Vol. 72/No. 31      August 4, 2008

Obama said July 27 that he supports affirmative action “when properly structured” so that it is not just a quota system. Black children from wealthy homes should not be given greater consideration, he said, than “a poor white kid who has struggled more.”

“If you’ve got 50 percent of African-American or Latino kids dropping out of high school, it doesn’t really matter what you do in terms of affirmative action. Those kids are not getting into college,” Obama said,

The position that affirmative action is not key to addressing race discrimination and that it harms working people who are white is not a new stance for Obama. In his 2006 book the Audacity of Hope he uses similar language and says that these programs must move beyond “race and test scores.”

Republican John McCain also spoke on affirmative action July 27, publicly backing an Arizona ballot initiative that would ban all affirmative action by the state government. At a press conference later in the day, Obama criticized McCain.

Two weeks earlier, Obama gave a Father’s Day speech at one of Chicago’s largest Black churches saying the biggest problem facing Blacks is the breakdown of the Black family not the capitalist economic crisis, institutionalized racism, or government inaction.

“Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL,” the Democratic contender said. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.” Obama told the audience to stop sitting “in the house watching SportsCenter” and instead help their children “with their homework.”

“Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools,” he said. “But we also need families to raise our children” and the children of single women “need another parent … That’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.”

Controversy over Obama’s views drew national attention when comments by Jesse Jackson were picked up on a Fox News microphone that Jackson thought was turned off. “Barack’s been talking down to Black people,” Jackson said. Explaining his comments later, Jackson said that Obama should be highlighting unemployment, the mortgage crisis, and the number of Blacks in prison, and “deal with the collective moral responsibility of government, and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices.”

On July 1 Obama said he was in favor of government funding and promotion of “faith-based” organizations to provide charity and social services in place of government agencies. The program had its start under the William Clinton administration; it was expanded and became controversial under President George W. Bush. The main problem with Bush’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives office, Obama said, was that it “never fulfilled its promise.” To do so he will give the office a cabinet-level seat and make the initiative the moral center of his administration.

He claimed that shifting money from government agencies and giving it to religious groups will not violate the constitutional separation of church and state because, unlike Bush, Obama will not allow those receiving funds to proselytize the people they help or discriminate in hiring.

Black conservative columnist Shelby Steele in a July 22 Wall Street Journal column complained that “Mr. Obama’s trick is to take politics off the table by moving so politically close to his opponent [McCain] that only culture is left to separate them.”
 
 
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