An old variant of which is “nigromancer,” BTW. (Read it in The Once and Future King.)
So, Obama is a nigromancer and a hugger. Dangerous combination - a hugromancer!
Simple. He’s not a controversial figure because nobody (outside of the lunatic fringe) materially disagrees with anything he used to say. Yes, he used to be a controversial figure, just like the Beatles used to be controversial figures. But his views are now considered mainstream - someone agreeing with Derrick Bell today is no more controversial than someone owning a Beatles album. It doesn’t matter if his views were controversial in 1968, because we are no longer living in 1968.
His views were not controversial when Obama hugged him. Simple as that. (personally, I have yet to referred to any views that would have been controversial in 1968 either. “Desegregation of public schools” is all we’ve got so far, and although some might have argued over how to best achieve that, the goal was certainly not controversial except for bigots.)
In fact, it would probably be much more damaging to a Dem candidate nowadays to have been filmed snubbing Derrick Bell.