Obama talks about race at South America summit

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

Obama talks about race at South America summit
Scott Wilson, Washington Post

Sunday, April 19, 2009

(04-19) 04:00 PDT Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago --

In presenting himself at a summit as an equal partner to Latin America, President Obama is drawing on his race as evidence of U.S. social progress and of his own affinity for the region's poor.

Race occupies a far larger and more troubled place in Latin American politics than it does in Europe, where Obama rarely mentioned his ethnic background this month during his first overseas trip as president.

He is doing so more often here at the Summit of the Americas in part to push an agenda that, among other issues, seeks to address the region's income disparity between rich and poor that is the widest in the world.

In talking about his race and the background of his counterparts, Obama is more closely associating himself than his predecessors did with Latin America's indigenous, black and mixed-race underclass, which has long identified the United States with economic policies that benefit the elite of European descent far more than them.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/19/MNEH1751PD.DTL&type=politics

[BumRushDaShow]

1. I suppose this is his consolation prize offering

for not having the U.S. attend the U.N. Summit on Racism?

[MarjorieG]

2. Hear his summit press conf, and UN summit on racism not strating on clean slate but continuing bad

conclusions and language of the last one (2001 or 2002).