By Michael Morton

The Obamas and the New Politics of Race

On the afternoon of Nov. 20, the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies presented the first of four lectures in its 2009-2010 Diaspora Talk Series focused on the subject of “The Obamas and the New Politics of Race.”

“Given the momentous occasion [of Barack Obama’s election], we have decided that the speaker series this year would directly engage the difficult questions of race, class, gender and nationality and use Barack Obama and the Obamas as a kind of discursive trope to track some of these issues,” said Ben Carrington, the director of this year’s Diaspora Talk Series and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Kareem Crayton, an associate professor of law and political science at the University of Southern California with a specialty in redistricting and voting rights, kicked off the series with “The Laws of Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” in a crowd-packed ISESE Gallery.

“This is a great time to talk about the handling of the White House and how [President Obama has] managed the presidency because we’re, of course, a year after which the candidate Barack Obama became President-elect Barack Obama,” Crayton said. “It’s a good opportunity to assess how things have gone so far.”

Crayton began his 40-minute lecture with a discussion of the various positionsŃcommander in chief, leader of the free world and head of the executive branchŃthat President Obama must assume and the challenges they present him.

“The job of president is hard. It’s hard because there are a lot of conflicting identities that the president has to manage at once,” Crayton said. “The biggest challenge for the president, any president but particularly this one, is managing the sometimes overlapping and conflicting identities that he holds as president of the United States.”

Crayton assessed the role of commander in chief as the most challenging for the 44th president of the United States because of his lack of military experience. It is also the most important one because it deals directly with defending the security interests of the U.S.

The Obamas and the New Politics of Race

“The simple thing that we have expected about presidents is that they have some experience in the past managing these sorts of questions,” Crayton said. “Usually it comes in the form of having served in the militaryÉbut this is interesting because Barack Obama is the first president in a very long time who has not served in the military.”

Because both President Clinton, who had no military experience, and President Bush, whose military experience was controversial, faced tough questions about their abilities to manage the country’s national security,  Crayton proposed that Obama will face even more skepticism.

“Compared even to these presidents [Clinton and Bush], Obama’s record features even less connection to the military,” Crayton said. “Both [Clinton and Bush] could argue that they had significant security management experience as governors, but [Obama] never served, and his experience in the Senate did not involve significant direct oversight of the military.”

However, without any military experience, Obama beat his Republican opponent, John McCain, who is a decorated war veteran. “The challenge is for [Obama] to show that he is capable of making difficult management decisions and keeping the military experts supportive of his decisions,” Crayton said. Crayton discussed Obama’s handling of several national security situations including his executive order to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base by the end of the year, the planned trial of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the pirate hijacking of the MV Maersk Alabama and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

“The management of all these problems poses a great risk,” Crayton said. “I think Guantanamo and the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial will test the president’s ability to actually make good on his promise to take national security seriously, but also treat it a little bit differently than the previous president.”

“Obama is taking a more nuanced approach than Bush, emphasizing the importance of handling terrorism as a threat while not painting the entire Middle East in enemy/ally colors,” Crayton said. “But he has also maintained many of the Bush era decisionsŃGuantanamo has yet to close, Afghanistan will see an escalation of troops as opposed to immediate withdrawal.”

Crayton said the war in Afghanistan, and the president’s decision to deploy 30,000 additional troops by the summer of 2010, is the biggest national security challenge facing Obama.

“Afghanistan will clearly be a major determinant of his success in the area of national security and how he is thought of as a commander in chief,” Crayton said.

Crayton also offered an analysis of Obama’s role as the leader of the free world.

“It [the president’s high international approval rating] does overall play into the positive side of Barack Obama,” Crayton said. “He has changed world perceptions, not just of himself but also of the United States of America.” President Obama’s relationship with Congress and the struggle he faces to pass his agenda is another crucial task. The president’s agenda cannot be accomplished in an enduring fashion without Congress adopting it in the form of statutes, Crayton said. The president needs to have partners in Congress in order to accomplish what he wants. In order to gather more allies in Congress, Crayton suggested that Obama’s administration create a centralized White House management strategy of appealing to the different interests that occupy both the House and the Senate.

“Just as in the executive branch, those partners can have conflicting agendas and different constituencies that they answer to” Crayton said. “So the fact that [Obama] has majorities of Democrats in both the House and the Senate obscures the fact that some of those Democrats don’t necessarily agree with him on all the issues that he wants put forth.”

