Seven Reasons Not to Get Overly Excited About the Fact That
Obama is Black
by Paul Street
"Superpower needs new
clothes and Obama is just the man to model them."
Recently I had a conversation with a radical intellectual
and activist who agrees with me that the Democratic Party's centrist
presidential nominee Barack Obama is a corporate and militarist politician who
can be expected to instantly and coldly betray his democratic campaign promises
when and if he becomes president.
The radical in question acknowledges all this and more but
still thinks I should be excited about the fact that the corporate-sponsored
Obama might be president. .
The main reason he gives for thinking this is quite simply
that Obama is black.
The fact that the nation is ready to elect a black guy, my
correspondent thinks, is a sign of real progress in the United States.
But
is it? In and of itself, it is of
course an outwardly positive development that droves of whites are willing to
embrace a black presidential candidate. Forty one years ago, as the United
States entered the racially turbulent summer of 1967 and the movie "Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner" disturbed conventional racial norms by portraying a black
doctor (played by Sidney Poitier) dating a white woman (Joanna Drayton), it
would have been impossible for a black politician to become a viable
presidential contender. Nothing a black
candidate could have done or said would have prevented him from being excluded
simply on the basis of the color of his or her skin. The fact that this is no
longer true is a sign of some racial progress more than fifty years after the
Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
"In 1967 it would
have been impossible for a black politician to become a viable presidential
contender."
Too bad much of this is countered and I think overwhelmed by
the following seven interrelated reasons NOT to get very excited - from a Left
perspective, including (as any decent Left perspective would) a racial justice
perspective - about the fact that Barack Obama happens to be black.
(1) He's Not All that Black.
A significant part of
Obama's appeal to white America has to do with the widespread Caucasian sense
that Obama "isn't all that black." Many
whites who roll their eyes at the mention of the names of Jesse Jackson or Al
Sharpton - former presidential candidates who behave in ways that many whites
find too African-American - are calmed and "impressed" by the cool, underplayed
blackness and ponderous, quasi-academic tone of the half-white,
Harvard-educated Obama. Obama doesn't
shout, chant, holler or drawl. He
doesn't rail against injustice, bring the parishioners to their feet and
threaten delicate white suburban and middle-class sensibilities. He stays away
from catchy slogans like Jackson's "Keep Hope Alive" and from emotive
"truth"-speaking confrontations with power.
To use Joe Biden's unfortunate terminology, Obama strikes
many whites as "clean" and "articulate" - something different from their
unfortunately persistent image of blacks as dirty, dangerous, irrational and
unintelligible. "Among the factors contributing to Obama's rise," Washington Post writer Liz Mundy noted
in the summer of 2007, was the interesting fact that "his appearance, his
voice, and his life story are particularly well suited to attract white votes."
"We'd probably like it better if he talked like Jesse Jackson," the black
political commentator Debra Dickerson told Mundy, "but ya'll wouldn't" (Liza
Mundy, "A Series of Fortunate Events: Barack Obama Needed More Than Talent and
Ambition to Rocket From Obscure State Senator to Presidential Contender in
Three Years," Washington Post Magazine
(August 12, 2007).
Obama
has no moral or political obligation to shed his biracial identity,
"multicultural" background and elite, private-school education to "act [more
classically and stereotypically] black."
But whites' racial attitudes are less progressive than might be assumed
when their willingness to embrace a black candidate is conditioned by their
requirement that his or her "blackness" be qualified.
"Obama strikes
many whites as ‘clean' and ‘articulate.'"
When ingrained gender sensibilities lead you (all other
things equal) to prefer your "straight-acting" gay uncle over your outwardly
"effeminate" gay nephew, your tolerance for non-traditional sexual orientations
might be less enlightened than you think.
The perceptive mixed-race journalist Don Terry was
understandably perturbed when a middle-aged white filmmaker said to the
following to him in early 2004: "I love Barack. He's smart. He's handsome. He's charismatic...I don't think of him
as black" (Don Terry, "The Skin Game: Do White Voters Like Barack Obama Because
‘He's Not Really Black?," Chicago Tribune
Magazine [October 24, 2004], p.16).
(2) "Race Neutral" Obama
Thanks in part to the fact that his
technical blackness triggers white racial fears and animosities, Obama has been
if anything more conservative on racial justice than Hillary Clinton and John
Edwards. Terrible racist attitudes and dread relating to the stereotype of the
"angry black man" make it particularly difficult for a black politician or
officeholder to function as a fighter for people on the wrong sides of the
nation's overlapping structures of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Eagerly
accommodating mainstream white attitudes, the "deeply conservative" (according
to Larissa MacFarquhar) Obama (Larissa
MacFarquhar, "The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama Coming From?,"
The New Yorker, May 7, 2007) has gone to extraordinary lengths to distance
himself from the cause of equality. He
has run a remarkably "race neutral" campaign that accepts dominant false
American concepts proclaiming the essentially "past" nature of racial
oppression and blacks' personal and cultural responsibility for their
disproportionate presence at the bottom of the nation's institutional
hierarchies.
