Academic

Deploying the F-Bomb: The Illegitimate Farrakhan Question

By Sherrilyn Ifill

It?s perhaps fitting that the media finally relegated Barack Obama to the confines of being just another ?black candidate? in the final days of Black History Month.  Obama?s fall ? or rather push ? from racial transcendance was broadcast on nationwide T.V., with the question heard round the world. That was when MSNBC and Meet the Press host Tim Russert dropped the ?F-bomb,? asking Obama if he rejected the endorsement of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.  It was though a decade fell away and in a very few seconds we were hurtled back into the tired, hackneyed and dispiriting race-talk of the 20th century.

It didn?t help that Obama answered the question too diplomatically, over-cautiously pointing out that he had never sought nor encouraged the support of Farrakhan, and then redundantly rejecting the endorsement of the Nation of Islam leader.  It was a moment that called for Obama to lead on race ? to show that transcendence doesn?t mean always mean turning the other cheek.  Sometimes transcending race means looking it squarely in the face and calling it out.  This was the moment for Obama to give his crooked grin, remain steely-eyed and to school Tim in baritone thusly: ?Tim, I?m not a Muslim, not a member of the Nation of Islam and I?ve never met Mr. Farrakhan.  As President of the United States I don?t intend to respond to everyone who claims to support me. Mr. Farrakhan is a man and entitled to vote for whomever he wants to in this campaign.  I?ve heard that there?s a story on the internet that the head of the KKK has endorsed my campaign.  Yet you don?t ask me if I accept his endorsement.  You ask me only about Mr. Farrakhan because I?m black and he?s black.  But you know Tim, I?m not running that kind of campaign.?  (Or Obama could have reminded Russert how he got his head handed to him by my cousin Gwen when she appeared on Meet the Press after the Don Imus controversy. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18094428/  Russert had appeared gleefully many times on Don Imus? show, and even on Rush Limbaugh?s show and he?s neither rejected nor renounced either Imus or Limbaugh, despite the offensive commentary of both men).

Because make no mistake about it, Obama?s decision to calmly engage the illegitimate Farrakhan question by Russert, and then submit to Hillary?s school-teacher insistence that he use the words ?reject and renounce,? to separate himself from Farrakhan, marked the moment in which Obama lost some of his transcendent luster, and left him vulnerable to what has become the increasingly naked racism of the Clinton campaign.

Like sharks smelling blood, Hillary and her supporters have circled ever since that debate, in an unrelenting effort to ?race? Obama. After winning the primaries, Hillary cancelled her day of rest and instead was on the morning shows saying that although she and McCain have devoted a lifetime to building their foreign policy credentials, Barack?s ?entire career is based on a speech he gave in 2004.?  Wow.  This is Race Talk 101.  Me and the white guy are qualified by hard work, but the black guy is just flash.

Geraldine Ferraro is the latest to have joined the fun, questioning whether Obama would have achieved his current status were he not a black man.  Her charge is so ridiculous, it?s laughable.  After blacks have been force-fed two decades of flaccid, somnabulent white candidates by the Democratic Party (pick one:  Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis), whites like Ferraro actually believe that being black and charismatic is akin to cheating. Hillary has taken this tack for months, decrying and mocking Obama?s ability to inspire and uplift, as though being unimaginative and boring is proof of super-competence and fairplay.  What Ferraro, Hillary, Bill and James Carville suffer from is ?black charisma envy,? a disease that Cornell West identified years ago.

And maybe that?s what motivated Tim Russert to bring Obama down a peg or two with the Farrakhan question. It was hardly a nail-biter.  Everyone knew that Barack would not embrace the Farrakhan endorsement.  Russert?s piercing Farrakhan inquiry was an exchange dreamed up for white people to watch Barack squirm, to put him in his place as a black candidate who, no matter his enormous cross-over appeal, has to run the same gauntlet as Jesse and Al and every other black presidential candidate.  It was so deeply unfair, Obama himself seemed a bit dispirited by Russert?s cynical line of questioning.  He looked as though he was thinking for the first time, ?maybe we can?t.?

Well maybe we had to come to this moment. If it wasn?t Tim Russert, it would?ve been Chris Matthews.  If Hillary doesn?t do it, John McCain will.  Now Obama?s got to stand firm. Call the race-baiting by the Hillary camp exactly what it is and call on her to renounce and reject it.  Remind us that we have a chance to do things a different way; that his campaign represents the 21st century, not the old dead-end conversations of the 20th.  And it wouldn?t be a bad idea for Obama to find a way to indicate to Tim Russert and the rest of the campaign media that he will not be limited by their narrow view of what a candidate who?s black can do in this election.  Forget about renouncing Farrakhan.  Renounce and reject the Farrakhan question.

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Full post as published by BlackProf on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).