The 411
The Media vs. Obama
By Brittany Hutson—SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer
Apr 15, 2008, 08:24

Political scholar and activist Ronald Walters, who served as a campaign manager and consultant for the Rev. Jesse Jackson during his two presidential bids, told a gathering recently at Howard University that Sen. Barack Obama is his pick for the next president.

“Obama is it,” said Walters to a capacity-filled audience at Howard’s Founders Library. “If you look at the delegate count right now, he has 1,626 delegates. [Hillary] Clinton has 1,486; she has 31 more super delegates, but altogether he has 140 more delegates.”

“He is ahead in the national polls by 48-42 with 12 undecided,” added Walters. “He’s ahead in the popular vote by 238,692, so [judging from] all the statistical measure at the moment, we see that his message is selling and that his performance is rendering him a hit.”

As current director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, he reflected on Obama’s journey from organizing his bid for the presidency around the simple message of change, to having his "electability" questioned by the Black community, to his struggles of being scrutinized in the media.

Because of his personal experiences, Walters is in a special position to share perspectives on the two most “viable” campaigns by Blacks for the U.S. presidency in history.
“The Jackson campaign was important because it was a vehicle for Black political mobilization,” Walters said. “His campaign had a progressive agenda—from acting against apartheid in South Africa, to fighting poverty, enriching inner-city neighborhoods, increasing government subsidiaries, to peace talks in the Middle East based on Palestinian equality—that was the progressive agenda.”

Walters considers Jackson’s campaign viable because in 1984, Jackson received 5 percent of the White vote and by 1988, received 12 percent of the White vote and arrived at the Democratic Convention with more than 1,200 delegates.

“I think most people have lost that particular effect in history but that’s what we mean by viable,” Walters said.
Fast-forwarding to Obama’s bid for the presidency, Walters began his critique with Obama’s first summer in the election when Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was ahead of him by 20 percent of the votes in the African-American community.

“People didn’t know who he was and this cultural confusion led to the question of whether he was Black enough,” Walters said. “This dynamic started in the media with Black journalists saying he was not a traditional African-American.”

He said the most important question is not of Blackness, but whether a candidate is close to a person’s value system.
Walters said, “Trust is extremely important in political support. You have to evaluate the person giving those sets of values and decide whether you can trust them or not.”
Obama was able to prove his Blackness to African-Americans by giving them confidence that he could be trusted with their legacy, according to Walters.

“How did he prove his electability?” he asked.

Walters recounted Obama’s success by winning states like Iowa, South Carolina—with 80 percent of the Black vote—during Super Tuesday, winning North and South Dakota, Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, as well as Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, and finally, Wisconsin on Feb. 19 with 55 percent of the White male vote.

According to Walters, the media still questions if Obama can win the White vote even though he has proven “beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can do it.”

“Obama developed a movement in the American mainstream,” Walters said. “He [created a movement] for change in which he became the symbol, the energy and the voice. The American people have obviously spoken, they want change,” he added.
Obama’s remaining barriers are cultural misrepresentation, he said.

“Obama is not only running against John McCain and Hillary Clinton, he’s also running against the media,” he said. “The media is the most powerful interpreter of how public opinion and attitudes are shaped in this country.”
Walter’s stance on the media led him to mention the controversy surrounding Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“It’s so emotional for me,” he said. “Rev. Jeremiah Wright is somewhat of my idol and is one of the finest individuals I know. What the media did to him was monstrous, but for our community to be as quiet as it has been is even more monstrous.”

Walters said that the media ruined the livelihood of a “great man” and since the Black church is “really all we have” he expected more people from the African-American community to speak out against the media attack.

“If we let [the church] go without saying a word because we’re too afraid then that says a whole lot about us,” he said.

The discussion was sponsored by the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Chief Librarian at the Center, Jean Currie Church, said she was intrigued by Walter’s presentation.
“I choose to [bring] Dr. Walters [to speak] because from the kind of audience he brings, to the kind of inclusive comments he makes, he is one of the foremost people in his area,” she said.

The discussion concluded with Walters holding a brief book singing for his 2005 publication, Freedom is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential Politics. He mentioned that he is in the process of writing a book about Obama’s bid for the presidency.
“I believe we need to support Barack Obama,” Walters said, “if you haven’t guessed it by now.”


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