Barack Obama and America�s Multicultural Divide by Dr. William K. Barth Ralph Nader�s accusing Barack Obama of �trying to talk white� during his recent Rocky Mountain News interview, is yet another example of how Obama is racially profiled by both white and black political opponents. Nader, like the other commentators, finds it irresistible to attack Obama on the basis of his ethnic (inclusive of race) characteristics. Aside from its apparent racialism, the Nader incident is a good moment for us to untangle the American multi-cultural divide. We need to determine standards by which we can judge Nader�s attack. America�s civil rights tradition, as well US ratified human rights treaties that protect members of minority groups, provide some guidance here. The United States has ratified such treaties as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which includes a minority protection provision (article 27) outlining our treaty obligations concerning treatment of members of minority groups. Much of the literature that surrounds minority rights regimes analyzes the issue in two ways, firstly, as inter-group relations, such as between the state�s majority and minority groups, and secondly, intra-group affairs, covering relations between individuals within their own ethnic, religious, linguistic, or national groups. The international regime requires states to treat minority groups with what Ronald Dworkin terms �equal concern and respect�. That is, states must provide a tolerance for minority ethnic characteristics similar to that enjoyed by the majority. When combined with America�s domestic civil rights tradition, these regimes amount to a standard articulated by the late Revd Martin Luther King Jr., that an individual should be judged by the content of her or his character, and not by skin color. International human rights treaties cater for the increased levels of multi-cultural diversity within states. Minority protections covering other international regions, such as Europe�s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, give individuals complete freedom to either associate, or reject identification, with their own minority group. That is, an individual may freely choose not to identify with his or her minority group, and instead to assimilate into the cultural norms set by the state�s majority. Nader, and other commentators, are wrong to identify Senator Obama racially, because by so doing, they violate human rights principles that protect minority groups. There are two principles at stake here. First, America�s domestic civil rights tradition requires one to take the position that policies advocated by Obama have nothing to do with his ethnic background. Accusing Obama of �trying to talk white� should have no place in the debate over whether Obama�s positions are good or bad for the country. Whatever the merits of Nader�s substantive criticism about corporate abuses in low-income, central-city and minority neighborhoods, what Nader did was to engage in a type of group insult, by challenging Obama�s association with African-Americans. Second, it is Obama�s human right to self-identify with his ethnic group, whether or not this meets with Nader�s approval. However, Obama�s opponents are intent on coercing Obama into a narrow racialism defined by a parochial, Afro-centric candidacy. Obama�s challenge is similar to that of late President John F. Kennedy who, as a candidate a generation ago, was forced to declare his independence from Roman Catholics as a group. During his address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, the then Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA) declared that he was not, �the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party�s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters � and the church does not speak for me.� It is telling that forty years after the assassination of the late Revd Martin Luther King, Jr., candidates such as Nader can demonstrate a shocking lack of maturity about the state of race-relations in the United States. Their conduct only serves to aggravate America�s racial divide, which was well documented by the (largely ignored) Kerner Commission, created forty years ago by President Lyndon Johnson to research the social conditions of African-Americans in the wake of civil unrest in Newark and Detroit. This report concluded that America is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal. Nader is not the first commentator to profile Obama racially. We must remember that even some black commentators met Obama�s candidacy with an initial degree of skepticism. Obama is the progeny of an Anglo-American mother and Kenyan father. He was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia. Both states contain an ethnically Asian social environment. Obama�s atypical upbringing resulted in charges by some commentators that Obama, as he himself now reminds us, is �not black enough.� For example, Revd Jeremiah Wright sermonizing before Washington�s National Press Club demonstrates that some black leaders are equally dedicated to coercing Obama into reflecting a narrow interpretation of African-American interests. Wright also disrespected Obama�s right to identify with, or equally well reject, these interests. Meanwhile, Obama�s other political opponents wrongfully portray him as just the opposite; namely, as what Obama also recently described as being �too black�. Now that Obama has become the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, we are already witnessing similar efforts by McCain�s surrogates. For example, conservative commentator Grover Norquist (in a recent Los Angeles Times interview) racially identified Obama as �John Kerry with a tan.� McCain (D-AZ) has also had difficulty with race-relations: recall his awkward attempt to apologize to black voters for his own political opposition to the Martin Luther King Day holiday. These tactics of Obama�s political opponents, both white and black, have one central purpose; that is, to coercively identify Obama with his own ethnic group in order to marginalize him as a candidate and identify him as someone who places his ethnic group�s interests above the common good. These efforts are obnoxious when placed in the context of America�s troubled racial past. For example, the legacy of once lawfully segregated neighborhoods and school systems continue to plague new generations of blacks and other disadvantaged minority groups. Scholarly research published in a Kaiser Family Foundation report concluded that black youth lag seriously behind their white counterparts in almost every social indicator from poverty, homicide, unemployment, high school and college drop-out rates, to horrendously high levels of prison incarceration. Other minority groups, such as Latinos and Native Americans, suffer a similar plight of disproportionate inequalities. However, the Obama campaigns efforts to transcend parochial ethnic identification and create a post-racial candidacy is not lost. His multi-ethnic, multi-cultural upbringing, as much as his coalition oriented campaign, makes him uniquely suited to resolving American ethnic divides. Obama has responded to these attacks with the tolerance and understanding that the late Revd Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed was necessary to improve relationships between whites and blacks, as well as between different ethnic groups. It also demonstrates that, while Americans have not yet �turned the page� on their troubled past in the field of race relations, Obama�s candidacy represents important progress. A victory for him in the Presidential election this November will take us even further in this regard.
Dr. Barth is a graduate of the University of Oxford in the UK where he performed research on international human rights treaties that protect minority groups.
