One day after receiving a good-natured sports ribbing by President Obama, Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson returned to the White House to offer serious policy advice. He wants Obama to consider hiring a high-profile liaison between the White House and minority communities, particularly to represent the concerns of the African American and Latino communities.
Johnson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the National Commission on AIDS in 1992, would love to return to work in a White House capacity, this time as a sort of minority czar to help stem the growing tide of angst and anxiety in the black community, Newsweek reports.
Why would the former NBA star man make such a suggestion to the president?
After receiving near-universal support from blacks in the polls during the historic 2008 presidential campaign, the honeymoon has long since concluded for the president, political pundits suggest. And after making it a nonverbal rule to abstain from publicly criticizing high-profile blacks, some blacks have recently broken ranks to voice their resentment of what in their view is Obama’s neglect of African American issues — particularly as crime, unemployment and despair continue to rise.
Renowned actor and activist Danny Glover claimed recently that he doesn’t “see anything different,” policy-wise, between the Obama and Bush administrations. Frequent Obama critic, Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, says Obama “runs from race like a black man runs from a cop” after Obama eagerly accepted Sen. Harry Reid’s apology for his “Negro” and “light-skinned black” comments. And on the Martin Luther King Holiday observance, Princeton professor Cornel West charged into Obama in front of an emotional congregation at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. “Even with your foot on the brake, there are [still] too many precious brothers and sisters under the bus,” West said. “Where is the talk about poverty? We’ve got to protect him and respect him, but we’ve also got to correct him if the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is going to stay alive.”
Johnson suggested that blacks may need to see some real, tangible improvements in 2010 in order for this constituency to remain supportive of Obama’s policies.
“The next 12 months will really be the test for him. I think we in the community will really have to begin to see the changes needed to get us back on track in 2010,” he told Newsweek, adding that he won’t mind if Obama appoints another person for the job of minority czar. “And if he wants someone else, that’s fine, too. But the sooner the better.” –terry shropshire
