Race talk about Obama prompts mixed reaction

In an interview on CBS television, the reporter spent as much time discussing Obama's blackness as he did the candidate's politics.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
People across the political and racial spectrums started discussing presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's race after he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
Some insist he is not African American and is unsuited to be a black candidate, because he is not a direct descendant of slaves and hasn't had what they see as an authentic African American experience.
Obama identifies as black. But he doesn't fit the stereotype of a black leader, a church-based fighter for civil rights.
He was president of the Harvard Law Review. He is the son of a Kenyan immigrant, his father, and a white Kansas native, his mother. He has many white supporters. And he is running to win, not just to fix black America.
"He touches on hot-button issues among African Americans," said Kevin Johnson, a professor of law and Chicano studies at UC Davis.
Frustration
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is frustrated by all the race talk.
"The conversation highlights the lack of information that people in general have about African American contributions," said Harris. "That is the added significance of Barack Obama. He is opening up what has been a limited perspective of who is an African American."
A personal connection to slavery and Jim Crow laws is still a common measure of who is and who isn't African American, said Melinda Chateauvert, an assistant professor of African American studies at the University of Maryland.
"A lot of my students are multicultural and don't have the problem with Barack Obama that you hear on the other levels, in the barber shop discussions," Chateauvert said. "We have to remember there has been a real interesting change in leadership."
People forget that the concentration of black leadership in the church happened in the 1950s, she said. Earlier leaders came from the labor movement as well as politics and law.
"This is simply a return to the old-style leadership, the long history that doesn't come from the church," Chateauvert said.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who ran twice for president, in 1984 and 1988, said in an interview last week that African Americans always have to work hard to get past historical rejections. But it does happen.
Black baseball players are now just players; black college presidents are college presidents; and black mayors are just mayors, he said.
"United States president would be a huge first -- which means race remains an issue," Jackson said. "Every time blacks advance beyond historical roles, it is a point of intrigue."
Limited perception
Harris said many Americans -- of all social and racial backgrounds -- have a limited perception of black people. In college at Washington D.C.'s Howard University, she saw African American men and women in leotards studying ballet in the arts department, young women with briefcases in business school, African Americans in lab coats studying medicine and in street clothes protesting actions on Capitol Hill.
"We are diverse and multifaceted," Harris said. "People are bombarded with stereotypical images and so they are limited in their ability to imagine our capacity."
The two major parties have fielded five black presidential candidates over the years -- Shirley Chisholm, Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun, Rev. Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes. But the issue of race didn't rise in those campaigns to the degree it has this year, perhaps because Obama is the first black person viewed as a possible winner.
In a "60 Minutes" interview on CBS television after Obama announced his candidacy, Steve Kroft spent as much time discussing Obama's blackness as he did the candidate's experience and politics.
He asked Obama if he "decided" to be black.
"I'm not sure I decided it," said Obama, 45. "If you look African American in this society, you're treated as an African American. I am rooted in the African American community, but I am not defined by it.