general consensus is that it was a deadly mix of panic, rage, and frustration that caused Lovelle Mixon to snap. His shocking murderous rampage left 4 Oakland police officers dead and a city and police agencies in deep soul search abut what went so terribly wrong. Though Mixon’s killing spree is a horrible aberration, his plight as an unemployed, ex-felon isn’t. There are tens of thousands like him on America’s streets.

In 2007, the National Institute of Justice found that 60 percent of ex-felon offenders remain unemployed a year after their release. Other studies have shown that upwards of thirty percent of felon releases live in homeless shelters because of their inability to find housing; and those are the lucky ones. Many camp out on the streets.

A significant number of them suffer from drug, alcohol and mental health challenges, and lack education or any marketable skills. More than seventy percent of all U.S. prisoners are literate at only the two lowest grade levels. Nearly 60 % of violent felons are repeat offenders. They are menace to themselves and as the nation saw with Mixon, to others. In some cases, they can be set off by any real or perceived slight, insult, or simply lash out from bitter rage. Mixon was one and he made four Oakland police officers victims and left a terrible trail of grieving and distraught families and a shell-shocked city and police department.

The answer to the Mixons’ isn’t easy and simple. The need is strike a fine and delicate balance between public safety and ex-felon rehabilitation. A big obstacle to making ex-felons law abiding, productive citizens is still the inability of many ex-felons to find jobs. City officials in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, and Atlanta have been repeatedly challenged to take action to end employer discrimination against ex-felons. The demand has been to restrict what employers can and can’t ask on job applications.

In a revealing study in 2003 and duplicated again several years later Northwestern University professor Devah Pager hired groups of African American and white young men with identical resumes and experience to pose as job applicants. Some were told to say they had a drug felony. The study found that a check when they checked the felony conviction box on applications it reduced the white applicants' chance of an interview by 50 %. For black applicants' their chance of landing the job was reduced by two-thirds.

To counter employer discrimination against ex-felons, nearly a dozen states and counties and cities have enacted laws in recent years to sharply limit what employers can ask applicants about criminal records. But that reform effort has stirred fierce resistance from employer groups. Washington D.C. is a near textbook example of that. Nearly 3,000 former prisoners are released and return to the District each year. Most fit the standard ex-felon profile. They are poor, with limited or education, and job skills, and come from broken or dysfunctional homes. Researchers again found that the single biggest thing that pushed them back to the streets, crime, violence and inevitably repeat incarceration was their failure to find work.

In 2007, the D.C. city council passed a measure that would have banned discrimination in employment as well as housing and education against ex-felons. It was vetoed by then Mayor Anthony A. Williams. The heat on Williams came from business groups who claimed that they’d be sued by rejected applicants.

Similar legislation has been kicking around in Congress since 2005. It hasn’t fared much better. The bill called the Second Chance Act is a relatively mild measure to pump about $100 million to local and state agencies for education, job and skills training, counseling, and family unification programs to stem the high rate of recidivism among ex-felons.

President Obama has often spoken of the need to unhinge the revolving door of felon release and reincarceration. He backs the Second Chance legislation. But with the economy and the financial crisis dominating the White House and Congressional agendas the likelihood that ex-felon aid will get immediate attention is slim.

In the meantime, the ranks of the felon underclass will continue to balloon. At last count, there were an estimated 12 million people in the U.S. with felony convictions. That’s nearly 10 percent of working-age population. And with jails bulging and states desperately trying to figure out how to cut jail costs and increasingly resorting to early release, more ex-felons will be on the streets. The current estimate is that more than 600,000 offenders are now being released from prisons yearly.

Mixon unfortunately was one of them. And others like him are ticking time bombs that endanger themselves and others. Oakland tragically showed that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard in Los Angeles on KTYM 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

