IT IS BLACK AND WHITE. As Dana noted, mainstream press coverage of the Jena 6 was pitiful at best, until it finally hit the major-media radar this week . And recent coverage seems to have disproportionately focused on Jesse Jackson's (possible) accusation that Barack Obama has been "acting like he's white" by not coming out more visibly on the Jena 6 issue. Jackson later backed down, saying that the statement doesn't really represent the way he feels about Obama, or that it was taken out of context. Obama put out his own statement on the case, saying it's not "a matter of black and white," but rather "a matter of right and wrong." He continued, "We should stand as one nation in opposition to this and any injustice."
I'm not going to endorse Jackson's race-baiting, but Obama's statement says a lot about the reality of racism in America today. Jena is about black and white. And if the actual events in Jena didn't make that clear enough, it's even clearer now that we have a black political candidate so worried about alienating white voters by identifying too closely with black causes that he feels he can't publicly call this a matter of racism, plain and simple. As our own Terence Samuel wrote just a few weeks ago, Obama might well be part of a new generation of African American political leaders that are post-civil rights. But even a post-civil rights candidate needs to be able to call out injustice fueled by racism when it exists. And in Jena, it exists.
But Obama is forced to operate as a presidential candidate in a country that's willing to accept his blackness, as long as he's not too black, which means he can't call it out. American voters are willing to vote for him as long as he doesn't try to challenge any of the underlying assumptions about who and what the United States is today, because the majority of Americans just don't want to think about the possibility that America is still a country hostile to its non-white citizens. They don't want to worry that a black president might make them cede some of the privilege they are afforded in white-dominated society. If they're going to even think about electing a black man to the presidency, he must assure them that he's not going to do anything to upset their sense of complacency and the illusion that America is a swell place for everybody nowadays.
And while the image of nooses hanging from a tree in Louisiana is a gut-wrenching reminder of the very overt racism that still exists in the United States, it's far more common to pretend to ignore race issues -- as is the case of Obama. It's easy to disassociate ourselves from Jena, to pinpoint that example of some of the very real, very major work that still has to be done, but then to write that off as an exceptional case. It's much harder to disassociate ourselves from the system of privilege and racism that Obama has to work within if he wants to win the Democratic nomination. Having a black political candidate among the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination serves as easy salve for the majority of well-intentioned, comfortable, middle-class white American voters. "Sure, there are still a few backwater rednecks in the South who hate black people," they think. "But us, we're good people. Look, we've even got an Obama '08 lawn sign!"
But the fact remains that if Obama came out with his proverbial guns blazing about the Jena 6, those same voters would probably do a little redecorating. And that is perhaps the most pernicious injustice.
--Kate Sheppard
