Is Obama distancing himself from prominent African Americans?

Glenn Loury, the first tenured African-American professor at Harvard University, and current Brown University economics professor, told The DC that he expected all along that Obama’s presidency could be detrimental to black political power.

“I have maintained for some time that Obama’s ascendancy could well mean less political influence for African Americans. I don’t necessarily fault the president for this — it goes with the territory if he wants to remain viable politically,” he wrote in an e-mail to TheDC. “I was not at all surprised to hear the president’s comment on Rangel … It’s par for the course. Moreover, it’s as much a tactic of separating himself from congressional Democrats, who are not popular, as it is a racial move.”

Loury continued, saying that Obama has been less than a loyal to his African-American base.

“I said a long time ago (actually, at the time of his speech in Oslo accepting the Nobel Prize and extolling the virtues of American militarism) that black people would be a lot better off if the president simply left us out of it. He’s as much a ‘white’ American as he is a ‘black’ American. He’s got to do what he’s got to do as a politician, but there’s no necessity that he do it while proclaiming himself to be a ‘black’ politician (as he has done).”

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn elaborated on Obama’s racial insensitivity to Maureen Dowd last month, in an article in which she declared the Obama administration to be “too white.” “‘The president’s getting hurt real bad,’ Clyburn told me. ‘He needs some black people around him.’ He said Obama’s inner circle keeps ‘screwing up’ on race: ‘Some people over there are not sensitive at all about race. They really feel that the extent to which he allows himself to talk about race would tend to pigeonhole him or cost him support, when a lot of people saw his election as a way to get the issue behind us. I don’t think people elected him to disengage on race. Just the opposite.’”

A recent Gallup poll reported that “black” approval of President Barack Obama has fallen slightly from 90% to an average of 88% for the month of July. Democrats have traditionally garnered the vast majority of black support, and as the first half black president, it is reasonable to assume the black population will remain committed to Obama. However, perhaps the large number of Africa American rejects left in the president’s wake is beginning to make a mark.