If Not, WHY Not? And If Not, Is That A Good Thing?
The prolific blogger shanikka wote a piece today (Sunday, 1/6/08) titled A Black Woman’s Musings on Coffee with Dad, Racism, and Barack Obama. It appeared on a number of blogs, including dKos, My Left Wing and her own blog, Maat’s Feather and it was in answer to a dKos post titled Coffee with Dad.
Shanikka’s essay is very long and more than worth a read, but I cite it here only because it got me to thinking about what is happening regarding Barack Obama’s recent almost landslide-like success in Iowa and…much more importantly in terms of the possibility of his securing the Dem nomination and/or the Presidency of the United States…in the media coverage of that success and of his candidacy in general..
So far, the dominant meme regarding Mr. Obama is that he is the first person of color to reach a position of front-runner for that nomination. Some approve of this situation, some do not, and some are reserving judgment. Many of those who do not approve cloak that disapproval in code words and elisions, this being the PC century and all. Many others resist his candidacy for other reasons as well…lack of experience, relative youth, personal ambition, etc.
Shanikka’s article has to do with the hidden racism implicit in the post that she is criticizing, which was basically about a so-called “liberal” white woman’s conversation with her (at least subliminally) racist father regarding the Obama candidacy.
But shanikka’s post got me to thinking.
About race, about self-limitations of all sorts, about the real reasons…aside from the accidents of historical flow…for Obama’s success so far, about the resistances that he is encountering from several sides of the political spectrum and about why so many who are NOT normally involved in politics to any great degree (the so-called “uncommitteds”) are greatly attracted to him and to his candidacy.
Read on if you so desire.
Here is the basic question that we must face if we are to see Obama’s candidacy clearly.
Is he a “black” politician? Or is the total sum of his effort greater than that?
We all…ALL of us…have to get past race if we are going to get anywhere here.
Get past race as a primary identifier. Just as we must get past sexual orientations, class and cultural affiliations, religions or lack thereof, nationality or any other partial identifiers which tie us down to a preconceived set of notions about right and wrong, good and bad.
I mean…is Hillary Clinton a “white”politician? Is that who she is?
Is she a female politician?
Is John Edwards a white politician?
A southern politician?
A male politician?
How about Rudolph Giuliani? Or is he just an Italian politician?
Is Joe Lieberman a Jewish politician? Or just a two-faced Republican mole. (Sorry…couldn’t resist.)
So why must Barack Obama be a black politician?
And all of these obsessive-compulsively imposed modifiers are driven by one thing and one thing only.
Our own self-identifiers.
The need for an attitude adjustment of this sort is especially true for the elite.
The leaders.
The gifted ones.
Because if they…may I be so bold as to say in some sense “we”, seeing as how those of us who spend hours every day trying to think and feel our way to the bottom of this mess are at the very least a small minority of committed souls who have been gifted with enough intelligence to see that something is indeed fundamentally wrong with what is going down here…if we do NOT try to rise above our own entirely accidental positions in the warp and woof of society then all that we are really doing is proposing alterations to the condition of who is the oppressor and who the oppressed.
It’s OUR turn now, motherfuckers!!! Move the fuck on over!!!
And the screw just keeps on turning…
An internal position of this sort is much harder to achieve for members of groups of people that have suffered long-term oppression than it is for members of the oppressor groups. Harder for people whose history includes gross injustices done to themselves, to their loved ones, to their ancestors and to others with whom they identify and brothers and sisters. But that adjustment MUST BE MADE. By all of us. Too many people in all positions of society throughout the world awaken in the morning and immediately…upon their first conscious set of thoughts…crawl into a box with a big negative label stuck on it.
OPPRESSED JEW!!!
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN!!!
OPPRESSED BLACK PERSON!!!
CONSERVATIVE RICH!!!
OPPPRESSED POOR WHITE!!!
RIPPED OFF WORKING CLASS!!!
ANGRY FEMINIST!!!
ABOUT TO BE ELEVATED TO PARADISE JIHADIST!!!
PUT-UPON WHITE MIDDLE CLASS WAGE SLAVE!!!
And on and on and on and on and on.
Straight downhill.
But that adjustment must be accomplished if we are to be able to see things clearly.
If there is ANYTHING that appears to me to set Barack Obama above his peers…and I do not care which group of “peers” you wish to consider, from people of color right on through Harvard-educated lawyers and national politicians…it is that he gives the impression (to me, at least) that when he wakes up in the morning his box is WAY bigger than that of most people and that it has next to no negative labels on it.
In fact, it appears to me that it is a box that is labeled, if anything:
HUMBLE RECIPIENT OF AN ENTIRELY ACCIDENTAL PLACE IN HUMAN SOCIETY THAT MAY ACTUALLY ALLOW ME TO DO SOMETHING SUBSTANTIVE ABOUT HOW FUCKED UP AMERICA HAS BECOME AND THUS DO SOME GOOD FOR ALL OF HUMANITY.
In this he seems to me to share the kind of box that was inhabited by Robert Kennedy, who also seemed to have been able to get past his upbringing and his dumb luck in having been brought up smart, rich, committed and powerful.
May Mr. Obama’s fate be more merciful.
Why do I write this in reply to shanikka’s essay here?
Because almost the entire leftiness AND rightiness reaction to Obama’s candidacy has been about the attempt to put him in a box in which I do not believe he lives.
Not anymore he doesn’t.
To approve or disapprove of his candidacy based on the positions of our our own self imposed boxes.
We are all born into various boxes, but it is beginning to appear the Obama has managed to grow out of his own ancestrally delineated goddamned box, and more power to him.
The right wing…and I include in that category when dealing with racial matters WAY more than the 30% of the population that continues to give G. W. Butch positive poll numbers, including any number of DemocRats…sees him as a “black” politician, complete with all of the disapproving, racist code words that have appeared in this lovely era of imposed-from-above-PC.
“Affordable housing”, “welfare”, “equal opportunity”, “unelectable”, etc…we all know the drill.
It was easier when racists called a spade a spade. At least then it was clear who needed a shovel upside the head and who didn’t.
The left…especially many black leftists…seems to often see him as some sort of a modern Uncle Tom.
PROFESSOR Tom.
LAWYER Tom.
POLITICIAN Tom.
SENATOR Tom.
OREO Tom.
Not sufficiently involved with the problems of “his people” Tom, etc.
Duke Ellington, a prophet and seer in racial matters as he was in matters musical (His whole life was an illustration of the concept of “As above, so below” in perfect action.), was once told by a white interviewer that he was a “credit to his people.”
Duke’s immortally gentle answer? Sitting at a table wearing a beautiful dark red silk smoking jacket and sipping an espresso? This grandson of slaves? This black man who grew up when lynchings were often not even covered in county newspapers in the south because they just weren’t important enough news compared to hog futures and the market price of cotton?
“Which people do you mean, exactly? Claret drinkers, perhaps?”
Not that he ever in ANY way denied his blackness. (See the “Black, Brown and Beige Suite” that was premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1943 (!!!) for all you need to know about that.) Just that he rose way above the negative aspects of forced confinement to that particular box.
Mr. Obama is approaching Ellington-land.
And more power to him.
Maybe we HAVE reached that Promised Land of which Martin Luther King Jr. spoke.
Or…maybe we have not.
We shall soon see.
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile…y’all continue to try to climb out of your OWN little boxes.
And have fun doing it.
I am.
May you be born into interesting times.
A Chinese curse?
Or a blessing in disguise.
We shall soon see.
Bet on it.
We shall VERY soon see.
Later…
AG