Obama and the Funding of Black Community Turnout

08 Oct 2008

Obama and the Funding of Black Community
Turnout

by Ron Walters

This article was distributed by the National Newspaper Publishers
Association (NNPA).

"The Obama campaign will have raised hundreds of millions
of dollars, most of which will have gone into the White community."

While
all of us are understandably proud of the showing that Barack Obama is making
this presidential election, I continue to also point out the cost. Symbolic of
this is that while the National Baptist Convention was meeting in Cincinnati
recently, Barack was in Akron giving a major education speech just 52 miles up
the road.

And
although he sent Michelle Obama to the convention, she delivered a largely
pedestrian speech urging Blacks to get out and vote that was-again-silent about
how Barack would address the pressing questions at the heart of the Black
community.

Earlier on, I noted that Radio One recently had a $7
million deficit for the first quarter of this year and wondered how it is that
a Black-owned radio empire could run a deficit in the middle of a presidential
campaign if it was receiving the advertising revenue from the campaigns that it
has in the past.

The Obama Campaign raised $66 million in the month of
August, yet although it has announced a vigorous voter registration drive for
the Black community, it doesn't seem to have taken into account funding the
Black civic culture.

In
Freedom
Is Not Enough, I wrote that in the 2004 election, American Coming
Together (ACT), a White Democratic-leaning 527 organization funded by a
collection of rich donors like George Soros went around Black civic and
religious organizations and sponsored its own voter turnout drive in the Black
community. Legions of kids with Blackberries showed up in places where the
NAACP, Urban League, National Coalition of Black Civic Participation, Black
churches, Black labor unions and local Black civic organizations had worked for
years to turnout the Black vote successfully. The result was that not only were
many of the Black organizations de-funded, but our strong Black churches and
civic organizations were pushed aside to make way for professional canvassers.

Again in this election cycle, I have heard stories of
young Whites showing up in Black communities to register Black voters. While on
the face of it, this would be a good exercise in race relations, this is a game
of community power. The power of the Black community in elections has always
resided not only in its turnout but in the fact that the turnout was controlled
by Black leadership.

"I have heard stories of young Whites showing up in Black
communities to register Black voters."

There
is an old law of politics that he who controls the voter controls the power
that it represents. So, when Blacks were turned out by strong White-controlled
urban machines in the first half of the 20th century, those White bosses owned
the power of the Black vote and they used it for their own ends.

One
of the major objectives of the Civil Rights movement was not only to enable
Blacks to vote in big numbers and to have their vote have an impact in the
political system, it was that it should be controlled by Black leadership who
would do the bargaining for issues with that system. Is this basic fact of
politics now to be sacrificed in a "post-civil rights" world?

The Obama campaign is using the same tactics of ACT,
financing thousands of young kids coming into Black communities to register
Black voters, when from my brief survey, traditional Black organizations who
have done this for years have received no funding from the campaign. Now, there
are some legal issues here that complicate 501c3 organizations receiving direct
funding from political campaigns and the fact that the Obama campaign has
raised more money than the Democratic Party and leaned on 527s not to come into
the game. But it seems to me that they could have been worked out to enable the
Obama campaign to be an empowerment vehicle for the Black community.

"He
who controls the voter controls the power that it represents."

So,
it was somewhat ironic to me that Michelle Obama would urge a convention of
Black Baptist ministers to turn out their people to vote-at the last minute in
the campaign, with no accompanying funding mechanism-when Blacks have
criticized the Democratic party for years for doing the same thing. I think
that the Obama campaign, when all is said and done, should be more than something
we can point to with pride insofar as he ran a good campaign. This campaign
will have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which will have gone
into the White community. Is that also something we should be proud of?

This
is another feature of the accountability of this campaign to the Black
community and my view is that those who have been critical of the Democratic
Party all these years cannot now give Obama a pass just because he is Black.

Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership
Scholar and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland
College Park. One of his latest books is: Freedom
Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential
Politics.

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