Obama Web Site Still Carries New Black Panther Party Endorsement

Has this campaign got a death wish???

One day after Barack Obama delivered a speech calling for improved race relations in America, the blogosphere was buzzing Wednesday about whether his campaign planned to remove an endorsement by the New Black Panther Party from his Web site.

The New Black Panthers, who inherited their name from the Black Panther Party of the 1960s, has a page on the Obama campaign’s public forums that says it is backing Obama because he “represents ‘positive change’ for all of America. Obama will stir the ‘Melting Pot’ into a better ‘Molten America,’” the group says.

The NBPP, which has been led since 2001 by Malik Zulu Shabbazz, is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a tolerance education organization, as an extremist hate group. The Anti-Defamation League calls NBPP “the largest organized anti-Semitic black militant group in America. … Under Shabazz, the group continues to organize demonstrations across the country that blend inflammatory bigotry with calls for black empowerment and civil rights.”