Roundup — Obama and Race Talk

The Biden-Obama flare-up is dying down, but be forewarned, friends and citizens, we might as well brace ourselves for a full year and a half of cringeworthy foot-in-throat racial punditry. With Obama in the presidential spotlight, talking heads and politicians and scribes across the land will have countless opportunities to comment on race and thus chomp on their feet; I'm expecting serious feasts of pale toes. I just hope some of it's funny. Though, of course, much of it will likely be decidedly unfunny.

But before the games begin in earnest, let's get something straight: The subject of race is charged, sensitive, impassioned terrain, not because of imagined boundaries or unwritten speech rules that people of color impose on white folks, but because racism is a powerfully virulent force in the real world which has caused and continues to cause untold human suffering.

White folks often complain that race is a rhetorical minefield which makes them nervous about saying the wrong thing. But for people of color, race is an actual minefield rife with physical dangers and obstacles and conflicts. As Chris Rock has said, "I ain't afraid of Al Qaeda; I'm afraid of Al Crackuh." Which is a cute line, but also deadly serious, because as the newspapers continue to remind us, racist hate crimes happen. This isn't hypothetical or abstract; for instance, I myself had my life threatened a couple years ago by an NYPD officer who assured me that he might "shoot a fuckin' chink and trust me, I can get away with it". Ain't that America. Excuse me if such experiences leave a foul feeling.

If white folks are genuinely interested in discussing racism without worrying about saying anything that could be construed as racist, I have simple advice: Become an anti-racist. Study the issue, listen and learn, join the struggle to end racism and white supremacy. If you do that, I'm pretty sure that you'll lose the nervousness about race talk.

~ ~ ~

In the previous thread on this topic, I commented:

Now that the white mass media have deemed Obama Safe To White America, they have begun projecting that racial designation onto the Black community as the reason that Obama has not yet garnered overwhelming popular support. If Black folks aren't scurrying onto the Obama bandwagon, it must be because he's Not Black Enough. It's not because he's a product of a shady DLC political machine; it's not because of his positions on "free trade" or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; it's not because of the mealy-mouthed mush contained in his book "Audacity of Hope". No, the only reason Black folks have for not getting behind Brother Barack is that he's Not Black Enough.

Line em up...

Margaret Calson asks, "Is Obama Guilty of Insufficient Blackness?":

By far, the biggest recent surprise is that it turns out Senator Barack Obama isn't black. I could have sworn he was, observing him at both large and small events. But I don't count. I can check out the relative merits of a venti coffee versus a Golden Arches' decaf, but not who high-profile leaders in the African-American community find acceptable. [...]

Last Saturday, the blacks in the huge crowd (estimated at 15,000 by the police) at Obama's announcement, standing for hours in the bitter cold, responded as if he were one of them. There he was in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, to wrap his campaign in the cloak of Lincoln. Even if he'd donned a stovepipe hat and fake beard, Obama looked like the people Lincoln tried to free, not Abe. But then it doesn't matter what I see.

What's up with this absurd whiny posture of powerless victimhood? Carlson is a nationally syndicated columnist and frequent TV pundit, and she thinks she's the one with no voice?

Over at The Guardian's Comment Is Free section, Ewen MacAskill remarks:

For an outsider - I'm from the UK - the present debate in the US seems extraordinary: One of the big questions is whether Obama, whose father is a black Kenyan and whose mother is a white Kansan, is black enough. [...]

I thought the US had moved on, and race was no longer such a decisive issue. But I haven't been in the US long enough to know. The primaries should provide evidence of whether there is a disconnect between who Democrats say they will vote for and who, in fact, they do vote for.

It would be refreshing to think they will vote for Obama because he is a good speaker, is exciting, described the Iraq war as dumb before the invasion, has good policies (still to be announced) on health and education - and not because of the colour of his skin. Maybe I am being naive.

In other words: I wish we didn't have to talk about blackness.

Jumping over to Australia and the latest antics of John Howard, Michael Gawenda at the Sydney Morning Herald shows us how white folks prefer that race be discussed:

No matter how much Howard denies that there was anything even remotely racist in his attack on Obama, there will be Democrats and sections of the media who won't believe it.

Whatever the fallout for the alliance of Howard's criticism of Obama - and that's likely to be minimal in the long term - the controversy has shown how sensitive and potentially explosive the race issue will be in this presidential campaign.

John Howard is not a racist. But his intervention and his track record suggests that on issues of race, he is vulnerable to the charge that he lacks sensitivity and still does not understand why his motives can be misunderstood.