AIG’s Minority Racket

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

AIG ignited the national firestorm of rage with its shell out of $160 to $600 million in tainted bonuses to its tainted executives. But what has gotten almost no attention is a big reason that AIG had to stiff the government and everyone else. That’s the role that the company played in the subprime loan racket; a racket that hurt and still hurts tens of thousands of would be black and Latino homeowners.
The lender’s bait and switch tactics, the deliberately garbled contracts, deceptive and faulty lending, questionable accounting practices, and charged hidden fees, all with the connivance of sleepy-eyed see-no-evil oversight of federal regulators, are well known and documented. Their snake oil loan peddling wreaked havoc with thousands of mostly poor, strapped homeowners. A disproportionate number of them were Latinos and African-Americans.
Enter AIG. It saw a, treasure trove of fast buck riches in the subprime business. AIG dumped $33 billion into bonds and securities that were tied directly to subprime loans. This was nearly four times more than the next insurer, the German-based Allianz SE, had invested in the subprime loans. In fact, AIG was the only US based life insurer that had more than 3 percent of their general account assets in debts tied to subprime loans.
In early 2007 things started to unravel. AIG reported a first quarter loss of more than $2 billion in its subprime mortgage bonds. This set off the first warning bell that AIG could implode. Bond traders openly worried that AIG’s subprime securities losses could drag the market down. They had good reason to worry.
AIG is first and foremost an insurer. And in addition to its plunging bond and security holdings, the company also insured restructured subprime home bonds. The assumption by the subrprime bond holders was that the bonds would lose only a fraction of their value. But by then subprime defaults had piled up to a ten year high and the subprime lending market, that was all of it stocks, bonds and insurance, had badly frayed.


AIG’s stock had plunged 60 percent within the year. The top rating agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, concerned over AIG’s continuing losses on subprime and other mortgage-backed securities, downgraded their credit rating. They demanded that company pay billions to creditors in order to bump back up their ratings. That was billions that AIG by then didn’t have.


AIG was clearly on a non stop down hill roller coaster ride, and many banks and lenders, were heading to perdition with them. AIG briefly flirted with the notion of filing for subprime mortgage lenders bankruptcy.
But there was a better deal to be had courtesy of a panicked then President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. They shoved out tens of billions in cash in what turned out to be only the first installment of cash to save AIG’s hide.
We may never know the full extent of the financial damage that AIG caused in the subprime market. Nor how manyprospective minority homeowners suffered losses both financial and personal from the company’s greed. United for a Fair Economy, a public advocacy research group, in an in-depth study on sub prime lending estimates that the tab for minorities for the dubious blending practices runs to more than $200 billion in lost equity and income during the years AIG and the subprime bank lenders ran amok. The group called the home losses the most massive loss of wealth for African Americans in U.S. history.
The ultimate tragedy is that many blacks who were enticed by the lenders through their web of lies and deceit into taking the risky sub prime loans didn’t really need them. Data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act found that about 40 percent of the black subprime borrowers could have qualified for cheaper mainstream mortgages.
But that was the last thing that the subprime lenders, let alone AIG wanted. This would have taken a big bite out of their fantasy level profits. In the end those profits turned out to be a smoke and mirrors illusion just as the subprime illusion was.
AIG happily aided and abetted the banks and lenders in their decade long fast and loose play with the lending rules. Taxpayers are, of course, paying and paying dearly for AIG’s greed and malfeasance. But thousands of black and Latino hoped to be homeowners are also paying for that greed. AIG’s minority racket is yet another sorry chapter in the AIG saga.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Norris’s Nutty War on President Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Chuck Norris claims that thousands of right wing cell groups exist and will rebel against the U.S. government. It’s tempting to laugh away his vow to wage war against President Obama as either the crackpot ravings of a washed up Z grade martial arts actor. Or as a cheap promotional stunt to get his mug back in front of the cameras. Norris’s bellicose rants against Obama are nothing new and they have gotten wide play in a shrill horde of on line blogs and websites, including the popular right wing sounding board WorldNet Daily.com. Norris will culminate his holy war against Obama with a big recruiting pitch in a live telecast scheduled appropriately for Friday the 13th (March). He’ll call on thousands to “surround” Obama and the dark forces that seek to subvert God, country, and liberty.
Unfortunately, Norris will have plenty of recruits. Two weeks before he bellowed his anti-Obama tripe, the Southern Poverty Law Center once more sounded its own warning that hate groups are on the rise. There are now nearly a thousand of them, and they’re in just about every state. They aren't just the catalogue of usual suspects--- neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Klansman, Aryan nation and Skinheads that exclusively roam around the Deep South. They’re all over. California leads the pack with nearly 100 identifiable groups. The Center fingered several dozen websites from the explicit Ihateobama.com site to groups with flag draped names like the sovereign citizen’s movement.
Then there’s the legion of sites that busily spewed anti-Obama venom before the election and haven’t missed a beat since.

