Analysis: Race is daunting challenge for Obama
July 26, 2009WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s summary of the furor over a black Harvard professor’s arrest was so understated, and perhaps obvious, that it barely rose above the cable-news driven din.
“Race is still a troubling aspect of our society,” the nation’s first black president said Friday, as he tried to tamp down a controversy he had helped fuel two days earlier.
Without doubt.
What’s less clear, however, is whether Obama’s history-making election is triggering changes in the day-to-day racial interactions of ordinary Americans. After all, if one of the country’s most prominent black scholars can be arrested in his home after a heated exchange with a white police officer, doesn’t that suggest Obama’s racial breakthroughs apply more to the political world than to the broader society?
No, say a variety of people who welcomed his plunge into the controversy, even if it caused the president a little heartburn. He is uniquely positioned, they say, to pour light on one troubling issue — racial profiling by police — and to nudge the nation to talk more openly about race in general, if only for a short while, as he did with a widely followed speech in March 2008.
“Obama’s election gives us someone in a position of authority to speak personally to this experience,” said James Lai, director of the Ethnic Studies program at Santa Clara University in California. Questions of whether police officers disproportionately stop minorities for questioning and frisking “will get a much more thorough debate now,” he said.
But Obama “has to walk a very fine line” when discussing race, Lai said. “He must be careful not to fall into the box of being the black candidate.”
Even Obama was surprised by the intensity of the uproar over the arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge, Mass., officers who were checking a possible burglary report, which proved unfounded. At a Wednesday news conference, Obama said the officers had “acted stupidly” after they realized Gates was in his own home.
The president said he had worked on a racial profiling bill as an Illinois state legislator “because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately.”
After two days of wall-to-wall media coverage, Obama placed conciliatory calls Friday to Gates and the arresting officer, and he popped into the White House press area. He said he hoped the episode “ends up being what’s called a ‘teachable moment,’ where all of us, instead of pumping up the volume, spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities.”
Obama’s actions will probably help that cause, and over time, he will reshape other parts of America’s racial fabric, said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
His impact “will be measured in time” on the way it affects white Americans “and the lives and morale of black families,” said Guillory, a Louisiana native and former journalist. “To have a young, black family in the White House remains a powerful symbol, a powerful message, without any words being attached to it,” he said. “We can’t know the impact just yet.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Baltimore, agrees.
“Things are getting better,” said Cummings, 58, who as a young lawyer was often the only black professional in the courtroom. “But we’ve still got a long ways to go.”
Nearly all his black associates think Gates was a victim of racial profiling, Cummings said, while 70 percent of his white friends do not. “We look at these problems of race out of our own glasses,” he said, “and they are based on our experiences.”
Cummings said Obama’s election has given young minorities greater hopes of achieving their dreams. “But they still have to go to the same schools,” which are often substandard, he said. A future Barack Obama may face fewer racial hurdles, Cummings said, but he or she won’t reach the White House if they lack access to decent schools, health care and job opportunities.
In a way, Obama made a similar point Friday, saying he had to cool the rhetoric over the Gates affair to refocus the political world on his top priority: revamping the nation’s health care system.
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and other presidents might have ducked a reporter’s question about Gates’ arrest simply by saying it was a local matter or they lacked enough details to comment. Obama would have had a harder time doing that. As the first black president, he is better situated_but also more obligated_to address racial matters.
Still, Obama rarely mentions race without prompting. And he addresses it in depth only when scandals or big controversies essentially force his hand.
When the black minister Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary racial remarks threatened his presidential bid early last year, Obama delivered a speech that was widely regarded as among the most comprehensive and nuanced addresses on race ever delivered by a top U.S. politician.
But race received only passing mentions after that. And Obama’s damage control on Friday was reminiscent of the Wright episode, when a racial tempest was overshadowing his message and agenda.
Obama made no apologies Friday for diving into the Gates matter, even as he said he should have used more judicious words at first.
“The fact that this has become such a big issue, I think, is indicative of the fact that race is still a troubling aspect of our society,” he said in the White House briefing room. “Whether I were black or white, I think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive, as opposed to negative, understandings about the issue, is part of my portfolio.”
Morocco challenges Mideast Holocaust mind-set
RABAT, Morocco – From the western edge of the Muslim world, the King of Morocco has dared to tackle one of the most inflammatory issues in the Middle East conflict — the Holocaust.
At a time when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dismissal of the Holocaust has made the biggest headlines, King Mohammed VI has called the Nazi destruction of the Jews “one of the most tragic chapters of modern history,” and has endorsed a Paris-based program aimed at spreading the word among fellow Muslims.
Many in the Islamic world still ignore or know little about the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jews during World War II. Some disbelieve it outright. Others argue that it was a European crime and imagine it to be the reason Israel exists and the Palestinians are stateless.