In other words: These blacks and liberals won't stop complaining no matter what, so the best a white politician can do is minimize your vulnerabilities.

The funny thing is that despite all the mass media racial projection going on, it seems to me that most African Americans are waiting for the substance of Obama's agenda rather than rushing to support him before knowing where he stands on important issues. According to this AP article:

Barack Obama may find that for black voters in South Carolina, being black isn't everything.

If there is a single state where being black holds the potential to boost Obama's chances to win the Democratic presidential nomination, South Carolina fits the bill.

Yet, Democratic voters and party officials here said the Illinois senator will have to do as much persuading as any other candidate to win the support of blacks, who make up about half the Palmetto State's Democratic voters.

“I'm looking for reality,” said Tremaine Hendrick, a 20-year-old communications major at historically black Benedict College. “I want the truth. You've got to wait and see to learn actually who tells the truth. You can't determine that from what they're saying right now.” [...]

“The black vote is big, but it's not monolithic,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Joe Erwin. “Anyone who thinks that because Obama is black that lops off a huge percentage for him is mistaken.”

It seems to me that the question many progressives and people of color are asking isn't, Is he Black enough? The question is, What's his agenda?

As a sidenote, after South Carolina state senator Robert Ford dissed Obama, he delivered the brand spanking new World's Worst Apology Ever: "If I caused anybody, including myself, any pain about the comments I made earlier, then I want to apologize to myself and to Senator Obama and any of his supporters." Hmm, apologizing to oneself first and foremost...that's new to me.

Anyway, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone offers a more sensible substantive perspective:

The Illinois senator is the ultimate modern media creature -- he's a good-looking, youthful, smooth-talking, buttery-warm personality with an aw-shucks demeanor who exudes a seemingly impenetrable air of Harvard-crafted moral neutrality. [...]

[Obama's] entire political persona is an ingeniously crafted human cipher, a man without race, ideology, geographic allegiances or, indeed, sharp edges of any kind. You can't run against him on the issues because you can't even find him on the ideological spectrum. Obama's "Man for All Seasons" act is so perfect in its particulars that just about anyone can find a bit of himself somewhere in the candidate's background, whether in his genes or his upbringing. [...]

As far as political positioning goes, his strategy seems to be to appear as a sort of ideological Universalist, one who spends a great deal of rhetorical energy showing that he recognizes the validity of all points of view, and conversely emphasizes that when he does take hard positions on issues, he often does so reluctantly. He is a black man from Chicago who gets away with praising Ronald Reagan, which is not an easy task. His political ideal is basically a rehash of the Blair-Clinton "third way" deal, an amalgam of Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton and the New Deal; he is aiming for the middle of the middle of the middle. [...]

I have no idea who Obama really is, but he is against the war now (and at least never voted for it) and he seems to infuriate the right people. He has people bitching now that he's not black enough, and there are obviously going to be plenty of people for whom he's too black. And both of those groups of people, frankly, deserve whatever's coming to them. So for the time being I'm going to enjoy his rise to the top, the same way I enjoyed reading The Red and the Black -- like another great phony, Julien Sorel, Obama is a perfect mirror of the society he was born to conquer, and his journey upward throws everyone he passes into stark, humorous relief. Whether I'll vote for him is another story. But he's certainly helping make it clear who shouldn't get my vote.

Over at the Black Agenda Report, Bruce Dixon gets right to the point:

Both Barack Obama's Republican opponents and the centrist Democrats who support his presidential candidacy agree on one thing. They all agree that black opinion on the senator is both uninformed and irrelevant.

To hear the mainstream media, black dissatisfaction with Senator Obama is all about his black African father, his white American mother, his light complexion and his Columbia and Harvard Law degrees. The day after Rush Limbaugh called the senator a "half-frican" on the air, the term was in the mouths of ignorant black talk show hosts in multiple cities. Black America was then admonished and chided by white Republicans and Democrats of all colors for not embracing Senator Obama based on some foolish standard of black authenticity.

This is a racist calumny and slur of the first magnitude against all of black America. Our people have never rejected leading figures because of light complexions, immigrant parents or advanced degrees. Black America emphatically did not reject Thurgood Marshall or W.E.B. DuBois, or Julian Bond or Adam Clayton Powell. Nor did the movement turn away immigrants like Stokley Carmichael or Roger Toussaint. Black opposition to Barack Obama on account of his parentage and Harvard Law degree is every bit as much a fabricated political issue as the wall to wall coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death and family issues are fabricated news. Both are served up to us by the same mainstream media, and for similar reasons.