AntiObama.net A Clockwork Obama AgainstObama.com AudacityOfHypocrisy.com BlockBarack.com ChicagoAgainstObama.com DiscoverObama.com DontVoteObama.net DrNObama.com ExposeObama.com InvestigateBarackObama.blogspot.com JewsAgainstObama.com JustSayNoDeal.com MeetBarackObama.com No-bama.blogspot.com NobamaNetwork.com NobamaZone.com NoExperienceNoChange.org NoQuarterUSA.net ObamaExposed.blogspot.com ObamaBlog08.com Obama-Wire.com Obamaism.Blogspot.com ObamaNation.com ObamaTruth.org ObamaWho.wordpress.com ObamaWTF.blogspot.com Obamology.blogspot.com SavagePolitics.com SlickBarry.com Stop-Obama.org TheRealBarackObama.wordpress.com TopShelf51.wordpress.com

The majority of the hate groups and the wacky anti-Obama websites are like Norris just hot air talk and delusional conspiracy stuff. They all hotly deny that they advocate violence. Yet, the number of hate crimes according to FBI statistics, and that’s real violent crimes, edged up to over 7000 in 2007. The number of these crimes has been fairly consistent since the FBI began compiling hate crime statistics more than a decade ago. They’re just the tip of the hate iceberg. Experts say the number of hate crimes could be ten times higher since most hate crimes go unreported.
But even that in itself might not be cause for alarm since most of the hate groups are well known, tracked, and when their members commit crimes are hit hard with federal prosecutions. It certainly would not be enough to give much credence to Norris’s crackpot call. That is if times were better. But when jobs and homes are lost, and there’s fear and uncertainty that things could get worse, the ruthless search for scapegoats—illegal immigrants, gays, Jews, blacks, and a history making president—are on with a vengeance. It takes little imagination to see that this could set off one emotionally unscrewed, gun culture obsessed looney. The murderous rampage by Alabama shooter Michael McLendon who was hell bent on wiping out a whole town was ample proof of that.
Norris, and the legion of other right side gassers and bloggers, mask their bigot tinged appeals to the mob with the usual wink and nod patriotic sounding code words, slogans, and phrases. In his WorldNetDaily columns, Norris tosses out gems such as the “second American revolution,” “new government,” the authority of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” “threat to religious freedom,” and “protect and save free enterprise” in his call for a citizen rising against President Obama.
The acidic dripping slogans just happen to be the same ones that stir the deep fury, hatred and resentment among a handful of the loose hinged malcontents and hate mongers. As has been amply documented, the thick list of fringe and hate groups as well as the hordes of unbalanced violence prone individuals running free in America can fill a telephone book. The long history of hate violence in America further is more than enough to raise the antenna on the danger of violence against prominent political figures.

Obama well knows the horrid violent history of America and the very real danger that violence poses to many Americans and especially a charismatic president who still energizes and excites millions and is determined to deliver on his promise of political change and implicitly racial change. The exact things that drives Norris nuts and many others that are nuts to cheer him.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

The Limbaugh Strawman

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

First President Barack Obama stroked talk show kingpin Rush Limbaugh’s ego by proclaiming him the pied piper of the GOP. Next Republican National Chair Michael Steele showed some moxie and publicly told Limbaugh that he was the shot caller in the GOP. That didn’t last. In the next breath, he publicly pleaded for forgiveness from Limbaugh for his momentary pique. Then top Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel jumped in and lathered Limbaugh with praise and scorn as the boss of the GOP. Obama and Emanuel had an ulterior motive. They propped up Limbaugh as their straw man to tar the GOP as an antique, discredited, and obstructionist bunch of sore losers who will stop at nothing to derail Obama’s policies. Steele is just simply running scared of Limbaugh.
But in either case, they have done what Limbaugh couldn’t do for himself and that’s to wildly inflate his importance as the GOP kingmaker. Limbaugh got the kind of promotion that ad companies spend millions on for nothing. But it’s still nothing but hot air. Limbaugh hasn’t stopped one Obama staff or cabinet appointment, prevented one policy directive, executive order, or a single piece of legislation. That includes Limbaugh’s favorite target Obama’s economic stimulus bill. Heck, Limbaugh couldn’t even stop his arch nemesis, Al Franken, from bagging the Minnesota senate seat. Franken’s the guy who outrageously wolf ticketed Limbaugh as the big fat idiot, and then turned the wolfing into a best selling book.
Limbaugh’s rambling, long winded, rant at the Conservative Political Action Conference, complete with his confusion over what the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence say, was the topper. The crowd which was heavily white and male, lapped up every Limbaugh inanity. A stroll through the convention hall showed that the crowd’s Cloud Nine divorce from political reality was almost laughable. Every anti in America—taxes, gay rights, gun control, and government, as well as touting their darling Sarah Palin—was on display there. This does a lot to further seal the GOP’s lot as a party that is stepping fast toward becoming a self-marginalized, mean spirited, faded political entity.