The sentiment was starkly illustrated in March after a Palestinian youth orchestra performed for Israeli Holocaust survivors, only to be shut down by angry leaders of the West Bank refugee camp where they live.
“The Holocaust happened, but we are facing a similar massacre by the Jews themselves,” a community leader named Adnan Hindi said at the time. “We lost our land and we were forced to flee.”
Like other moderate Arab leaders, King Mohammed VI must tread carefully. Islamic fervor is rising in his kingdom, highlighted in 2003 by al-Qaida-inspired attacks in Casablanca on targets that included Jewish sites. Forty-five people died.
The king’s acknowledgment of the Holocaust, in a speech read out in his name at a ceremony in Paris in March, appears to further illustrate the radically different paths that countries like Morocco and Iran are taking.
Morocco has long been a quiet pioneer in Arab-Israeli peace efforts, most notably when it served as a secret meeting place for the Israeli and Egyptian officials who set up President Anwar Sadat’s groundbreaking journey to Jerusalem in 1977.
Though Moroccan officials say the timing is coincidental, the Holocaust speech came at around the same time that Morocco severed diplomatic relations with Iran, claiming it was infiltrating Shiite Muslim troublemakers into this Sunni nation.
The speech was read out at a ceremony launching the “Aladdin Project,” an initiative of the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (Holocaust) which aims to spread awareness of the genocide among Muslims.
It organizes conferences and has translated key Holocaust writing such as Anne Frank’s diary into Arabic and Farsi. The name refers to Aladdin, the young man with the genie in his lamp, whose legend, originally Muslim, became a universally loved tale.
The Holocaust, the king’s speech said, is “the universal heritage of mankind.”
It was “a very important political act,” said Anne-Marie Revcolevschi, director of the Shoah foundation. “This is the first time an Arab head of state takes such a clear stand on the Shoah,” she said in a telephone interview.
While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often aggravates Arab sentiment toward Israel, Morocco has a long history of coexistence between Muslims and Jews.
The recent Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip has further inflamed resentment at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. But Ahmed Hasseni, a Casablanca cab driver, echoes a widely held view that it shouldn’t affect relations with Morocco’s Jews.
“We’re not dumb,” he said. “We don’t confuse the Israeli army with the Jewish people,” he said.
Jews have lived in Morocco for 2,000 years. Their numbers swelled after they were expelled from Spain in 1492, and reached 300,000 before World War II, when yet more fled the German occupation and found refuge in Morocco, then a French colony.
Today they number just 3,000, most having emigrated to France, North America or Israel, but they are free to come back to explore their roots, pray at their ancestors’ graves and even settle here.
Simon Levy heads the Jewish Museum in Casablanca, a treasure trove of old Torah scrolls, garments and jewelry illustrating the rich culture of Moroccan Jewry.
“That I still run the only Jewish museum in the Arab world is telling,” he said.
Andre Azoulay, a top adviser to the current king, is Jewish and one of six members of the king’s council in a monarchy that oversees all major decisions. Considered one of Morocco’s most powerful men, he views his country as “a unique case” for the intensity of its Jewish-Muslim relations. “We don’t mix up Judaism and the tragedy of the Middle East,” he told The Associated Press in an interview.
A founding member of the Aladdin project, Azoulay says part of the program’s goal is to show the West that Muslims aren’t hostile to Jews, and that Morocco was among countries that resisted Nazi plans to exterminate their Jewish populations. He points to king Mohammed V, the current ruler’s grandfather, who is credited with resisting French colonial anti-Semitic policies.
Such actions were rare, but not unique in North Africa during World War II. In Tunisia, the late Khaled Abdelwahhab hid Jews from the Nazis on his farm, and was the first Arab to be nominated as “Righteous Among the Nations,” a title bestowed by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, on those who risked their lives to save Jews in the Holocaust. His case is still under study.
The Aladdin project is only just beginning. Its work has yet to reach schools or bookstores in Morocco, although the Shoah foundation’s Revcolevschi said Anne Frank’s diary is among Holocaust memoirs available in Arabic and Farsi on the Internet, and is being sold under the counter in Iran.
“People speak of a clash of civilizations, but it’s more a clash of ignorance,” she said. “We’re countering this.”
Hakim El Ghissassi, an aide to the senior Islamic Affairs official who delivered Mohammed’s speech, said the king is uniquely positioned to promote Islam’s dialogue with Judaism, because his titles include “Commander of the believers” — meaning he is the paramount authority for Moroccan Muslims.
“What the king has said on the Holocaust reflects our broader efforts,” said El Ghissassi, listing such reforms as courses to reinforce Morocco’s tradition of tolerant Islam by familiarizing local imams with Jewish and Christian holy books.
“We want to make sure everybody can differentiate between unfair Israeli policies and respect for Judaism,” he said.
