Groupies for Obama

Are black journalists qualified to cover the presidential run of Sen. Barack Obama? By even engaging the question, I may have validated an inherently offensive query.

Over at The Root, Jeff Winbush takes people to task for raising the issue.

A lot of this comes from earlier scuttlebutt about the applause Obama received during his Sunday morning appearance at the UNITY Convention in Chicago a couple weeks ago. I missed the final day of the conference, thus I didn't have much of a read on the scene.

One of my former colleagues in Shreveport shares some of his thoughts about the reaction here. His was a much more nuanced analysis of the event than someone like, say, John Leo of the New York Daily News who said, "This was a convention of journalists, not a rally of groupies for Obama."

I'm not going to even get into the double standard applied to black reporters, which means someone like Leo might totally overlook the occasionally groupie-ish behavior of reporters in the insular world of Capitol Hill or those who scramble to take pictures with Dubya at the White House's annual Christmas party.

Not to mention, as Winbush writes, the fact that John McCain once felt comfortable enough with recorders and cameras and softball questions to refer to the media as "my base." Which black reporters do you think he included in that statement?

Anyway, I could also address the fact that plenty, if not most, of the attendees at the convention won't come anywhere near a political story, particularly one about Obama or McCain, this year. That includes myself, though I try not to air out a particular preference here for the most part. It's probably not too hard to parse the posts and figure out where I stand. But you'll never see me shilling for anyone.

That said, I'll let Winbush take it from here: If my white colleagues are confused as to where my allegiances are, let me make it clear for them: I am a human being first, a black man second and journalist last. Dead last. It's not even remotely a close call. Journalism is what I do. Black is what I am.

True.