Obama focused on issues, not race

WASHINGTON  Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said his campaign for the presidency "will send a wonderful message to young people of color and to immigrants around the country" if successful.

He makes clear, though, that he hopes to make race irrelevant in his bid to become the first black to occupy the White House.

"If I'm talking about the issues that matter to people, if we do a good job in letting people know who I am and what I stand for … they'll make their judgment not based on my race but based on how well they think I can lead this country," Obama told USA TODAY.

As he begins campaigning in earnest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Obama cannot assume that he will be the favorite of black voters, who are crucial to the success of Democratic candidates in states such as South Carolina, which holds one of the earliest primaries. Blacks accounted for nearly half of the state's Democratic primary voters in 2004.

Obama's background doesn't fit the mold of previous black presidential candidates or that of traditional civil rights leaders. He is the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother. He grew up in Hawaii and spent some of his childhood in Indonesia. He was the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and spent some time as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side.

Obama "has demonstrated a great deal of popularity with white people," said David Bositis, an expert on black voter opinion at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. "There is almost always, on the part of some African-Americans, a thing in their back of their minds that says, 'What's the catch?' "

Wilbur Rich, a political scientist at Wellesley College, said: "This is the kind of thing people talk about in black barbershops: Is he really a brother?" With his résumé, Rich said, Obama "has earned the right to call himself whatever he wants."

The debate is playing out not just in barbershops, but in blogs, magazines and newspapers. In the New York Daily News recently, columnist Stanley Crouch, a prominent black social critic, said that when "black Americans refer to Obama as 'one of us,' I do not know what they are talking about."

Other blacks dismiss such criticism. The real test will be whether "he is the best qualified person for the job," said Bruce Gordon, president and chief executive officer of the NAACP. "Black folks will not vote for Barack simply because he's black. Not all women will vote for Hillary," he said, referring to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, another Democratic contender.

Clinton leads Obama in polls of black voters. Recent ABC News/Washington Post polling, for instance, found that 60% of black, Democratic-leaning voters supported Clinton, and 20% backed Obama.

Cornell Belcher, a Democratic activist and pollster for Obama, said the story behind those numbers is simple: "African-Americans know the Clintons. They don't know Barack Obama. Those are numbers that are going to move."

Evan Brunson is among the black voters Obama will have to win over.

Brunson, president of the College Democrats chapter at Howard University in Washington, said he felt a surge of excitement as he watched Obama speak at a recent event.

Still, the 22-year-old senior from Dallas said he's more interested right now in a fellow Southerner, former North Carolina senator John Edwards. "I like that someone is picking up the mantle of social justice," he said about Edwards.

Obama's race will be a factor in his choice, Brunson said, but not the only one. "You don't give your vote away; they have to earn it."

Keen reported from Chicago