Celebrated journalist speaks on politics and race

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-Chief

Noted journalist and senior editor of Chicago’s In These Times magazine Salim Muwakkil spoke to students, faculty and community members about the changing identity of African-American politicians in the face of Barack Obama’s announcement of his intentions to run for the presidency in 2008.

Thursday, Jan. 25, at noon, the Martin Luther King, Jr. luncheon commenced in the Whiteman-McMillan Highlander Room of the Stockdale Center with Muwakkil speaking on the topic “Emerging Black Leadership.”

He currently teaches a seminar on Race, Media and Politics for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Chicago Urban Studies Program. He has been the editor of In These Times since 1984, and often writes a column for the Chicago Tribune. Muwakkil has won many journalism awards over the course of his career, including the “Top Ten Media Heroes of 1994” from the Institute of Alternative Journalism, the “Black Rose Achievement Award for 1997” from the League of Black Women, the 2001 Studs Terkel Award for Journalistic Excellence from the Chicago-based Community Media Workshop and the 2004 Lillian Award for Excellence in Journalism from Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

His journalism career, for which he has won all his awards, is widespread. Muwakkil began his career as a reporter for the Associated Press in Newark, N.J., shortly before he graduated from Rutgers University with a B.A. in political science. He next moved to Muhammad Speaks-Bilalian News, the largest black-owned publication in the United States, where he was a copy editor and later managing editor. Muwakkil has also written for the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Progressive, Newsday, Cineaste, Chicago Magazine, the Toronto Star, the Baltimore Sun, Z Magazine, the Toronto Star, Emerge Magazine, The Black Scholar, the Philadelphia Enquirer and Utne Reader.

In addition, he taught journalism at Columbia College in Chicago from 1986 to 1990, and has held positions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Film Center, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the University of Illinois.

In his lecture, Muwakkil began by speaking of Barack Obama’s “rapid ascent” into the political and public eye, saying that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would probably been amazed. Obama, who went from being an Illinois state senator to one of the two Senators from the state of Illinois, and whose wake has been followed by extreme media hype within the two years since his election to the Senate.

Obama, who has been criticized by many within the African-American community recently for being “too white” experiences what Muwakkil called a “hybrid heritage.” His education at Harvard University School of Law, where he was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, some find difficult to reconcile with his identity as an African-American.

However, Muwakkil stated, Obama has “used his alienness to his advantage,” creating a situation in which he can relate to many different social, political and economic groups. This “alienness” will also be used to his advantage in the presidential campaign for 2008.

Following his discussion of Senator Obama’s sudden rise to fame and what his throwing his hat into the presidential ring of 2008 might bode for America, Muwakkil moved on to discuss, in more broad terms, the changing state of African-Americans in politics today.

He said American politics has recently seen a “paradigm shift” from the old focus upon civil rights and funding programs for African-Americans to “post-race candidates” whose campaigns do not focus upon race as a central issue. Obama, the “black Great White Hope,” as Muwakkil called him, marks the most public of this new paradigm in politics. While this bodes new things for the state of African-Americans in politics, Muwakkil stated that he is wary of race taking a sideline to other issues, as he fears it may mean important steps will not be taken for awhile, as the politicians are not making race as much of a primary issue as it needs to be.

Muwakkil also touched a bit upon the media as a powerful influence in African-American politics, especially the hip-hop culture. He cited many of the hip-hop artists of the 1980s as being extremely important leaders in the African-American political realm, comparing their influence to the recent controversy surrounding Kanye West’s comments about how the Bush administration has been ignoring the African-American community since 2000.

Despite speaking to a mainly Caucasian audience, Muwakkil seemed to strike some very important chords with the audience gathered at the Martin Luther King lecture on Thursday. His talk, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, was followed by another 30 minutes of questions from the audience, many of which led Muwakkil to other important insights on the role of race in politics.