Hazel Trice Edney, NNPA Editor-in-Chief
- Now that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is back in the U. S. after a rock star-like tour through the Middle East and Europe, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain ought to take a tour on soil that is foreign to him – through America’s Black neighborhoods, ravaged by drugs, poverty and violence largely because of historic racism and economic bias.
That’s the sentiment of some international and African-American affairs experts, who say Obama trumped the McCain campaign with his trip last week that included stops and meetings with troops and world leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Germany, France and Britain.
“My advice, really, and it’s very serious advice to John McCain, is let us let you replicate trips to the ghettos of America,” says Clifford Alexander, who more than 30 years ago became the first Black secretary of the Army in the Carter Administration.