President Obama’s declining poll numbers contribute to his struggles with Congress.

“The public as a whole likes Barack Obama, but on most of the policies that he’s articulated so farŃforeign policy, health care, the economy, Afghanistan, and the budget deficitŃhe’s running below 50 percent in the polls,” Crayton said. “So if you’re a congressman and you’re looking at whether or not you should do what the president wants, you see on the one hand that you, as an institution in Congress, are not all that popular; but it’s not quite clear that the road to popularity and reelection is to do exactly what the president wants you to.”

Crayton at last presented arguably the biggest topic of the afternoon: President Obama’s image and the subject of race.  Obama’s oratory skills, images of the president and his wife on a date and the infamous “beer summit” with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass. police Sgt. James Crowley were among the subjects discussed to illustrate that Obama has not only changed the image of the presidency but also the image of black politicians.

President Obama has in many ways transformed the conventional understanding of how the White House is managed, Crayton said. He exclusively set forth an agenda that was intended to break the mold of what it is to be president and how politicians who become president behave. “He [Obama] has defied conventional wisdom in understanding how black politicians make their mark,” Crayton said. “I think that it is very difficult to see Barack Obama’s tendencies as consistent with the typical way in which black politicians move forward.”

Throughout his chapter entitled, “You May Not Get There With Me: Barack Obama and the Black Political Establishment” in the  book “Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America’s New Leadership” by editors Manning Marable and Kristen Clarke, Crayton further discusses what made Obama different from past black politicians and how the former Illinois senator was able to win the presidential election in 2008.

“Many black political candidates begin their campaigns with solid black voter support, and their task is expanding their appeal in other racial groups. Obama’s experience, however, was quite the contrary,” Crayton wrote.  “[Obama] started with most of his support coming from white liberals, which is stunning for almost any black politician. The challenge for Obama’s effort was establishing and consolidating support for his campaign within the black community.”

“Obama’s success was largely possible because of his campaign strategy, which was unconventional compared to other black politicians,” Crayton wrote.

“Having started with a solid base of white liberal voters, Obama campaigned for black votes in much the same way that many white candidates do: utilizing the credibility of surrogates within the existing black political structure,” he wrote. “In the end, the mixed strategy allowed Obama É to transcend race while also legitimately claiming a part of the black political experience.”

In his chapter, Crayton points to three individuals who played key roles in Obama’s ascension within the black political establishment: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright [Obama’s former pastor], former Illinois State Senator Emil Jones, Jr., and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

“Obama could not successfully engage black voters solely using his personal history or his professional record; in different ways, they [Wright, Jones, and Jackson] supplied their own credibility to burnish Obama’s bona fides as a racially authentic candidate,” Crayton wrote. “These figures helped to perfect the linkage between [Obama’s] constituency of white liberals and black communities [and helped] Obama successfully marshal the language, the skills, and the strategy from the black political establishment.”

Although President Obama’s election has played a role in race and politics, Crayton said the president still has some work to do in order to help ease racial issues in America.

“To some degree the racial dynamics of politics have changed by virtue of having a very white country elect an African American to president of the United States,” Crayton said. “On the other hand, it hasn’t fundamentally shifted the way in which a lot of people think about race and I think in many ways the traditional perceptions of race affect the way in which he manages his office.”

Crayton said Obama has introduced discourse that allows the public to be more open about race in America and hopes the president can add to what he discussed in his speech on race following the Jeremiah Wright debacle and “encourage people to have more of a dialogue” on race. “Electing a black candidate for the nation’s highest office may certainly be part of the formula for black political power, but it cannot substitute for the enactment of substantive policies that respond to the long overdue calls for racial justice,” Crayton wrote.

“I think the biggest challenge for the president will just be following up on his promise to make America make as good as its promise with respect to being open to all people no matter what walk of life they started with,” Said Crayton

Crayton’s lecture kicked off the Diaspora Talk Series, which will feature lectures from Professor Richard Iton from Northwestern University at 3 p.m. on Feb. 19, 2010, Professors Eddie Glaude Jr. and William S. Tod from Princeton University on April 9 at 3 p.m. and Professor D. Soyini Madison from Northwestern University at noon on April 16. All lectures will take place at the ISESE Gallery/John L. Warfield Center located in Jester A232A.

“The turnout was really great and we hope for a good turnout next time and to engage the campus in conversation, not just in the talk itself but afterwards outside, in the corridors and in the classrooms,” Carrington said.