Obama's balancing act with black politicians

The Congressional Black Caucus finally got their much awaited meeting with President Barack Obama. The Caucus didn't have to wait because Obama intentionally snubbed it; though the Caucus was split virtually down the middle during the campaign between backing him and Hillary Clinton. The wait had to do with Obama's crushing priorities. The economy, budget, appointments, the banking crisis, a brief Middle East flare up, and foreign policy matters had to be addressed and addressed fast. But even if these problems didn't bog Obama down, meeting the CBC would still likely be a lower grade priority for him.

Obama walks the same line in the White House that he walked during the campaign. The strength and appeal of his campaign was that he was the all-purpose candidate who gave no absolutely no hint that there would be any tilt toward minorities if elected. This was based in equal parts on recent Democratic presidential campaign tradition, fear, political expediency and belief. Once nominated, the Caucus wisely understood the fine line he walked, backed him enthusiastically, and waited patiently their turn to meet him and lay out their agenda.

And that's an agenda that Obama still may not be able to totally meet, or even feel an urgency to meet. That's not Obama's fault or failure, it's politics, or more specifically it's the slippage or at best stagnation in the numbers and political clout of black elected officials.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington D.C. political think tank, in a study found that the rise in the number of black elected officials has slowed.

The bulk of black officeholders are still mainly concentrated in five states, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana, and Georgia.

Overall, the percentage of black elected officials in relation to all elected officials has remained static in the last decade.

The slowdown is glaringly evident in Congress. The U.S. Senate has only had three, and a disputed fourth, black member since Reconstruction, Massachusetts Republican Ed Brooke and Carol Moseley-Braun, and Obama's much disputed interim replacement, Roland Burris. In the House, Congressional Black Caucus membership has had only a modest rise since 1996.

The stagnation in black political strength has hampered the Congressional Black Caucus in its past efforts to get Congress and the White House to support increased commerce, trade and aid to African and Caribbean nations -- as well as greater HIV/AIDS funding, strong backing for affirmative action programs, the passage of tougher anti-racial profiling and hate crimes laws. The stagnation in Congress has also meant that it took marches and protests by civil rights leaders to get any national attention on hate crimes, voting irregularities, police abuse, chronic black joblessness, and the gaping racial disparities in health and education.

The constraints on black elected officials and the at times cavalier treatment by top Democrats of black voters before Obama's run fueled rage and deepened cynicism among many blacks that Democrats care about them only when they need their votes. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1993 on minority redistricting is another potential peril for black politicians. The court tossed out districts that had been gerrymandered to preserve black population majorities. These so-called race-based districts were mostly in the South and were deliberately drawn to insure that black candidates would perpetually be elected to Congress.

An added dilemma for black voters is that any future increase in the number of black elected officials must come from what are currently majority white districts. Yet, with the exception of former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts and former Connecticut Congressman Gary Franks -- both Republicans and both conservatives who were elected from majority white districts -- it is still a hard sell for blacks to triumph in non-black majority districts.

The turgidity in black political gains can also be dumped squarely on several phenomena -- black voter apathy, alienation, inner-city population drops, suburban integration and displacement by Latinos and Asians who have shown a far greater willingness to split their votes more evenly among both Republicans and Democrats than blacks. To overcome these daunting obstacles, civil rights and black political groups must mount and sustain voter mobilization and education drives aimed at increasing the number of black voters, not just to elect a black president. On the GOP side, the jury is still way out on whether Michael Steele, the new Republican National Committee chair, can budge the GOP toward fulfilling Bush's vague pledge to make diversity a watchword in the party and then did little to see that it was.

Black politicians must also expand their agenda to address the needs of Latino and Asian voters. Their support will be absolutely crucial if black politicians expect to hold or win office in the future in districts that were once majority black but are fast changing to majority Latino and Asian districts.

Obama's triumph was a milestone for American politics, not black politics. And that's the dilemma for black politicians. Obama will continue to do a balancing act with them.