Race and President Obama 5.0

I have lost count so this may be the sixth iteration of that headline. In any case, the bottom line is the same: Race matters.

It pains me to hear folks who I know and respect say President Barack Obama can address gender, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, immigration status, whatever. But race. He dare not speak its name.

Dr. Dorothy I. Height, the 97-year-old grande dame of the civil rights movement, told the New York Times:

We have never sat down and said to the 43 other presidents: “How does it feel to be a Caucasian? How do you feel as a white president? Tell me what that means to you,” Dr. Height said. “I am not one to think that he should do more for his people than for other people. I want him to be free to be himself.”

Black folks don’t want to feel Obama’s pain. We want him to feel our pain.

So, I agree with Rep. Elijah Cummings:

On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed irritation that Mr. Obama has not created programs tailored specifically to African-Americans, who are suffering disproportionately in the recession. In December, some of them threatened to oppose new financial rules for banks until the White House promised to address the needs of minorities.

I don’t think we expected anything to change overnight because we had an African-American in the White House, but the fact still remains that we’ve got a constituency that is suffering,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. “I think he could do more, and he will do more.”

I also agree with Bruce Crawley, founder of Philadelphia’s African American Chamber of Commerce.

Crawley recently wrote:

First of all, in what turned out to be the longest of the 412 speeches the president has given this year, he failed somehow to mention the words, “Black,” “African American” or even “Negro,” which his Census Bureau says is an appropriate description of us again — whether we like it or not.

I couldn’t help thinking that you wouldn’t even have to be the “first Black president” to recognize that African-American communities are still a part of the nation as a whole, and they still deserve, no matter what conservative pundits say, full and equal access to the country’s economic opportunities.

If Obama is concerned about being the “president of black Americans,” it may be too late. According to the weekly Gallup poll, 42 percent of white Americans approve of his job performance.