WASHINGTON (By Stephanie Griffith, AFP) — US political darling Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) has received enthusiastic support for a possible 2008 presidential bid -- except from fellow African-Americans, a group many had believed would be among his staunchest backers.

Obama announced Tuesday that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, allowing him to begin raising campaign funds and openly court support in his bid to become the first black US president.

But in sharp contrast to the effusive reception he has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, noting that while they share skin color with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history.

"Obama did not -- does not -- share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves," African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch wrote in November, in an article entitled "Barack Obama -- Not Black Like Me."

Radio host George Wilson, whose nationally-broadcast talk show tests the opinions of a cross-section of African-American listeners, said response to the Illinois senator so far has been "lukewarm."

"He's not getting as much of an enthusiastic send-off from black people as he is from whites," Wilson said. "There's a feeling that if white folks like him so much he must not be good for us. For some blacks, it's a turn-off."

Obama draws enormous, mostly white crowds, even though the first presidential primary election is still more than a year away, and is seen as a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Crouch said that the first-term US senator -- the bi-racial progeny of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother -- does not share with most American blacks the painful legacy of slavery, repressive segregation laws and civil rights struggles.

"While he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own -- nor has he lived the life of a black American," Crouch wrote in his New York Daily News column.

"If we then end up with him as our first black president, he will have come into the White House through a side door," the columnist wrote.

Political analyst Ron Walters said that Obama, whose Harvard law school pedigree rounds out his half-European ancestry, is a black man whom many whites find reassuring.

"If you take this in almost anthropological terms, there's a sense in which whites are more comfortable with blacks who they believe reaffirm them," Walters said.

However, African-Americans, who are accustomed to leaders who emerge from the civil rights movement, sometimes appear to struggle to relate to Obama.

"He has affirmed his own mixed identity, but he has not strongly affirmed the right and the claim of African-Americans in this society to equal treatment," said Walters, a professor at the University of Maryland.

If Obama runs -- he said he would announce his decision on February 10 -- he would be the first African-American candidate for president who does not come out of the civil rights movement.

US Representative Shirley Chisholm, of New York, was the first African-American to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson was a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

For his part, Obama seems to be aware of the need to court longtime black elders before pursuing the US presidency. Last week, for example, he hailed Jackson as having paved the way for his own presidential aspirations.

"I owe him a great debt," Obama was quoted in the US press as telling the audience at an event in Chicago sponsored by Jackson.

"If I'm on the cover of (African-American magazine) Ebony this month, it's not because of me. It's because a whole bunch of folks did the work to put me there," Obama said.

But another civil rights leader, the firebrand Reverend Al Sharpton, who was a Democratic presidential contender in 2004, reportedly has dismissed the "razzle-dazzle" surrounding Obama, and recently said he might choose to run again for president himself.

A CNN poll last month found that 60 percent of Americans said they have no reservations about voting for a black president, but some observers have their doubts.

"There are individuals who say one thing publicly, but ... in the privacy of the voting booth, they do something else," said Wilson.

"The American population is not ready -- despite of what Barack says -- to have a black man be the president of the United States," Wilson said.

One thing that is clear, he said, is that Obama, like any Democratic presidential nominee, would need strong African-American support to win the White House in 2008.

"If he declares, then he will have to convince African-Americans to support him, and just his color alone is not going to be enough," Wilson said.