Avoiding reporter keeps Obama spokesman clear of race question

A decision by White House spokesman Jay Carney not to allow a WND reporter to ask a question at the daily news briefing has kept him clear of the touchy subject of whether Barack Obama deserves votes because he's "a black man."

It happened at Thursday's regularly scheduled briefing, where Les Kinsolving, the WND correspondent at the White House and the second most-senior reporter on the White House beat, had prepared to ask a question.

But Carney did not allow him to do so, instead allowing Fox News, CBS and CNN to ask four apiece, and ABC and Bloomberg three each.

Kinsolving had hoped to ask, "The Washington Post quotes network talk radio host Tom Joyner as saying, 'We have a chance to re-elect the first African-American president and that's what we ought to be doing. And I'm not afraid or ashamed to ask that as black people we should do it because he's a black man."

"Does the White House agree or disagree with this statement?" Kinsolving wanted to ask.

The Post report said Joyner had written, "Let's not even deal with the facts right now. Let's deal with just our blackness and pride – and loyalty."

The report dealt with the question of whether Obama can retain the black vote in 2012 and highlighted Joyner's campaigning for Obama.

"Stick together, black people," he's said.

"That message is pointed at racial unity much more than it was in 2008, when just the prospect of electing the nation's first black president brought out record numbers of African American voters," said the newspaper.

But the report warnned that Post-ABC News polls "have shown a drop in the number of blacks who have 'strongly favorable' views of Obama and those who think his policies are improving the economy."

There's also been mounting criticism of Obama from the Congressional Black Caucus and other African-American leaders.

Eddie Glaude Jr., a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, told the paper, "What I hear them saying is, 'Black folk need to get in lock step because we don't want Republicans to take the White House.' There is a kind of disciplining of the black polity that doesn't lend itself to a vibrant and detailed consideration about political issues."

In a Post letter to the editor, reader Rob Jones was alarmed at the rhetoric.

"Imagine a radio host who took to the airwaves with the following commentary: 'Stick together, white people. Let's not even deal with the facts right now. Let's deal with just our whiteness and pride – and loyalty. We have a chance to elect a European American president, and that's what we ought to be doing. And I'm not afraid or ashamed to say that, as white people, we should do it because he is a white man.'

"What would we call such a radio host? A racist, of course," Jones wrote. "We need to move beyond racial labels and identification if our society and species are to survive the 21st century, especially given that Mr. Obama's mother was 'white' (whatever that means), making him biracial, like my three children."

Ask President Obama your own question.