In many quarters of black America there are sane, solid and sensible reasons for black voters to question whether Barack Obama will represent them at all. Many remember that his first act as a US Senator was to refuse to stand with California Senator Barbara Boxer in opposition to Ohio's nullification of hundreds of thousands of black votes. Obama's second, third and fourth significant acts were when he declined to ask any difficult, pointed or revealing questions of Condoleezza Rice and two of the president's disastrous Supreme Court nominees, and he actually voted for two out of three of these. Obama's sixth and seventh important acts as a senator were to vote for a bill that made it nearly impossible for ordinary people to sue giant corporations who rob, defraud, maim or kill, and another vote to renew the hated Patriot Act which he vigorously campaigned against. And though Senator Obama now claims to oppose the war in Iraq, he remains advocate of bombing Iran to start yet another.

Now let's all listen to the wisdom of Skeptical Brotha:

The political organization around racial identity is a political reality in America whose necessity has not abated. It is the reason for, and the continuance of, the Congressional Black Caucus. To make it as plain as I can, we are a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, pluralistic society that is economically, politically, and socially stratified by race and class. We understand the negative role race and class play in the lives of racial minorities. To pretend to believe otherwise is a simple denial of reality that is not borne out by any facts now in existence.

[...] Barack Obama, despite the naysayers in our community is, and always shall be, a black man. The arguments about who raised him and whether or not he is a descendent of slaves are irrelevant and silly. The brotha may be running for President but stick him on a D.C. street corner late at night wearing a hoodie and some jeans and see how many cabs pass him by. He is black. Period. He understands what that means and because he does, he fuels my anger when he steps away from that reality to placate a power structure that devalues our lives and demeans our dignity.

Right on.

Comments

[Eli]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that most black voters are rational, meaning that they will vote in accordance to what they believe is their best self-interest. If they judge Obama to be the best candidate to represent their interests, they'll vote for him. If he isn't, they won't.

For me, Obama right now is looking like the most appealing of three weak options (assuming Gore doesn't run). Hillary is so DLC she's almost Republican, and Edwards' non-defense of his blogger hires was very disappointing and does not bode well for his ability to handle the mud that would be piled on him in the general election.

I'm still waiting for a Democratic candidate to stand up and shout, "Look at what the Republicans are doing!" instead of just pretending that they're rational people speaking their conscience.

[Sylvia]

Excellent round-up, Kai. I have a lot of good reading ahead of me. And I think you're spot on with how you tackled the punditry.

But still, don't knock the foot cuisine; it has all sorts of nutritional value. ;)

[Kai]

Eli, yeah, I guess I continue to find it slightly amazing how many white liberal pundits appear unable to grasp your first point, that "most black voters are rational"! I could've linked and excerpted dozens of pieces like the Margaret Carlson one (not to mention the filth emanating from the right-wing press), these folks just appear to live on a different planet than me, and to view people of color as, I dunno, strange mammals requiring observation in their natural habitat from a safe distance.

Sylvia, hehe I just re-read (and added a link to) your summary of the Greenwald situation, and realized that I probably lifted my foot-chomping toe-feast line from your comments! I'm gonna assume it's no big deal, since it's a common cliche and all, but I just thought it was funny how the words kinda insinuated themselves from your comments to my post. Anyway, I'll take your word on the nutritional value... ;-D

[Sylvia]

Hehe, no, it's not a big deal. (Just don't steal my recipes. :-p)

And that Margaret Calson article's ridiculous. Some people need their dictionaries revoked.

[Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez]

I dont know much about, um, history...shit i was gonna comment but now i gotta sing.

[kactus]

excellent article, Kai.

[Professor Zero]

On "saying the wrong thing" - I have noticed from other contexts that people who say they are worried about "saying the wrong thing" are people who are avoiding responsibility for dealing with whatever is going on.

As in:
Person A: please do not X, Y, or Z. [being specific and clear]
Person B: define and defend that better, please.
Person A: [explains]
Person B: that is very complicated.

Then person B goes and does X, Y, and Z. Person A complains.

Person B: Oh, all right, I said/did the wrong thing. You are just so complicated, it is hard to understand, it does not make any sense, so I have to get used to the idea that you will randomly tell me I have said/done the wrong thing.

[Kai]

Prof Zero, that is exactly it. It seems to me a straightforward power dynamic: someone with the power to get away with oppressive/exploitative behavior against another considers all negative talk of such behavior to be a nuisance or even threatening to the ongoing behavior. Thus, belligerence is the answer.