Black President

MARC LAMONT Hill's May 25 column ( "Black Pols Vs. Pols Who are Black" ) may be accommodating to "whites," who he suggests may be "uncomfortable" with "race" talk - but he, conveniently, never made the point that there seems to be a double standard when it comes to the African-American vote. For example, it's said that Barack Obama is "everybody's president," not just the president of African-Americans. Yet not a single other president in U.S. history has ever had that standard of representing all voters, from the slave owner George Washington to Bill Clinton, who was president when the Million Man March occurred in 1995.

Les Payne is a columnist for Newsday The emergence of Barack Obama as presumptive nominee is considered a credit to blacks; however, it is more a victory for the Democratic Party, and should he win in November, it might prove to be a triumph for the entire nation. The Illinois senator is indeed part of the continuum of blacks' struggle to gain political empowerment as U.S. citizens. He arrived on the shoulders of preceding black presidential candidates; however, he stands now on the platform of preceding Democratic nominees.

On Wednesday I was on Carol Saline's WDVT Talk 900 radio program. I arrived to discuss the Kerner commission report 20 years after it was released in 1968. We began with Jesse Jackson's candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. Mention Jackson's name and people become passionate. Callers insisted Jackson lacked the "experience" of running a government. "That's true," I said, "but is experience the measure? Look how much damage President Reagan has done with experience.

I was at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High stadium when Barack Obama gave his speech accepting his party's presidential nomination. Later, I eagerly watched the general election returns in the news offices of the Baltimore Afro, where I was serving as an editorial consultant. And I was on the Mall on Tuesday to witness Obama being sworn in as the nation's 44th president. Still, the reality of an African American becoming president of the United States did not sink in until I saw a Jumbotron image of Obama inside the Capitol just minutes before he would come outside to take the oath of office.

RE BYKO'S Jan. 22 column on Obama: It's not about black or white history, it's about qualifications. I have no problem with a black president, but not one who was put in there because he's black. Community organizers are important, but that does not qualify you for president. One Senate term and no work-related experience scares me. He'll be challenged. Even Joe Biden expects it. And the only experience he'll have to fall back on is "gathering" people in Chicago to unite in whatever cause he was promoting.

Foreign Minister Roelof F. "Pik" Botha, defending the South African government's proposed political reforms, said yesterday that his country could be governed by a black president provided there is an agreement protecting the rights of the white minority. Botha, going further than any cabinet minister has dared to go before, said he saw a black-led government as the "inevitable result in the future" if President Pieter W. Botha's new proposals on power-sharing are accepted by South Africa's black majority and become the basis for a new constitutional system.

EVER NOTICE that every TV show and commercial that depicts an office has an equal number of men and women, a black, an Asian, a Hispanic, an elderly? That virtually every judge on TV is a black woman, every chief of police a "tough but fair" black man? The real percentages are under 5 percent for both professions. That the white man in the group is usually the butt of jokes, never the minorities? Notice that all beer commercials show the politically correct mix socializing together?

The instant Barack Obama tossed his hat in the presidential ring, the dominant mantra was that he could be the first black president. That mantra was dead wrong. The early hint that race was overblown came from Obama. He didn't talk about it. For good reason. He was running for president, not black president. He made that crucial distinction for personal and political purposes. The ritual preface of the word black in front of every achievement or breakthrough by an African American is insulting, condescending and minimizes their achievement.

It sounds as if Saturday will be the day. For a week, the return of 76ers power forward Elton Brand supposedly has been just around the next bend in the NBA schedule. But one game came and went, then the next, then the next. Finally, a little less than six weeks after Brand suffered a dislocated right shoulder, he is expected to return Saturday against the New York Knicks at the Wachovia Center. Coach Tony DiLeo said the plan is to have Brand come off the bench that night and play in "short stints" of four, five or six minutes.

So John Kerry wants to be the next black president! Of course, he was speaking in jest and political code. If Bill Clinton had been the "first" black president, as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison christened him, "I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second," Kerry said in an interview with the American Urban Radio Network. I hate to burst their bubbles, but, according to the research of the late historian J.A. Rogers, five presidents actually had documentable black roots.

