WaPo: Blacks at Odds Over Scrutiny of President

[chimpymustgo]

This is an interesting article that reflects some of the conflicted feelings expressed here at DU. The piece is very balanced, a good read, worth clicking the link.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501894_2.html?hpid=topnews

Blacks at Odds Over Scrutiny of President

By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 6, 2009; Page A01

Jeff Johnson knows how to make his audiences squirm. The young, black radio and TV political commentator waits for the discussion to turn to the topic being talked about ceaselessly, incessantly, ad nauseam: the meaning of the barrier-breaking election of Barack Obama.

Then, in his laid-back style, he says, "The real issue for me is that history is not enough." That's when the mood becomes tense.

"Black folks, in particular, get irritated," says Johnson, who travels the lecture circuit, hosts a half-hour show on Black Entertainment Television and has a weekly spot for social criticism on a radio program popular with black listeners. Get past "Obama the personality" and see "Obama the president," he says. "Otherwise all you're being is a political-celebrity groupie instead of a citizen. . . . It starts with acknowledging he's my president, and not my homie."

As the nation's first black president settles into the office, a division is deepening between two groups of African Americans: those who want to continue to praise Obama and his historic ascendancy, and those who want to examine him more critically now that the election is over.

Johnson is one of a growing number of black academics, commentators and authors determined to press Obama on issues such as the elimination of racial profiling and the double-digit unemployment rate among blacks.

But doing so has put them at odds with others in the black community. Love for the Obamas is thick among African Americans -- 91 percent of whom view the president favorably, compared with 59 percent of the total population, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month -- and as a result, the African American punditry finds itself navigating new ground.
ad_icon

They are learning to negotiate what talk show host and author Tavis Smiley calls an "unfamiliar dance." If you push too forcefully, he says he has learned, you risk your credibility in the community.

That's what happened to Smiley last year, when he was the one in the commentator's chair that Jeff Johnson now sits in on Tom Joyner's syndicated morning radio program. During the heated Democratic primary, Smiley questioned Obama's decision not to attend his annual State of the Black Union conference and said he hoped Obama would make it through the campaign "with his soul intact."

The push-back was "brutal," Smiley recalls. Angry listeners called him a "sellout," an "Obama hater" and "Uncle Tom." Surprised and hurt, Smiley left Joyner's show but now uses the rough patch to make the case for a new book he co-wrote, "Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise."

-snip-

What he is up against are people like Leutisha Stills, a regular blogger on the African American opinion site Jack and Jill Politics. She dismisses anything Smiley has to say about Obama because he is "always going negative."

"I cannot be on the Haterade fest," Stills says. "It appears that whatever Mr. Obama tends to do, no matter what, somebody is going to put a negative spin on it. Whether I agree with his policies or not, from appearances' sake he's trying to do what he promised in his campaign."


-snip-

Johnson, of BET and the Tom Joyner show, describes a similar transformation.

He was so moved during the inauguration ceremonies that he cried on air while hosting BET's coverage. But that was the day his celebration stopped and his question quickly became: "Now what's he going to do?"

"With the state of the economy, the fact that we're at war on at least two fronts, we're dealing with 50 percent dropout rates for some high school students, we're losing jobs -- we don't have time to celebrate nothing," Johnson says. "Anybody who cares about making history more than they care about the transformation of their community and their country has a real misplaced understanding of what making history is supposed to mean. . . . The person that I believe we voted for doesn't want us to continue to celebrate him."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501894_2.html?hpid=topnews

[jaxx]

1. This smacks of the instant gratification being demanded by the right.....

not a good thing.