Joyner's Call for Blacks to Re-Elect Obama Draws Heat

 

If you want to raise the ire of white voters, all you have to do is tell your 8 million African-American listeners that they need to re-elect President Barack Obama because he's black, Annette John-Hall writes in her Philadelphia Inquirer column.

The influential "fly jock" and creator of the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a syndicated radio mix of R&B, news, comedy, and commentary, stirred up a tempest in a tea party with his recent blog post on his Blackamerica.com website.

Urging his overwhelmingly black listenership to "stick together," he wrote: "Let's not even deal with facts right now. Let's deal with our blackness and pride -- and loyalty. We have a chance to reelect the first African American president ... And I'm not afraid or ashamed to say that as black people, we should do it because he's a black man."

Cue hand-wringing here.

One white columnist wrote that Joyner's call for racial solidarity is "a terrible idea." Given that the president was "elected on a promise of unity," any of his supporters "who play that [race] hand will be doing a disservice to themselves and to the nation," she argued.

Hmm. Seems to me that the real disservice is all those obstructionists who aren't putting country first.

Remember Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's now-infamous quote: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

If that's what he means by unity, I wonder how he defines dissension?

Read Annette John-Hall's entire column at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Joyner's Call for Blacks to Re-Elect Obama Draws Heat
Annette John-Hall
Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:58:00 GMT