Black Loyalty Above All Else in Politics?
October 8, 2009 by blackgirlgrown
Filed under obama, politics, race
Michelle Chen over at RaceWire, a national newspaper on race and politics, writes about the tension between President Obama and New York State Governor David Paterson. President Obama’s preference that Governor Paterson not run in next year’s gubernatorial race recently became public. Michelle Chen asks if the Obama-Peterson tension marks the limits of “race loyalty:”
Since Paterson was catapulted into the seat following his predecessor Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal, he has struggled with low popularity, frazzled by fiscal crisis and embarrassing partisan paralysis in Albany. And while his status as New York’s first Black governor invites comparisons to the President, unlike Obama, Paterson has been (awkwardly) outspoken about how race impacts his political image. When he suggested that the media’s condescending portrayal of him reflected racism—he was criticized for being impolitic or “making excuses” for his lackluster performance.
And now we have President Obama apparently urging Paterson to step aside and let a much more popular Democrat, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, go up against the Republican challenger (rumored to be none other than the notoriously dictatorial former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani). Is there something troubling about the nation’s first Black President trying to squeeze New York’s first Black Governor out of a pivotal race? Is Obama going to the mat for the Democratic Party when he should instead be standing up for an embattled fellow trailblazer?