This isn't the first time that the Obama team created and then punched away at a GOP strawman target. When Republican rival John McCain plopped Sarah Palin on his ticket, a top Team Obama member reflexively hammered Palin. Obama quickly realized that it was a colossal mistake. He did the smart thing and simply congratulated her on being picked as McCain's VP candidate and then went back to talking about the issues. He knew not to make her the issue. But the lesson hasn’t stuck in the case of Limbaugh.

By making Limbaugh bigger than life in American politics, it gives steam to his inflammatory campaign of rumors, half truths, distortions, and flat out lies about Obama, liberals, and now Steele. Limbaugh’s aim with Steele is to further cow the GOP into line; the line that forms behind him.


At the start of his tenure as RNC chair, Steele had the good sense to know that kowtowing to Limbaugh was a prescription for even bigger disaster for the GOP. He resuscitated the old Bush line circa 2000, and talked about making the GOP a party of big tent diversity. Then like Bush he promptly forgot it.

That’s exactly what Limbaugh with his conservative white man’s litmus test for the GOP wants. But that flies in the face of what Obama’s election triumph showed. That is that the country's fast changing ethnic vote demographics looks nothing like it did a decade ago. Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American voters now make up nearly a quarter of the nation's electorate. College educated whites make up more than one-third of the vote. Limbaugh’s comfort zone voter demographic; white blue collar, heartland and deep South voters have shrunk to less than forty percent of the nation’s voters. Immigration, higher birth rates, and the youth trends will continue to swell the numbers of minority and youth voters. The white electorate overall will continue to decline.

It's not only the numbers that work against the GOP. It's also ideology. The Democrat's expanding core base of voters is more moderate, socially active, and pro government; the exact opposite of what Limbaugh rants for.
Obama, Emanuel, and Steele know this. The Democrats would not have won the White House and Steele would not have beat out a pack of mostly Limbaugh fawning contenders for the RNC top spot if that hadn’t been true.
Still, Limbaugh has one powerful tool to bully, badger and cajole the GOP and saber rattle Obama. That’s the airwaves. He’ll exploit it to the hilt. But that won’t make him the boss of the GOP let alone any real threat to Obama. It’ll just make him an inviting and convenient strawman.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

The Murdoch Non-Apology

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The day the New York Post sleazed its op-ed section with the vile, vicious, and veiled urge to violence cartoon against President Barack Obama this writer demanded that Post boss Rupert Murdoch issue this statement.
“The News Corporation pledges that the Post’s offensive cartoon will not be circulated, or reprinted, or syndicated. Further, we have zero tolerance toward racially insensitive and inflammatory cartoons or editorial depictions of African-Americans and other ethnic groups. Finally, we apologize for the Obama cartoon and pledge in the future that the Post and other Murdoch entities will hold to the highest standard of editorial sensitivity in our cartoons.”
Though it took a firestorm week of massive demonstrations, threats of a boycott, and an FCC license challenge (the Murdoch owned Fox Network), and a Mt. Everest sized stack of emails, letters, and faxes demanding the firing of Post management, Murdoch pretty much issued a statement that came close to what this writer demanded.
But that by no means closes the book on the sorry Post-Murdoch-Fox saga. It can, and probably will happen again. Start with Murdoch’s apology. There were three escape clauses buried in it. One is the self-serving, lame Post defense that the cartoon was just fun and games spoofery of Obama’s stimulus plan. The other is a rehash of the other Post editor’s fall back line that the cartoon was not meant to be racist. Murdoch’s final give the paper a pass defense was his declaration that the cartoon was “interpreted” as racist by “others.”
That’s not a whole heck of a lot better than the non-apology, apology Post editors issued a day after their public shellacking.


