Thoughts on a well-reported piece about the Obama campaign's apparent Islamophobia. The piece resonates with a number of things I've been writing about, right up through yesterday.
I was writing about communities of color expecting a certain kind of "change" in Obama's message, that is, a greater push for racial justice.
Here's Minha Husaini, an Muslim American in her 30s now working in the Obama campaign:
"He gives me hope," Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, "as if it's something bad," she said.
In fact, the article reports, the campaign is even stricter about regulating Obama's appearances -- and even the appearance of subordinates -- at Muslim American events, culminating in last week's resitting of two young women wearing hijabs. Obama himself called the young women to apologize.
Truth be told, for many Muslim American activists and other grassroots progressives, the Obama campaign can be, at best, a big buzzkill machine and, at worst, a wheel-shattering brake on "change" and "hope."
Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama's campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation's leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said.
The most frustrated surrogate of all is Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the nation's first Muslim congressman, who has seen efforts to bring the Muslim communities in greater contact with Obama stopped dead by the campaign.
It's hard not to notice that this is where the "change" message gets run over by the still largely white mainstream Democratic party operatives who control Obama's campaign. Again, to all those who want to complain about allegedly coalition-fragmenting "identity politics", here are the real identity politics at work.
Muslims, like other communities of color, confront this problem: Do you trust the candidate to do right once elected or do you accede to the reality of the campaign and sit it out?
Which leads to the second thread I've been talking about: the fact of formerly marginalized communities becoming (re)energized in the electoral process over the last 8 years -- whether the young, women, communities of color, or non-Christians.
These minorities are facing the difficulty of moving their vote from emergent to insurgent, from one that can get ignored or vaguely patronized to one that can make things happen.
Here's the article again on the Muslim American vote:
American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation's Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.
As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.
"We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. "We went back to the base."
In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.
By itself, these kinds of elections are transformative. They will help build lines of access to change for the communities. No one who is serious about gaining power can ignore the electoral process.
But what happens when groups turn out, get their candidate elected, but still can't influence the process?
If Obama wins, this is a problem Muslim Americans, communities of color, and all those minorities who took the mantra of "hope" and "change" to heart may find themselves in by the middle of 2009.
That's about when the new majority that the Democrats didn't really want and certainly didn't know how to create starts making its claims.
Originally published at Vibe.com
Follow Jeff Chang on Twitter: www.twitter.com/zentronix
Is it Islam and Muslims that told GWB to invade Iraq? Is it Islam and Muslims or Big oil and Big Pharma who are ripping off America? Is it Islam or Muslims who is the driving force behind FISA? Can you face your state of powerlessness and moral impotence and for once stop blaming Muslims and Islam and focus on fixing the real crisis facing this nation?
Those two women represented no danger to America, to senator Obama or to his chances of winning the White House. Do you know how pathetic the US sounds to the rest of the world? Really, I am being serous. Look atthe following links and make the necessary links. The US is a one sinking ship and nobody seem to be in charged. In one of the links shows McCain making fun Obama by saying he will fund green energy because if the US can ‘built a bridge’ it can spent three hundred thousand dollars on green technology. Note this is a direct copy of Obama’s often repeated stump speech that if the US can spent 10B a month in Iraq some of that money can go to rebuilt America,. Keith Olbermann’s missed this association nor is this slippage had been noted by the rest of the US media.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25352442/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/24/20-billion-later-iraq-sec_n_108919.html
Everything about Obama indicates that his arguments are well-reasoned and that he listens carefully to all sides. If politically right now, the candidates distance themselves from certain groups, so it goes. To say that Obama isn't going to hear the grievances of Muslim-Americans however is an unlikely hypothetical.
The Muslim community needs to be a little more understanding and lighten up until after the election. Anyone who is a Muslim is aware of the stupidity of mainstream America, and it would be wise to lay low if they want Obama to win. Yes it sucks, but sometimes it is necessary. There is plenty of time for religious healing, but right now we have an election to think about.
If even ONCE, Obama was to say that not all Muslims are bad and that there are many things about the religion that are good, he would be slaughtered. Most people don't realize that Jesus is in the Qu'ran, and is a major character too. He can't say this because if he did, the Republicans would have him doing a "Muslims are good people" voiceover with images of the 9/11 attacks, and Americans would be scared, and McCain would win.
Pick your battles, please, and don't pick on the ONE CANDIDATE who has a decent chance to bring acceptance and integration to the White House.
Congressman Ellison has been very vocal in telling Senator Obama what to do, and Senator Obama isn't having any of it. Ellison things he should apologize to all Moelms and that he wouldn't support as ticket with Hillary Clinton on it.
