Obama: I don’t need to prove myself to black leaders

02/28/2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Barack Obama says he doesn't feel a need to prove himself to black leaders as he runs for president.

"You know, I really don't," Obama, a black Democrat from Illinois, said during an interview to air Wednesday on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."

"The notion that right now I'm not dominating the black vote in the polls makes perfect sense because I have only been on the national scene for a certain number of years, and people don't yet know what my track record is," he said.

His leading rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, is popular with black voters. Obama, 45, was a state senator for eight years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

While acknowledging that many candidates in both parties are concerned about education, Obama said how he feels about education as well as civil rights and other issues would be influenced by his experience as a black American.

"I feel great pain knowing that there are children in a lot of schools in American who are not getting anything close to the kind of education that will allow them to compete," he said. "When I know that a lot of those kids look just like my daughters, maybe it's harder for me to separate myself from their reality. Every time I see those kids, they feel like a part of me."