(3) Burying Institutional Racism Deeper
Obama's ascendancy -
like the earlier and related ones of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Oprah
Winfrey - reinforces the widespread majority white post-Civil Rights sentiment
that racism no longer poses serious barriers to black advancement and
equality. The other night on the Conan
O'Brien Show, the white-pleasing black comedienne Wanda Sykes received
uproarious laughter and applause from a predominantly white studio audience
when she said that Obama being in the White House would mean that black people
have no more "excuses" for their inferior status and would now have to take
personal responsibility for being disproportionately locked up in the nation's
prisons. No joke.
"Conservative"
commentators like George Will and William Bennett have long been applauding the
Obama phenomenon for putting an end to "obsolete" complaints about the "over"
problem of racism.
"Obama accepts
dominant false American concepts proclaiming the essentially ‘past' nature of
racial oppression."
Last March the "liberal" white Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter voiced an interesting racist
pinion on what he called "the Obama Dividend. While "Obama's unique assets" [a
reference to the Senator's blackness and multiculturalism, P.S.] have been
viewed in international terms," Alter argued, the presidential candidate's
"most exciting potential for moral leadership could be in the African-American
community." Alter praised Obama for
being a potentially "important president" simply on the grounds that the
Senator would tell and inspire "black adults and children" to behave better and
thereby to stop sabotaging themselves and alienating culturally superior
whites. Obama could mishandle U.S.
foreign or economic policy, and fail in his tepid efforts to address social
problems at home, but he would leave a powerful and important legacy, Alter argued,
if he could just get "black adults and children" - a category that technically
includes every single African-American human being - to think and act in a more
positive and productive fashion (Jonathan Alter, "The Obama Dividend," Newsweek, March 31, 2008, p. 37).
The problem with such commentaries -widely emblematic of
mainstream white sentiment in the post-Civil Rights Era (PCRE) - is that
institutional racism remains alive and well in every area of American society,
providing the essential explanation (the supposed "excuse") for a savage racial
wealth gap that grants the median black household seven cents on the white
median household dollar. More than
merely persisting into the PCRE, the deeper structures and practices of
institutional white supremacy are cloaked by regular rituals of Caucasian
self-congratulations over white America's increased willingness to embrace
"good" and bourgeois, business and power-elite-approved and not all that blacks like the corporate
mass-marketing icon Oprah Winfrey and the mendacious imperialists and Iraq War
agents Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Obama.
(4) Race and the Progressive Illusion
The fact that the "deeply
conservative" Obama is black has helped deepen his appeal to certain vaguely
progressive voters by making him seem more left than he really is. According to researchers studying the
political psychology of race, voters asked to compare a black and a white
candidate with similar political positions will tend to see the black candidate
as "more liberal."
"Many voters were
identifying Obama as more liberal at least in part because of his race."
During the recently concluded primary race, Obama did much
better than the also centrist and militarist Hillary Clinton with Democratic
primary voters who identified themselves as "very liberal." Clinton, by
contrast, did better with the large number and percentage of Democrats who
called themselves "moderates." Since Obama's actual policy agenda was generally
no more liberal than Clinton's - and his health care plan was considerably more
conservative - it seems likely that many voters were identifying Obama as more
liberal at least in part because of his race. There were other factors
besides race in that identification (the Iraq War especially), but the simple
fact of his skin color has given Obama no small measure of deceptive rebel's
clothing he does not deserve given his clear presence (documented at some
length in my forthcoming book "Barack Obama and the Future of American
Politics") on the wrong/right-wing side of each of what Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. called "the triple evils that are interrelated:" racism (deeply
understood); economic exploitation (capitalism), and militarism/imperialism.
(5) Resistance Will Be Inhibited
The fact that the (not-so) "progressive" Obama is black will inhibit
certain left-leaning Americans from engaging in the sorts of action that will
be required to pressure the White House to behave decently if he wins the
election. John Pilger recently wrote something that rings very true with me on
the basis of numerous discussions I have had with "progressive" youth and
activists in recent months: "By offering a
‘new,' young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party - with the
bonus of being a member of the black elite - he can blunt and divert real
opposition. That was Colin Powell's
role as Bush's secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure
on the US antiwar and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration
for all its faults. If that happens,
domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent." (John Pilger,
"After Bobby Kennedy (There Was Barack Obama)," Common Dreams (May 31, 2008.)
