Maybe you do need to do a better job with outreach. I’ll be all ears. I really want to trust the guy. But I wanted to defend some of my points which, I assure you, do not necessarily eliminate Obama from my list.

Based on my 24 years in Chicago, I used the term South Side as a synonym for the poor, African American areas also known as the “projects” in Chicago. Obama’s constituency, 13th District, which is Hyde Park, is not the projects by any means. With a median income of $44,000 and a white majority, Hyde Park is also the home of one of the leading universities in the US, University of Chicago, and otherwise a pretty decent neighborhood. One of my rich clients had a 5,000 sq. ft. condo in Hyde Park where I spent many hours in business meetings. No wonder Mr. Obama makes his home there. My point stands – his constituency was never the poor and downtrodden, which is not to say that his heart does not bleed for them and he is not qualified to represent them.

As a young Harvard trained lawyer working for a reputable law firm, Obama supposedly “worked on” many civil rights cases. Most budding politicians get interested in civil rights and other social aspects of the legal profession rather than divorce or corporate law because they are the type that care about social issues. That’s why they enter politics in the first place. Heck, there are rich Republican politicians who have had legal backgrounds similar to Obama’s. But to take Obama’s “associate level” legal work in civil rights and make it sound as if he spent a decade working with the poor and disadvantaged is exactly what I would call a spin.

A major critique of Obama is from the African American hard liners who refuse to accept him as truly representative of the African American agenda. I wouldn’t go to that extreme, either. To represent a people, you don’t really had to have lived among them. The Kennedy’s did great work for civil rights in this country, and I don’t think any of them had slept even one night in a ghetto. But my concern about Obama is the general inclination to oversell his blackness by glossing over the facts.

Whaa? Before becoming the Senator, Obama was a state senator in Illinois representing a district in Chicago’s South Side. Prior to that, both before and after law school, he was a community organizer/civil rights lawyer working in inner city communities in Chicago’s South Side. He still lives in Chicago’s South Side. This isn’t spin. Heck, as a “South Asians for Obama spokesperson”, it worries to me to know that people form seemingly strong opinions about Obama without knowing that basic fact about his life — I guess we need to do a better job with outreach.

“But I am gloating over their success because they are indavertently benefiting our children.”

“As a fifty-something Indian, I sometimes wonder if we really had thought everything through when we decided to come to America in the 60′s and 70′s (1973 in my case). We were so obsessed with improving our dismal Indian lives that we never thought that, a) we would eventually be producing a million or more desis and turning them loose in a very alien land, and b) these American born desis, with all their reference points in America, would not be content with the small gains that had satisfied us, and c) whether their extremely American drives and needs would ever be met in a “white” society.”

Floridian, Thanks for expressing those sentiments so precisely. I fully share them. Regards.

Now, Bharat is a different story. America seems to be falling in love with him as if he is our Great Brown Hope. But he is nothing more than a politician, and judging from his recent 60 Minutes interview, perfectly capable of manipulating his audience. Taking the reporter for a walk in Chicago’s South Side, never his constituency, and then brazenly claiming that he had problems hailing a cab as a black man, not a situation he would ever find himself in, were not the type of spins I had expected from Obama.

That said, they both have my gratitude. They are both laying the tracks on which a lot of browns will ride into fame someday. I am not ready yet to vote for Obama for President unless I understand him better, and I will never vote for Sanjaya to go into the next round because he is simply not good enough. But I am gloating over their success because they are indavertently benefiting our children.

As a fifty-something Indian, I sometimes wonder if we really had thought everything through when we decided to come to America in the 60′s and 70′s (1973 in my case). We were so obsessed with improving our dismal Indian lives that we never thought that, a) we would eventually be producing a million or more desis and turning them loose in a very alien land, and b) these American born desis, with all their reference points in America, would not be content with the small gains that had satisfied us, and c) whether their extremely American drives and needs would ever be met in a “white” society.

We never thought that far. So it was pure luck, at least on our part, that America started to turn brown, firt slowly, then torrentially, eliminating the risk that our children would be second class citizens in their own land.

Huh ? So his family could be running the voting for American Idol ????

reminds me of a documenary I saw about some dude on a game show in the 1960′s that cheated and let him win all the money week after week..

I, too, think Clinton is divisive and personally would not vote for her. Don’t know if that means Obama could beat her (he does seem “young” although he’s super experienced), but I just find myself consistently disappointed with her politics. Too bad, too, because I’m sure commentary throughout the election will continue to pick up steam around, “Will a black man be able to win before a white woman?” instead of focusing on broader issues.