But even if Murdoch had made a sincere bare-the-chest heartfelt apology it wouldn’t amount to much. That’s the standard ploy that shock jocks, GOP big wigs, and assorted public personalities employ when they get caught with their racial pants down.
On a few occasions the offenders have been reprimanded, suspended, and even dumped. That won’t happen with the Post editors, or the offending cartoonist, and Murdoch gave absolutely no hint that anyone would be disciplined for the racial slander. There are two reasons why. They tell much about why the Post, Murdoch’s media empire, and shock jocks can get away with demeaning gays, blacks, Latinos Asians, Muslims, and women and skip away with a caressing hand slap.
One is that these guys ramp up ratings and that make media syndicates such as Fox and the Post’s cash registers jingle.


The other reason is that it’s virtually impossible to effectively muzzle cartoonists such as Sean Delonas and others that draw or talk race trash is the sphinx like silence of top politicians, broadcast industry leaders, and corporate sponsors.
Sharpton, Spike Lee, and a handful of local New York politicians led the charge against the Post, but that’s pretty much where it ended. The problem of the silence or perfunctory belated criticism by higher ups to racial taunts surfaced a few years ago following then Senate Majority leader designate Trent Lott’s veiled tout of segregation. It touched off a furor, and ultimately Lott stepped down from the post, but it took nearly a week for Bush to make a stumbling, and weak sounding disavowal of him. The silence from top politicians and industry leaders to public racism was even more deafening a few of years ago when former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett made his weird taunt that aborting black babies could reduce crime. Even as calls were made from the usual circles almost always blacks and liberal Democrats for an apology, or his firing from his syndicated national radio show, neither Bush or any other top GOP leader said a mumbling word about Bennett.

There’s another reason for their silence. The last two decades many Americans have become much too comfortable using code language to bash and denigrate blacks. In the 1970s, the vocabulary of covert racially loaded terms included terms such as "law and order," “crime in the streets," "permissive society," "welfare cheats," "subculture of violence," "subculture of poverty," "culturally deprived" and "lack of family values" seeped into the American lexicon about blacks. Some politicians seeking to exploit white racial fears routinely tossed about these terms.
In the 1980s new terms such as "crime prone," "war zone," "gang infested," "crack plagued," "drug turfs," "drug zombies," "violence scarred," "ghetto outcasts" and "ghetto poverty syndrome” were shoved into public discourse. These were covert racial code terms for blacks and they further reinforced the negative image of young black males as dope dealers, drive by shooters, and educational cripples. And the image of young black women as a dysfunctional collection of B’s and “hos,” welfare queens, and baby makers.
Obama is hardly exempt from this irresponsible race tinged character assault. The non-stop whisper and slander campaign against President Obama by packs of bloggers, talk jocks, and even a senator on the legitimacy of his US citizenship is a case in point.
The loud demands will continue that Murdoch back up his kind of sort of apology with real action. But he won’t. There’s simply too much money in racial trash talk (and cartooning), and too much silence from the higher ups that send a tacit signal condoning it. That silence is Murdoch’s ultimate trump card.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Mr. Murdoch Is Obama Really a Chimp?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Mr. Rupert Murdoch it’s certainly no surprise to you that New York Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan would hotly defend the racist Post cartoon comparing President Obama to a chimp. That’s what your shock and smut dealing Post is in the business of doing and it does it well. The idea of course is to get the tongues furiously wagging, get enraged emails, letters and phone calls pouring in, and then put forth the predictable defense calling this and other inflammatory cartoons a parody, a free speech right, and harmless spoofery. Allan didn’t stop there. He couldn’t resist the urge to take a swipe at Al Sharpton, branding him with the standard tag of race baiter and media hound for daring to call out the Post on the vile cartoon.

The furor might have drawn little more than a public yawn and shrug except for two two small points. One is the long, sordid and savage history of racist stereotyping of African-Americans. A few grotesque book titles from a century ago, such as The Negro a Beast, The Negro, a Menace to American Civilization, and the Clansman depicted blacks as apes, monkeys, bestial, and animal like. The image stuck in books, magazines, journals, and deeply colored the thinking of many Americans of that day.

Yes, Mr. Murdoch, it’s true that was a long time ago, and as Allan intimated in his lame defense of the Post cartoon, no sober person could seriously believe that anyone would liken the President or for that matter any black to a chimp. Unfortunately, a lot still do.

