A Complicated Record On Race

When it comes to the question of race in America, Barack Obama is used to hot tempers, accusations of bias, protests, speeches and pained outrage. In 1990 Harvard Law School was a key battleground in the identity wars. The faculty was angrily split over minority hiring and how to teach race in the classroom. Two years earlier 50 students had occupied the dean's office, demanding a more diverse faculty; that spring Derrick Bell—the first African-American to get tenure at Harvard Law School—resigned over the issue.

Similar tensions roiled the prestigious Harvard Law Review. "That year was unusual in that there was a group of very assertive conservative types on the Law Review," says Adam Charnes, who counted himself among them. Obama, who had earned a place on the journal in his first year at Harvard, saw a role for himself that has come to define his pitch for the presidency today—as a bridge-builder. He approached the conservatives, according to one who asked for anonymity in order to speak more freely. Obama explained that while he supported affirmative action as a policy matter, he recognized it came at a cost and didn't consider them to be racists for opposing it. Charnes praises Obama as "a straight-up guy, who always told you exactly what he thought." Obama was handily elected Review president.

In his acclaimed Philadelphia speech on race, Obama tried to walk an equally fine line. He did not disown his controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.—who fulminated against America's foreign policy and history of discrimination in some of his sermons—or the black church tradition from which he had emerged. Yet Obama also made clear that he understood the reaction of whites who were angered by Wright's denunciations. That's a hard-enough balancing act when talking about race in the abstract; detractors later criticized Obama for pandering to all sides. It's even tougher with an issue as specific, and as potent, as affirmative action.

Should Obama become the Democratic nominee, this could be one of the tougher issues on which to find common ground. Ward Connerly, a prominent opponent of affirmative action, is pushing to get referendums on the subject onto ballots in at least five states this fall. Affirmative action, he says, "is probably the most difficult race issue [Obama] will have to face." If the candidate denounces affirmative action, Connerly predicts, "his support among blacks will plummet from around 80 to 50 percent. Then, bear in mind that much of his support in Iowa, Vermont and Wyoming came from white males, who by a margin of 70 to 30 [percent] oppose affirmative action." The challenge is made all the more difficult by Obama's well-polished reputation for fresh thinking: this, some supporters say, is a perfect chance for him to break with the liberal orthodoxy. To this day, some of the conservatives from the Law Review wonder if Obama agrees with them on race-based affirmative action—a testament to his skill at projecting empathy, if nothing else. "But in politics you can only be a moderator for so long," says Connerly. Eventually, "you must become a referee."

Obama has sent signals that he is not doctrinaire on the issue. In an interview last May on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," the senator was asked whether his own daughters should someday receive preferences in college admissions. His response was startling: "I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged." He added, "I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed." His comments lit up the blogosphere with speculation that as president he might spearhead a major policy change, shifting the basis of affirmative action from race to class disparities.

The statement fits into Obama's record on the issue, which has never been black and white. At Harvard as a 28-year-old, he attended meetings of the Black Law Students Association and spoke to at least one event demanding greater diversity on campus. But classmate David Troutt, now a law professor at Rutgers, says he was no militant. "There are a lot of people that spent a tremendous amount of time on that issue. They sued the school. They camped out at the dean's office," says Troutt. Obama wasn't among them. Instead, he worked in more subtle ways to promote faculty diversity. Although he is a formidable writer, Obama took a relatively relaxed approach to articles while president of the journal, trusting his editors rather than micromanaging each piece. But according to a classmate, he worked especially hard to improve one story, by a young black professor who was up for tenure at the time.