Barack Obama and Al Sharpton:

A depressing duo

By Michael Meyers   New York Daily News

Thursday, April 7th 2011, 12:18 PM

Barack Obama's got a hex on him - he keeps palling around with race men. His 2008 presidential race almost got derailed because of friendship with the Rev. Jeremiah ("God Damn America") Wright and now, as he starts his bid for reelection, he's embracing America's biggest race huckster south of Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Al Sharpton.

It was bad enough when President Obama created a racial flap by siding with Harvard's Prof. Henry (Skip) Gates, agreeing without knowing the facts that his pal was a victim of a white police officer's racial insensitivity. This week Obama is actually kissing the ring of Sharpton, who cut his teeth on cop-bashing in a city that was, in large part thanks to Sharpton, racially divided.

Make no mistake: By making the appearance, Obama is giving weight to Sharpton's claim on the mantle of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This is the anniversary week of King's assassination, and the de facto presidential appointment of Sharpton as America's black leader is as important to Sharpton as being in good standing with America's black voters is to Obama. "Win-win," as the saying goes.

Or, in the words of another black preacher - who sold prayer clothes and healing oils as his hustle - "You can't lose with the stuff [they] use."

But why would Obama place the presidential seal of approval on a National Action Network anniversary and thereby confer prestige and respectability on one so brazen and divisive on race matters? Though Obama repeatedly says he rejects race-based thinking, this is not a color-blind outlook. National Action Network is not a color-blind organization.

The answer, I suspect, is politics.

On the eve of his reelection, Obama needs a solid-black vote in 2012. But he knows that his disappointing policies - and reversals of campaign promises - have not brought any realities of change for the better to most black people's lives. Unemployment remains, for blacks at least, in double digits. So, rather than delivering a chicken in every pot, he seems to be relying on men like Sharpton to keep stirring up the cauldrons of racial pride as the best way of ensuring that blacks return to the polls to reelect America's first African-American President.

These are strange times. Our politicians are turning to preachers and our preachers are turning into politicians. It's an unholy alliance that exploits passions about race and reinforces condescending stereotypes of "black" leadership.

Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

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