That’s the second small point about the Post cartoon. Post Cartoonist Sean Delonas could so casually and easily depict Obama as a monkey because that image didn’t die a century, half century, decade, or even a year ago. In fact, exactly a year ago, Penn State researchers conducted six separate studies and found that many Americans still link blacks with apes and monkeys. Many of them were young, and had absolutely no knowledge of the vicious stereotyping of blacks of years past. Their findings with the provocative title "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences," in the February 2008 issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, was published by the American Psychological Association.

Please keep in mind Mr. Murdoch that the overwhelming majority of the participants in the studies bristled probably as undoubtedly you would at the faintest hint that they had any racial bias. But the animal savagery image and blacks was very much on their minds. The researchers found that participants, and that included even those with no stated prejudices or knowledge of the historical images, were quicker to associate blacks with apes than they were to associate whites with apes.

This was not simply a dry academic exercise. The animal association and blacks has had devastating real life consequences. In hundreds of news stories from 1979 to 1999 the Philadelphia Inquirer was much more likely to describe African Americans than Whites convicted of capital crimes with ape-relevant language, such as "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild." And jurors in criminal cases were far more likely to judge blacks more harshly than whites, and regard them and their crimes as savage, bestial, and heinous, and slap them with tougher sentences than whites.

The Post cartoon, Mr. Murdoch, was the complete package. It depicted violence, death, brutality, incitement, and animal like imagery. The topper was the not so subtle inference that the target of the chimp depiction and more was an African-American male, namely President Obama.

In recent days, Mr Murcdoch you’ve dropped a hint or two that you want to put the word balance back into the vocabulary of those who run your media empire. You can start by issuing this statement.

“News Corporation pledges that the Post’s offensive cartoon will not be circulated, or reprinted, or syndicated. Further, we have zero tolerance toward racially insensitive and inflammatory cartoons or editorial depictions of African-Americans and other ethnic groups. Finally, we apologize for the Obama cartoon and pledge in the future that the Post and other Murdoch entities will hold to the highest standard of editorial sensitivity in our cartoons.”

You’ll issue that statement Mr. Murdoch if you are personally repelled by the comparison of President Obama to a chimp. That is so, right Mr. Murdoch?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Obama The One Term President?

President Barack Obama had barely finished uttering the oath of office when the talk started that he would be a one term president. This political doomsday talk was chalked up to a few bored reporters looking for something contrarian to say about Obama, the deluded hopes of hard bitten, spoil sport conservatives for a failed Obama presidency, and a few naysayers among economists who repeatedly warned that economic collapse would do in a young, inexperienced president. The first two reasons to think Obama would get a quick boot can be easily shrugged off.

Tying Obama’s White House fate to public jitters over a hemorrhaging economy can’t be so easily brushed aside. Obama pretty much said as much in an interview on NBC’s Today Show two weeks after he was sworn in that if he didn’t deliver he’d be “a one term proposition.” This may not be a totally accurate prediction since in four years a foreign blow up, terrorist attack, cataclysmic natural disaster, a squabbling, headless, and discredited GOP and any of a number of other unforeseen things could make him shine. Any of them could just as easily be his ticket back to the White House. Still, the rise or fall of the economy is the only thing for now that anyone seems to think matters.

Obama has smartly hedged his bets on judging his presidency on the speed of an economic turnaround by repeatedly damping down expectations that economic recovery is just around the bend, and that he can wave a magic wand and make the economic pain instantly disappear. Obama’s pleadings, warnings, and cautionary notes are his back door admission that Americans want and demand that he do something, and do it now to reverse the economic slide, and that there’s little margin for error, and none for failure, if he doesn’t.

Recent presidential history amply shows that the public is brutally unforgiving when the man in the White House doesn’t immediately turn things around. In a look at how six of eight presidents fared since 1948 when the economy hit the skids or appeared to skid, the scorecard for presidents winning and losing because of economic woes is a draw. Three were beaten and three beat back their challengers. It came down to whether voters really perceived that their economic plight, or rather pain, would show no sign of a cure if they kept the incumbent in office. But even more important presidents had to do one crucial thing in the face of rising unemployment, recession, inflation, and public grumbles if they wanted to stay on the job. They had to assure a majority of voters that things would and could get better for the voters if they stayed in the White House and that any likely opponent couldn't do any better.

Presidents also had to have a lot of luck. W. Bush had that in 2004. He won reelection in part because memories were still fresh of the 9/11 terror attack. Bush adroitly played the terror card and convinced enough voters that he could beat back any new terrorist threat. But hard times, plant closures, farm foreclosures, and high unemployment even then had gripped big sections of the Midwest and as Democrats gleefully noted, growth was much slower during Bush’s first term than during Clinton's second term.