Who the hell is he?
He's one Congressman among many who things he is calling the shots.
Get in line.
Seantor Obama is our nominee and the decisions are his to make
Congressman Ellison embarassed himself at the last meeting Senator Obama had with the Congressional Black Caucus, where he was so disrespectful to Senator Obama that the Chairwoman had to gavel him.....
Seantor Obama would be doing an extreme disservice to himself and his supporters by letting Ellison call the shots...
It is also a mistake to equate "communities of color" with religion. Islam is multi-racial, just like Christianity (remember that Obama has been accused of being a member of a radical black church). Big difference between race and religion.
It's not about religion. Those two women who attended the Obama event were not there to represent Islam. They were there to represent themselves. It was the Obama campaign that only saw religion and squashed it. Obama is so afraid of being seen with anyone who practices the Muslim faith his campaign is doing back flips to distance themselves.
This isn't change. This is the same old scared politics we have had for too long. Instead of standing up to the smears Obama runs from them.
That's not hope. That's the same old same old.
Get real,fair or not ,for him to be closely associated with Muslims,would be manna from heaven for the neo-cons. He wants to get elected-I want him to get elected-and if you think about it-you should too.
"These minorities are facing the difficulty of moving their vote from emergent to insurgent, from one that can get ignored or vaguely patronized to one that can make things happen.
Here's the article again on the Muslim American vote:"
I think the point is quite clear to anyone who reads the complete post.
We are down to the home stretch in this race, and the bottom line is that you will either trust Obama to be more progressive than he can publically present himself during this election, or you will lose your resolve and vote for one of the other candidates. IMO, of the choices remaining, Obama represents the best hope for Muslim Americans in gaining rightful equality in the next few years.
I don't agree with many stances he is taking, but I do believe he is reigning in his left-of-center propensities for the sake of winning the election; if not, I will--like many others--be disappointed.
But that's the gamble we are left with, and have no doubt, this election will be won by Obama or McCain; it is simply a matter of either voting for the viable candidate whose views are closest to your own, or voting your conscience [even if that means voting in protest for McCain or for a 3rd party candidate].
Unless Obama suddenly comes to represent more of a continuation of BushCo than McCain does, I will vote fore Obama.
No he will not wear his liberal credentials on his sleeve.
No he will not go out of his way to embrace each minority community.
No he will not embrace every liberal group.
He wants to win. We want him to win.
The ultimate goal is not for progressive groups to get face time, it is to have the best person for the job win.
Please stop whining every time someones toes get stepped on.
It seems that Obama is doing a very good job in pissing off Molsems. Starting with his hawkish, pro-Israel speech at AIPAC (which caused Hamas to withdraw its endorsement and outraged Islamic extremists everywhere), his emphatic denials of being Moslem and the recent incident with the two Moslem women Obama could be putting his life at great risk.
Keep in mind that on the 40th anniversray of Bobby Kennedy's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian fanatic, Obama was meeting with Clinton at the home of Dianne Feinstein, who in 1978 replaced the mayor of San Francisco when he was gunned down by an irate politician. Also keep in mind that Obama shares the same birthday with Keith Ellison, our first Moslem congressman, who was born on August 4, 1963 Obama's second birthday-just 110 days before JFK's death.
If our jihadist enemies believe that a President Obama would be useless for advancing their cause in the Middle East and elsewhere they may see him as more useful to them dead than alive. For a dead Obama gunned down or killed by professional jihadist killers without a trace would cause chaos in this country.
As for reference to assasination of american leaders, I believe more can be traced to non- muslims then muslims.
If it makes you feel better, he missed the Black Congress event, didn't make a guest appearance on "Gays for Jesus" on public access channel 129, didn't go to a Navajo reservation, hasn't learned creole, doesn't make time to talk to the Small Business Association, didn't meet with the Dali Lama when he was here: and the list goes on.
The fact is that if he did any of these things, it would be OK, and would probably actually get him a few votes. For him to meet with Muslim clerics or attend an Muslim PAC event would mean you'd have to say "President McCain". How does that sound? Do you think religious tolerance will be better under Obama or McCain?
Moreover, with Obama having met Hillary on the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's murder by an Arab fanatic-triggered by RFK's support of Israel-a day after his AIPAC speech and in the home of a senator who became mayor of a large US city due to the assassination of her predecessor, I would be very careful if I were Obama.
That said, Obama is still the best choice against McSame...issues of diversity are not his strong suit.
J