Obama hits out at black rappers who degrade women
By Tim Shipman, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:54pm BST 14/04/2007
The man who hopes to become America's first black president has launched an outspoken attack on rap singers who use derogatory language about women.
Rapper Snoop Dogg, who has been sentenced to five years' probation for gun and drug charges
Barack Obama told a crowd at a campaign rally in South Carolina that rap artists were "degrading their sisters", and added: "That doesn't inspire me".
The Democratic hopeful for the White House also compared the references to "[censored]" and "hos" in rap music to the racist outburst last week which cost the country's most famous "shock jock" his job.
Radio talk show host Don Imus, who is white, was sacked after branding a female college basketball team "nappy-headed hos" - a term for black prostitutes with unkempt hair.
Sen Obama's comments are part of a growing backlash at the double standards in American public life that mean Mr Imus was fired, but black rappers like Snoop Dogg and Ludacris continue to cash in by using similar imagery.
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They are also further evidence of Sen Obama's determination to align himself with the concerns of middle America. Last week, however, he came under fire for that very strategy, from black activists who said he was too slow to respond to the Imus affair.
While civil rights activist Al Sharpton toured the studios condemning Mr Imus, the senator from Illinois waited five days before making any public statement, and then pointedly refused to make it a racial issue.
It was only following a wave of public criticism of his caution, that he later joined the calls for Mr Imus to lose his job.
A California Democrat activist, who worked on the previous presidential campaigns of both Rev Mr Sharpton and Rev Jesse Jackson, told The Sunday Telegraph: "A lot of people of colour are uncomfortable with Barack Obama. He wants the kudos of being the first African American who could win the presidency, but he does not want to get there by becoming a leader who speaks to African-Americans."
Ludacris has had four
US number one hits
Melissa Harris Lacewell, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, said: "Black people want to love Barack, but they will turn on him."
As the son of a recent African immigrant, Sen Obama cannot claim any link to slavery or the civil rights movement and is, therefore, not seen as "authentic" by many in the traditional black leadership.
The latest poll shows Democrat front-runner Hillary Clinton leading him by 50 per cent to 41 per cent among black voters.
Sen Obama's calculation, however, is that he has a greater chance of winning the presidency if he remains a candidate who happens to be black, rather than "the black candidate".
One European diplomat compared Sen Obama to Tony Blair: "Most Americans have moved on from the civil rights battles, in the same way that people in Britain have moved on from the union politics of the 1970s.
"Obama is a post-civil rights politician just as Blair was post-socialism. The problem he has is that many in the black hierarchy are still fighting the old battles."
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