Yet Bush also won in big part because overall unemployment and economic growth had slightly improved in the run up to the 2004 election. Bush used this to spin the news, even bad economic news, into a gain. He solemnly pledged there would be more economic improvement for voters if he was reelected. That didn’t work for Republican rival John McCain in the make or break wind down months to the 2008 campaign. The financial plunge in September virtually sealed his loss.

Obama relentlessly painted a stark, grim and scary picture for workers and the middle class that the crash was Bush’s doing and by extension McCain’s doing. He masterfully sold the idea that things would only get worse if McCain was elected. He directly linked the perceived failure of Bush to right the nation’s economic ship to McCain. And that McCain’s policies would result in still bigger deficits, the prospect of even greater inflation and a more intense recession. Obama made voters believe that Republican economic policy would not promote recovery and economic security but increase economic pain for millions of wage earners; put bluntly economic collapse.

Obama has literally bet the bank that that the economic stimulus will turn the economic tide. Packs of Republicans and not a few economists warn that it won’t. A few such as Rush Limbaugh even hope that it won’t.
Economic failure alone may not spell a one term presidency for Obama. But economic success, even the perception of success, will help insure that Obama won’t be another Jimmy Carter.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Octuplet Mom Reinforced Single Mother Stigma

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


In her NBC interview Octuplet mom Nadya Suleman was irked at getting pounded for being a single mother with fourteen kids. Or in her words, "it's not as controversial because they're couples so its more acceptable." She had good reason to be irked, but she should be irked at herself too for doing much to reinforce that stigma. For the past half century single mothers have been ritually dumped on by everyone from liberal sociologists to Christian fundamentalists and even self-promoting gabber Ann Coulter. They are the fall women for every real and perceived malady in society; poverty, crime, drug use, personal profligacy, welfare dependency, bad acting, and even worse performing students, and of course, family breakdown.

As for Coulter, she got hammered for beating up on single mothers in her new book while letting the guys who shove the women into single motherhood skip away scot free. This was more a hit against Coulter than a real defense of single mothers. The perception is just too deeply ingrained that single mothers create babies and problems for a momentary attack on Coulter to change that perception.

Suleman is naive, in denial, or blind to the power of the negative single mom image to think that her pleading for the bashers to knock it off will fall on anything but the tinnest of tin ears. If anything, having eight babies, on top of six, and then hinting that her over the top baby making is a good thing without a prospective father sighting anywhere, fuels public wrath over the folly of babies and single mothers even more. But leaving aside questions of moral right, ethical propriety or even Suleman’s legal responsibility, all have been hotly debated, the truth is that single mothers do not cause a terrible society, but do fare terribly in society.
And there are a lot of single mothers. At last count nearly 40 percent of children are born out of marriage. In the majority of those cases the mothers will stay that way. The figures for lower income black and Hispanic women almost all Suleman’s age or a decade or even decades younger than her are far greater than for unmarried white mothers. The number of single mothers are inching up after a decade long drop from the mid 1990s to 2005.

The demographic of who gets pregnant and is single is predictable They’re young, have multiple births, are non college educated, or even high school educated, and invariably poor. In their, Child Wellbeing Study, Princeton University researchers tracked 5,000 single mothers in who are charitably called Fragile Families. The women gave birth between 1998 and 2000 and all claimed that they wanted to get married.

The wish didn’t get any further than a wish. In a follow-up survey, most did not get married and a fair share of them had more babies by multiple partners. They had done little to improve themselves educationally or boosted their income. The Princteon findings are not unique. This reinforces the belief that single mothers are inherently doomed to wallow in poverty and want, and that their children are doomed to be congenital gang bangers, drive by shooters, and drug peddlers and jail and early cemetery fodder.

Many single mothers swear as Suleman has that they will be good, devoted and loving mothers and that they will be able to foot the bill for their children’s care and upbringing. That’s not a small point in the furor over single mothers. The prospect that Suleman who’s not only a single mother but an unemployed single mother who filed workers compensation claims, bankruptcy, and had a mountain of debt, might put the state (taxpayers) in hock for the medical care and treatment of the octuplets drew loud howls of protest.

