Black columnists' Obama praise not same as support

My Newsday colleague Saul Friedman set off a wildfire among black columnists last week by asking, in a column on the Nieman Watchdog Blog, why we are all supporting Barack Obama.

I have known Saul for years, and happen to like him. But his conclusion, that by showing such unanimity over the black presidential candidate black columnists have made race an issue in the presidential campaign and have failed to engage in the type of critical thinking that should be expected of journalists, ranks high on the list of the silliest things a white person has ever said about black people.

For starters, I don't know that his premise is correct. I haven't kept track of what other black columnists have written about Obama, so I don't know if it's true that "virtually every black columnist was supporting Obama." I suspect that, like many white journalists, we have all had something positive to say about him, along with something negative. But given Obama's amazing campaign, and his surge from being just a junior senator and a fine speechmaker to being a serious contender, it's not surprising that black columnists, along with many others, would view him favorably.

To write positive things about him is not the same thing as supporting him, however. And I personally know of no black columnist who has openly endorsed his candidacy. But even if we did, and in great numbers, so what?

Friedman's question is a variation on one that is frequently asked when African-Americans appear to be coming together. It's on par with "Why do all the black students eat together in the cafeteria?" when asked by worried white college administrators, and "Why are you black guys all gathered around the same desk at work?" when asked by our perplexed white colleagues. The answers to the above are: "because we enjoy each other's company" and "because we are having a conversation."

Friedman's column has the same finger-wagging quality. As if by writing well of Obama we have undermined the vigorous marketplace of ideas, and should apologize for it. As if the only way to prove that we can think critically is to criticize the black guy. I, and a number of other black columnists who have responded to his column on the blog, find this patronizing and insulting.

When he first posed the question to me, I tried to explain why black voters in general might be trending toward Obama. After a century and a half of having nothing but white candidates to vote for, now that there's an exciting black presidential candidate who, in addition to being one of our own, has a good chance of winning, why wouldn't blacks support him? If there were an equally exciting Jewish candidate - not a Joseph Lieberman - I would expect Jewish voters to line up behind him, just as Irish voters got excited over John Kennedy's candidacy.

The history of elections in this country has shown that whites tend to vote for the white candidate in a race between a black and a white, while blacks, out of necessity, have usually had to choose between one white candidate or another. Obama, with his extraordinary gifts and his appeal to a post-racial society and government, has changed that and shown that he can attract large numbers of white voters. Even so, according to Davis Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., in November black voters were evenly divided between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And not until Obama won the Iowa primary did black voters begin to vote for him in overwhelming percentages.

As I explained to Friedman, black columnists are also voters, and it's not surprising that their views would reflect those of black voters, even if not perfectly. I was leaning toward John Edwards until it became clear that his candidacy was not catching on. And I was disappointed by Clinton, who has abandoned all principle in her quest for the presidency. Meanwhile, Obama has become an increasingly strong candidate with a real chance of winning.

There's no reason to believe that black columnists are less capable of judging character and ability than Friedman is, or that we are any more swayed by the emotions of race than anyone else. And if, in numbers large or small, we happen to come down on Barack Obama's side, I see no cause for alarm.