To his credit, Obama never bought into the myth. It would be hard for him to. He has frequently praised King and the civil rights movement, and has said that he has read and studied closely King’s writings and speeches. But even if he hadn’t read a word of King’s speeches, Obama is not just the symbolic embodiment of the civil rights struggle, but of the still unfinished business of the civil rights movement.
But that’s with one caveat and a risk. The caveat is that the civil rights challenges that King faced and that he so eloquently spoke of in his "I Have a Dream" speech 45 years ago are even more complex today. The risk is the great temptation to see Obama’s historic candidacy as the end, not the continuation of the civil rights battles.
The checklist of problems that King faced and Obama now faces includes astronomically high unemployment among young blacks, gaping racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resegregation of neighborhoods and schools, rampant housing discrimination, racial glass ceilings in corporate hiring and promotions, black family instability among the black poor, police abuse, racial profiling, and racially motivated hate crimes.
There are challenges that King didn’t have to deal with, or were barely issues a half century ago. One of those is that race problems in America are no longer exclusively a black and white problem. That’s because blacks are no longer America’s largest minority. Latinos are. Immigration reform, the English- only wars, and the fight for political empowerment are the new civil rights concerns.
Obama also faces a glaring problem that King had only begun to wrestle with in his last days: the plight of the urban black poor. As America unraveled in the 1960s in the anarchy of urban riots, campus takeovers, and anti-war street battles, the civil rights movement and its leaders fell apart, too. Many of them fell victim to their own successes and failures. When they broke down the racially restricted doors of corporations, government agencies, and universities, it was middle-class blacks, not the poor, that rushed headlong through them.
More than four decades later there are now two black Americas. The fat, rich, and comfortable black America of Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, Bill Cosby, Condoleezza Rice, Denzel Washington and the legions of millionaire black athletes and entertainers, businesspersons and professionals have grabbed a big slice of America's pie.
The black America of the poor is fragmented and politically rudderless. Lacking competitive technical skills and professional training, and shunned by many middle-class black leaders, they have been shoved even further to the outer margins of American society. The chronic problems of gang and drug violence, family breakdown, police abuse, the soaring incarceration rate of young black males, the mounting devastation of HIV and AIDS in black communities, and abysmally failing inner-city public schools have made things even worse for them.
Then there’s the political rise and influence of black conservatives and black evangelicals. The rancorous internal fights among blacks over gay marriage, gay rights and abortion have tormented, perplexed, and forced civil rights leaders, who are mostly liberal Democrats, to confront their own gender and political biases. They have tried to strike a halting, tenuous balance between their liberalism and the social conservatism of many blacks.
In his drive for the White House, Obama has had to walk a thin line between those who demand that he say and do more about civil rights, and those who watch like hawks for any hint that an Obama White House will tilt toward minorities. That would have rendered his campaign dead on arrival.
Obama’s decision to peg his acceptance speech to the March on Washington is not mere showy campaign symbolism. It stands as a fitting tribute to the civil rights movement that challenged the nation to make King’s dream of justice and equality a reality. Obama faced that challenge as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, during his stints in the Illinois legislature and in the Senate. He’ll face that same challenge in the White House. And that can hardly be called post-civil rights.
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is "The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House."
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New America Media is the country's first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. Over 51 million ethnic adults connect to each other, to home countries and to America through 3000+ ethnic media, the fastest growing sector of American journalism.
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