This is not a totally unfair concern. Kaiser Hospital shelled out a reported cool million for delivery, treatment, and care costs for the octuplets. Few single mothers, and that certainly includes Suleman, have a prayer of paying this cost out of pocket. Suleman gave no indication that she had a clue that someone else will have to pay the staggering cost of their ongoing care.

This is not to pass moral judgment on Suleman’s act, legions have already done plenty of that. Suleman may well prove her scoffers, bashers, and revilers all wrong. She may find a way to pay the freight for all 14 children, provide them with a warm, stable and loving home, and even stroll down the aisle with a mate. This would transform her from the poster single mom for irresponsible induced baby making to a true American motherhood success story. She would hardly be the first single mother to become a productive, paragon of achievement. Anything is posssible.
Whatever happens, Suleman was right that single mother’s do unfairly get beat up on for creating societal’s ills. Unfortunately Suleman insured that the beating will continue.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Why Many Think Obama has to be Better Because He’s Black

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



A recent CNN poll seems to confirm what a majority of African-Americans and a significant percent of whites seem to think or at least say. And that’s that President Obama will have to be better because he’s black. Translated this means that at Obama’s first real or perceived screw up there will be howls that that’s what you get when you plop a black into any position that requires a brain and skill. The undercurrent that courses through this warped race tinged view of why blacks are expected to fail is that they are plopped in an important spot because of affirmative action or unexpunged white guilt, and they’re grossly unqualified for it.

These screwy reasons ignore the savvy, ability to think, preparation, or education that get African-Americans top spots in corporations, universities, and politics. Obama certainly had the right stuff to bag the biggest political prize of all, the presidency. The great what if, though, is would former President W. Bush have bagged the grand prize if he had been black? The CNN poll doesn’t answer that but some have set a bar virtually nonexistent for a mediocre white politician ridiculously high for Obama.

Obama is well aware that the old racial double standard rule might apply to him too and that he will be under torrid public glare; more torrid that any presidential candidate in campaign history. And there will be packs of voters who hope, even pray that he flops. Race is the only reason many of them wish that. Surveys during the campaign found that even some of the most passionate Obama backers did racial gymnastics and separated their man from other blacks. They raved about his political genius, hailed him as the one to lead the country out of the Bush morass. Yet many still said that blacks were more crime prone and less industrious than whites. A month after Obama’s triumph not much had changed. A long term study of racial attitudes by the National Academy of Sciences found that a significant percent of Americans still saw color as the major factor in determining who committed crime and who was most likely to be poor.

Obama acknowledged the racial wariness of some near the beginning of the campaign when he said that there were some who would not vote for him because he’s African-American. He said the same thing again albeit more subtly in his triumphant speech on Election Night in Chicago’s Grant Park when he said that he wanted to reach out to those who did not vote for him(accept him).

During the campaign the political stars aligned for Obama as they did for no other Democratic presidential candidate in a decade and a half. There was massive public fatigue from Bush policies, rage at Republican corruption and ineptitude, an SNL laughingstock vice presidential candidate, and a catastrophic financial meltdown and crumbled economy. There was also Obama’s backward stretch to keep race out of the campaign. The only time he dealt with the issue was to damp down public unease over the inflammatory racial tirades of his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Despite all the towering political pluses he had, a majority of whites and that included a narrow percentage of young whites did not vote for him

But the presidential campaign is now a fast fading memory. The big concern for most Americans no matter whether they backed Obama or not is can his policies work? This doesn’t mean that racial stereotypes, open and closeted, have magically vanished. He’s in the bare embryonic stage of his presidency, and few are willing to say anything about his style or program that can be remotely seen as having a hidden racial animus. It’s simply politically incorrect and crass to hint or infer that Obama is not up to the weighty task of governance. Even GOP hard bitten conservative William Bennett publicly but lightly rapped talk show kingpin Rush Limbaugh on the knuckles for allegedly wishing that he wants Obama to fail.

The true test, though, will come when Obama makes a real or perceived foreign policy or domestic issue stumble or takes a stance on an issue that angers his opponents. Obama will be lambasted for that. All presidents are. Criticism is a part of the job; it comes with the political turf. Presidents know that, expect that, and should even welcome positive criticism. The difference is that America has never had a black president who has had to bear the brunt of criticism for missteps or policy blunders. Obama is the first. There are two kinds of criticism Obama will get. One is leveled based solely on whether his policies and decision making help or harm public interests. The other comes with a sneaky racial motive. Obama sadly will get both.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009). http://www.learnhowobamawon.blogspot.com