LeRoy Walker, 93, the first African American president of the U.S. Olympic Committee who attended the Penn Relays for six decades as a coach and referee, died Monday in Durham, N.C. Dr. Walker spent more than 40 years at North Carolina Central, first as track coach and later as chancellor. During his career, he coached eight Olympians who won a total of 11 medals, including back-to-back golds by hurdler Lee Calhoun in 1956 and 1960. Dr. Walker became the first African American coach of the U.S. Olympic men's track and field team in 1976 and led the squad to 22 medals, including six gold.

MARC LAMONT Hill's May 25 column ( "Black Pols Vs. Pols Who are Black" ) may be accommodating to "whites," who he suggests may be "uncomfortable" with "race" talk - but he, conveniently, never made the point that there seems to be a double standard when it comes to the African-American vote. For example, it's said that Barack Obama is "everybody's president," not just the president of African-Americans. Yet not a single other president in U.S. history has ever had that standard of representing all voters, from the slave owner George Washington to Bill Clinton, who was president when the Million Man March occurred in 1995.

Corbett's taking part in a fool's errand Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett is one of the attorneys general wasting time on lawsuits challenging the landmark federal health-care reform law. Corbett and his fellow conservatives know this is a quixotic fool's errand. They have no case. If they were to convince the conservative judicial activists on the U.S. Supreme Court of their flawed arguments, the result would be that we the people of Pennsylvania would once again be subject to the tender mercies of the insurance industry.

When his high school track coach looked at James C. Kennedy Sr., he saw an out-and-out speedster who would dominate the 100- and 220-yard sprints, his own Jesse Owens in Chester County. When Kennedy looked at his coach, he saw a white man who was pigeonholing him. Kennedy balked; being black didn't make him a sprinter. He insisted on running the mile for the Coatesville team, and he would get his way. It was neither the first nor last time that Kennedy would run against a stereotype.

RE THE recent op-ed by Christine Flowers responding to Attorney General Eric Holder's comments about America being a nation of cowards when it comes to race: I have nothing to say about the ways the piece criticized his comments, but why did it bring up black-on-black crime and that a majority of the people in prison are black? We will never overcome racism unless everyone admits the roles they have in it. As to accountability, if you're not racist, then you're not. If you are, then good.

In the college admissions essay she wrote for the University of Virginia, Autumn Adkins said she hoped to open a boarding school for low-income students. Now she's getting a chance to run one. Today, Girard College is scheduled to announce that Adkins, 36, will become the first African American woman to serve as president in the Fairmount boarding school's 160-year history. Adkins, an assistant principal at Friends Seminary, a Quaker school in New York City, said she knew her selection was a breakthrough for the private school that 19th-century merchant-banker Stephen Girard established to educate poor, white, orphan boys.

RE BYKO'S Jan. 22 column on Obama: It's not about black or white history, it's about qualifications. I have no problem with a black president, but not one who was put in there because he's black. Community organizers are important, but that does not qualify you for president. One Senate term and no work-related experience scares me. He'll be challenged. Even Joe Biden expects it. And the only experience he'll have to fall back on is "gathering" people in Chicago to unite in whatever cause he was promoting.

AT LAST, our country can know for sure that the color barrier has been forever broken. At last, our black men can move forward without excuses, no longer feeling oppressed by the things that had them bound for years, and what they set out to do can be done. At last, the dreams every black person had in his heart for the day of a black president has finally come. No matter how many of our people have struggled before us, and how many of them have struggled up to this day and hour, it has finally happened.

It sounds as if Saturday will be the day. For a week, the return of 76ers power forward Elton Brand supposedly has been just around the next bend in the NBA schedule. But one game came and went, then the next, then the next. Finally, a little less than six weeks after Brand suffered a dislocated right shoulder, he is expected to return Saturday against the New York Knicks at the Wachovia Center. Coach Tony DiLeo said the plan is to have Brand come off the bench that night and play in "short stints" of four, five or six minutes.

I was at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High stadium when Barack Obama gave his speech accepting his party's presidential nomination. Later, I eagerly watched the general election returns in the news offices of the Baltimore Afro, where I was serving as an editorial consultant. And I was on the Mall on Tuesday to witness Obama being sworn in as the nation's 44th president. Still, the reality of an African American becoming president of the United States did not sink in until I saw a Jumbotron image of Obama inside the Capitol just minutes before he would come outside to take the oath of office.