Black Community Sets High Bar for Obama

Jan. 19, 2009— -- Following the outpouring of pure, unadulterated emotion from black Americans after voters elected Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president, black leaders are ready to see how he will address chronic issues that affect their communities.

To many blacks, Obama's breakthrough is greater than Jesse Owens' sprinting to Olympic victory in Nazi Germany or Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., nearly jumped out of her seat as she sought to describe her emotion on Election Night.

"It is 'wow,' it is 'oh, my goodness,'" she said.

"The word 'devotion' is too tame a word ... It's almost a frenzied love that this new president will have from the African American community."

Roger Wilkins, a retired professor of history at George Mason University, elaborated on that sentiment: "To see a black man elected president of the United States gave them hope, as in places where hope doesn't visit very often."

But in those places of little hope in the African American community, severe, chronic problems run deep.

Blacks die of homicide at a rate six times that of their white counterparts. African Americans make up 13 percent of the nation's population, but comprise nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated. And blacks are twice as likely to drop out of school as whites.

When you add in higher rates of AIDS and poverty, the ugly list grows longer. The question is: what, if anything more, can or should President Obama do that his predecessors did not?

Activist and talk show host Tavis Smiley said it's a delicate balance.

"We've still got to find a way to juxtapose these two realities: our celebration and, yet, the quagmire that we find ourselves in."

Students at historically black Howard University said they're not sure Obama should or would target these chronic issues.

"One of the things we have to bear in mind is that he's not just the president of the African American community," said senior Chris Buckner. "He's the president of the United States, which has a lot of different communities ... He never really ran on race-specific issues."