Maybe He's Not Black Enough

It seems Barack Obama isn't popular enough with the alleged civil rights consortium. He needs to do two things. Start making up stories and whine a little more.

HE is a media darling, a paparazzi target and a source of inspiration for millions of Democrats who dream of retaking the White House in 2008. But Senator Barack Obama, the charismatic African-American who is shaking up the presidential primary race, has not impressed some of America’s most powerful black activists.

Civil rights leaders who have dominated black politics for much of the past two decades have pointedly failed to embrace the 45-year-old Illinois senator who is considering a bid to become America’s first black president.

At a meeting of activists in New York last week, the Rev Jesse Jackson, the first black candidate to run for president, declined to endorse Obama. “Our focus right now is not on who’s running, because there are a number of allies running,” Jackson said.

The Rev Al Sharpton, the fiery New York preacher who joined the Democratic primary race in 2004, said he was considering another presidential run of his own. And Harry Belafonte, the calypso singer who became an influential civil rights activist, said America needed to be “careful” about Obama: “We don’t know what he’s truly about.”