Obama's Bid Turns Focus On Class Split Among Blacks

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The Wall Street Journal

Obama's Bid Turns Focus On Class Split Among Blacks
By JONATHAN KAUFMAN
January 22, 2008; Page A1

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Even as Mr. Obama is promising to bring America together, his candidacy is casting new light on the mounting class divide in the black community -- and the debate among blacks about how to get ahead. The expanding black middle class -- accounting for about 40% of the black population -- see in Mr. Obama a validation of the choices they have made: attending largely white colleges, working in predominantly white companies and government offices, climbing up the ladder of American success. For African-Americans living in the inner city -- where most children are being raised by single mothers, male unemployment in some cities tops 50% and 40% of young black men are either in jail, awaiting trial or on probation -- the view of Mr. Obama is much more skeptical. Black teenagers mock Mr. Obama as a "Halfrican" and a "50-percenter" for his biracial background; his mother is white, his Kenyan-born father was black. A recent special on Mr. Obama on Black Entertainment Television, the most popular station among inner-city blacks, was titled, "Obama: What's in It for Us?"

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Many poor blacks don't vote, so their skepticism likely won't hurt Mr. Obama's candidacy. But Mr. Obama's challenge goes beyond politics: Can he unite his own community -- and, if elected president, inspire and uplift African-Americans of all classes? Many of the features that whites find most appealing about Mr. Obama -- his mixed-race background, cosmopolitan upbringing, the ease with which he moves among whites -- stir unease among some blacks. The debate among blacks about Mr. Obama has become unusually intimate, including discussions about the color of his wife's skin.

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Mr. Obama's candidacy comes amid an intensifying argument in the black community about what it means to be black in America and how blacks succeed. A survey this past fall by Pew Research found that 60% of blacks say the values of poor and middle-class blacks have grown more dissimilar over the past decade -- with "values" defined as "things that people view as important or their general way of thinking." Almost 40% of blacks say that the values of poor and middle-class blacks have diverged so much that blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race. Middle class is commonly defined as households making between $40,000 and $100,000 a year. Bill Cosby, now ranked by blacks as one of the people they admire most, according to the Pew Research survey, has been traveling across the country, visiting black churches and organizations, lacerating poor black parents: "I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit . Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is his father?"

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Class has divided American blacks ever since slave owners divided blacks into field slaves and more favored house slaves and interracial relationships left some blacks with lighter skin. Lloyd Kinnitt, a retired cook who grew up in Georgia and now lives in Boston, recalls his mother looking askance at some black neighbors and telling him: "They may be my color but they're not my kind." Such class distinctions are true among white Americans and ethnic groups as well; whites in South Carolina talk about rednecks and "trailer trash." But the debate over class in the black community has been particularly harsh in recent decades because while many, like Mr. Obama, have seen incomes and opportunities grow, others, even in the same families, have slipped further and further behind.

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Some poor blacks worry that whites will look at Mr. Obama's success and conclude that the "system" works -- that if Mr. Obama can succeed the government doesn't need to provide further programs for poor blacks in the inner cities. "When he says, there is no white America, there is no black America -- well, there is," says Ronald Peder, a black activist and writer in Boston. "If he really believes in all this magic about change in America -- well, I don't feel anything is going to change in black America." .. One of the things that many poor and middle-class blacks say they like best about Mr. Obama is that his wife, Michelle, who attended Princeton and Harvard Law School, is dark-skinned. Color has long been a sensitive subject in the black community, with men and women of lighter skin seen as having higher status.

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