The recent radio spat between Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley was entertaining, and most assuredly fodder for many in the African-American community who are addicted to black talk radio. Yet what the community needs is a reality check – we have enough “entertainers.”
At issue is whether or not President Barack Obama should include on his already crowded plate a “black agenda.” I recall during the 2008 presidential campaign Obama was challenged by a young black man in Florida to take a more proactive and assertive stand on issues facing the black community. Obama reminded him that first as a community organizer and throughout his career he had been an advocate for change.
At the time, I wrote that an Obama administration would be challenged on several levels with the management of two wars, a health care agenda, a restoration of America’s image and unsustainable national debts. Moreover, having a black agenda would be politically divisive and would turn off many supporters, as well as become an issue that the GOP and conservatives would use to create a wedge within the Obama coalition.
I believed that then, I believe that now.
Yet a discussion of a black agenda championed by the first black president is troubling for reasons far beyond the political dimension. It is troubling because when two African-American individuals with the capacity to influence spend their time publicly debate what truly should be a non-issue, it serves to distract our attention from the type of soul-searching needed for our community to evolve.
For a generation, the African-American community has successfully integrated itself into the American mainstream to such a degree that for millions of African Americans, our problems are no longer “black” problems.
The near economic meltdown that occurred in the fall of 2008 was ostensibly one of credit. As a nation of consumers whose consumption was built on the back of credit, a calculation was made by the federal government that massive infusion of federal money was needed to keep credit flowing. Needless to say, millions of blacks were beneficiaries of that decision.
Furthermore, when the Obama administration passed the massive stimulus bill within days of his swearing in, millions of Americans, including a large percentage of African Americans, were impacted via new tax credits, withholding reductions, mortgage modifications and the like.
Therefore, to assert a need for a presidential agenda that includes Black America ignores the reality that many African Americans have become so immersed into the economic fabric of this culture that an American agenda equates to a black agenda.
Which by the way, isn’t that, what we wanted?
This black agenda spat also ignores the political reality that President Obama operates in, and it ignores the policy changes that have taken place within the Obama administration that impact the African-American community.
The Sharpton aptly noted that Obama is walking the thinnest of tightropes of any modern president. With the emergence of the 24-hour news cycle, and the vitriol of conservative commentators, the Obama administration has to be both vigilant and focused so they don’t create fodder for the right that will ultimately serve as a distraction. For example, Obama injecting himself in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. controversy when his health care agenda was hanging in the balance.
Obama took the oath of office to be the president of all Americans, not just black Americans. But let’s be clear. Barack Obama ran to the White House, but he did not run not away from his blackness.