From The Chicago Tribune…
Obama’s nomination doesn’t end fight for civil rights
By Dawn Turner Trice
DENVER — More than five decades after the start of the modern civil rights movement, the country has its first African-American nominee poised to compete in a general election for the U.S. presidency.
While civil rights leaders, black politicians and others consider Sen. Barack Obama’s nomination the culmination of a dream, they fear his ascent may suggest to some that the civil rights battles of the past have been won and that it is time to lay down arms.
No need for race-based remedies or preferences, anymore. No need for civil rights groups or leaders.
But those leaders stress that such a line of thinking is flawed and can’t be further from the truth. They believe Obama’s nomination should be viewed as a milestone and evidence that the country is heading in the right direction. Still, they say, where race is concerned, the country remains a work in progress.
“Racism didn’t end when Richard Parsons got his job as the head of Time Warner or when Kenneth Chenault became the head of American Express,” said Marc Morial, the National Urban League’s president and chief executive.
He said the same “blacks have arrived” argument was made three decades ago when cities across the country began electing blacks as mayors.
“Harold Washington being elected mayor of Chicago didn’t end racism in that city,” said Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans.
He said Obama’s nomination may mark a fundamental shift away from racial-identity politics to so-called post-racial politics. But, he added, the nomination doesn’t diminish the need for activism on behalf of social justice.
Civil rights leader Al Sharpton said that it’s “irrational” to expect Obama’s nomination to represent the end of the civil rights movement or even its fulfillment.
‘Fix an entire nation?’
“Black mayors couldnt solve all the problems,” he said. “So how do we expect one man to get in there and fix an entire nation?
“Throughout the black community, we’ve got double-digit unemployment, health and health-care disparities, education disparities. If we elected a messiah, he couldn’t close some of those gaps,” Sharpton said.
Marian Wright Edelman, president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, said that when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, there were 11 million poor children. Today there are 13 million, with blacks representing a disproportionate share of the total.
“We have a cradle-to-prison pipeline that threatens the last 45 years of civil rights progress,” she said. “I think about the election and I’m so proud of America right now, but we have to continue to ensure that everybody partakes in the American dream.”
Ward Connerly, the black California businessman who has led several voter initiatives around the country aimed at banning affirmative action, said he understands that racism is still a factor and that some people of color face great odds.
“But I think it’s impossible to make the argument that black Americans need to be treated differently because black people can’t get a fair shake in America,” he said. “You need special public policies to level the playing field? How do you look at Sen. Obama and make that argument?”
He said in the past 50 years, the country has undergone a profound change.
“We have stripped away the argument that you have to have one group of policies for one group of people over the other,” he said.
Not enough
But Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said that the country’s problems with race are so entrenched and institutionalized that 50 years of change is not enough.
“Race got locked in with our country’s founding,” he said. “Even after the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, members of Congress allowed separate but equal to be the law of the land until 1954” and the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation in schools.
Clyburn said Obama’s election could serve as a huge step toward moving beyond deep racial divisions, but that it is only one step.
At an event Thursday commemorating the 1963 March on Washington, the National Urban League’s Morial said Obama’s nomination is not only a celebration but an opportunity to recommit to the causes of the civil rights movement.
“We usher in a new era of our work,” he told the crowd of about 400. “Our work is not over.”
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