Tricia Rose: Obama can't talk about race 'too much'

President Barack Obama has to walk more gingerly around the topic of race than even a white progressive, The Young Turks contributor Tricia Rose said on the show Thursday night.

Rose was responding to recent criticism by Congressional Black Caucus chairperson Emanuel Cleaver, who said the president has not been as strong of an ally to the African-American community as he could be.

"Unfortunately, the way race works in America, if Obama talks about race too much, he gets tainted by a kind of anxiety and fear that a white Democratic president wouldn't be," Rose told host Cenk Uygur. "So it does put black people between a rock and a hard place."

The keys to pushing Obama to be a better advocate for the community, she said, goes beyond mobilizing more people to the polls. If he gets re-elected, black voters need to look at ask themselves some questions.

"What is our position, and what can we expect from any color president if we have a racial landscape that still constructs black people as a problem, as a negative source, and not as a full member community of the nation as a whole?"

Watch Rose's discussion with Uygur, aired Thursday on Current TV, below.