Insight News

America’s first “Black President” could teach Barack Obama about reaching out to Black Americans.  Unlike Bill Clinton & Crew, Obama and his advisors lack the central African-American experience needed to understand and engage Black Americans.

Obama’s failure or refusal to communicate with Blacks continues questions of his relative blackness.  Discussions and debates among Blacks over “how effective he is” have amplified.  Barack may be more white on the inside than he is Black.  Surely, the people around him are.   House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn says Obama “needs some Black people around him.”  Clyburn says Obama’s inner circle keeps “screwing up” on race: “Some people over there are not sensitive at all about race. They really feel that the extent to which he allows himself to talk about race would tend to cost him support”.

Barack needs to do more “Louie Martin-style politics” and less maintenance of the status quo.    Louis E. Martin’s adapt work behind the scenes in the White House as an adviser to three Democratic Presidents brought Blacks into high-levels into government public policy-making positions. In these decision-making jobs Blacks brought about major leveling programs.  Martin’s political acumen during the 1960s and 70s set the tone for Presidents that saw the need for and sought Black outreach and inclusion.

Louis Martin set the way toward African American political and economic empowerment.  A Black journalist, newspaper publisher and civil rights activist, Martin advised Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.  Well founded in who and what he was, Martin helped start America’s “Black Press. He helped initiate the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research organization in Washington, D.C. providing technical support for Black officeholders and scholars.  Martin joined Senator John F. Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential campaign and was instrumental in persuading Candidate Kennedy to call Coretta Scott King and express dismay over the jailing of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr.  That phone call was widely credited with helping Kennedy win a majority of the Black vote.  After Kenney’s assassination in 1963, Martin transitioned to Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration and influenced American policy from 1963 to 1968.  Martin was instrument for much of Great Society social reforms that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation with new and greater government funding.  It was on Martin’s say that President Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967.  Martin came out of retirement to serve as Special Assistant to President Jimmy Carter from 1978–81.

After Martin, Presidents that followed his era had Blacks of varying levels of clout in their operations until Bill Clinton appointed the largest number of African American cabinet officials ever.  Clinton elevated the importance of Black outreach in the White House with high-ranking Black appointees such as: Alexis Herman and Ben Johnson.  Obama’s cabinet is whiter than that of George W. Bush.  Through their own prisms, White Americans believe that Blacks “have equal opportunity” and are “treated equally”.  Obama followed the path of the Bush Presidents and made Black Outreach a position of low-importance.  Corey Ealons, Obama’s African American Media and Coordinator of Special Projects, recently left that job.

Even with full knowledge of the facts of American Blacks’ history of disenfranchisement, President Obama is bent toward the conscious of the majority and afraid of being seen as “too friendly” toward African Americans.  As opposed to the Louie Martin or Clinton approach of political staffing; Obama just follows America’s Establishment’s view of “fair employment” - surrounding himself with what he thinks to be the “best and brightest” and “most capable and qualified”.   What Obama needs is a high-level operation for Black Outreach.  A long-time civil rights and political campaigner, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s Delegate to Congress, agrees: “The president needs some advisers or friends who have a greater sense of the pulse of the African-American community.”   As young Ealons leaves his White House portfolio behind, now would be a good time to appoint a staff member not afraid to speak out about and be Black during White House discussions.

William Reed is available for speaking engagements via BaileyGroup.org)