This is a presidential election year, and successful candidates do well when they appeal to a broad cross-section of voters.

Last week on the Urban Radio Network, whose radio-station affiliates target African-American audiences, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said, "President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second."

Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton later told the Associated Press that Kerry's words were offered "as a light-hearted remark about President Clinton's strong legacy with African-Americans. It is a legacy that John Kerry would like to build upon if elected president. John Kerry has a record of fighting for civil rights and as president he will continue this fight."

African-American Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, in a 1998 New Yorker essay titled "Clinton as the first black president," first introduced the notion. She wrote that Clinton was "blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas." Clinton later acknowledged the moniker.

But can John Kerry?

No, says the head of the Andrew Young Center for Social Change.

"I consider John Kerry's statement regarding his earning the right to be known as the second black president an insult," Paula Diane Harris, founder, president and chief executive officer of the Harrisburg, Pa.-based center, which provides legal and conflict resolution services.

The statement is posted on the organization's Web site (www.ayncsc.com) . "John Kerry is not a black man - he is a privileged white man who has no idea what it is in this country to be a poor white in this country, let alone a black man. Civil rights leaders in this nation sit back and ignore these types of comments, a practice that further insults African-Americans."