(6) The Emperor Gets A Chage of Clothes
Obama's race and ethno-cultural nomenclature - his full name is
Barack Hussein Obama help make him useful to the architects of an American
Empire that Obama strongly and openly supports. These attributes have enhanced
his attractiveness to a considerable section of Superpower's foreign policy
elite, who sense a need for the U.S. to seem
to be dramatically changing the face of power in the wake of George W.
Bush's shockingly clumsy, provocative, and (by the way) richly racist
imperialism. As Meg Hirshberg, an influential New Hampshire political donor,
told Mundy last year, "His election would do more to restore peoples' faith and
belief in the U.S. around the world. Can you imagine [Barack and Michelle
Obama] being president and first lady?
It knocks me out as far as what we would be saying to ourselves and the
world. He's not a descendant of slaves,
but Michelle is. I think it would be a
remarkable moment in history." Obama's technically Muslim name and his three
years living as a young boy in Indonesia hold special promise, many U.S.
foreign policy elites hope, in the oil-rich Middle East and across the Muslim
world - areas of special concern and danger for U.S. globalists. By Mundy's
account, "in the wake of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo...part of Obama's appeal is
the opportunity to send the world a different message about racial tolerance at
a moment when this seems more important than ever."
John Kerry, who ran for the
presidency four years earlier largely on the claim that he would be a more
effective manager of Empire (and the Iraq War) than Bush II, was certainly
thinking of these critical imperial "soft power" assets when he recently
praised Obama as someone who could "reinvent America's image abroad." So was
Obama himself when he said the following to reporters abroad his campaign plane
in the fall of 2007:
"If I am the face of American
foreign policy and American power, as long as we are making prudent strategic
decisions, handling emergences, crises, and opportunities in the world in an
intelligent and sober way....I think that if you can tell people, ‘We have a president in the White House who
still has a grandmother living in a hut on the shores of Lake Victoria and has
a sister who's half-Indonesian, married to a Chinese-Canadian,' then they're
going to think that he may have a better sense of what's going on in our lives
and country. And they'd be right."
Obama's distinctive
ethno-cultural and geographic biography is one of his great attractions to the
foreign policy elite in a majority non-white world that has been deeply
alienated by U.S. behavior (and truthfully before) the post-9/11 era. Call it
"the identity politics of foreign policy." Superpower needs new clothes and
Obama is just the man to model them."
"What better gift to the
empire than JFK in sepia?"
The black Seattle-based Left poet and activist Michael
Hureax is on solid ground when he says that an Obama would be about
"restor[ing] faith in the imperial project" by putting an eloquent black leader
at its nominal head, to function as a "JFK in sepia." As Hureaux observed in the comments section attached to a
haunting Dissident Voice essay by
Juan Santos, titled "Barack Obama and the End of Racism" ( Dissident Voice, February 13, 2008): .
I'm watching all kinds of people who I'd previously thought
had some critical thinking skills cave under this Obamania business. I had a
hunch this was coming when I watched his speech at the convention four years
ago, my wife and I both sat and took it in and looked at each other and said,
almost word for word, "He's good, he's
very good." The rakish JFK style jabs, the clearly studied rhetorical
grace. What better gift to the empire than JFK in sepia? All last year,
numerous discussions with people from the old new left who told us, "He'll
never get a shot at it because of racist US etc.," to which we maintained, "But
what better figure to have out there than one to restore faith in the imperial
project, but someone with a black face? They managed to live with Powell and
Rice, why not Obama?"
(7) An Opportunity for the Proto-Fascist GOP.
The fact that Obama is black may contribute
to the extremist and dangerously messianic-militaristic and arch-plutocratic,
proto-fascistic Republican Party keeping the White House. Obama's claim to
reporters last April that "if I lose, it would not be because of race but
because of mistakes I made on the campaign trail," was certainly largely
incorrect. If he fails to defeat Republican John McCain despite critical trends
favoring a Democratic candidate (economic recession, rising prices, and a
failed foreign policy in Iraq, above all) in November, 2008, it will be largely
and perhaps mainly because of race. As
John Judis noted in The New Republic
at the end of May 2008, the racial voting trends are a real cause for Democratic
Party concern:
"The United States has not ‘transcended race' - something
that should be obvious from the exit polls."
Clearly Obama gained some votes in the early primaries from
college-educated [white] Democrats who liked the idea of an African American
transcending the historic conflict over race. And, if he had not been running
against a popular female candidate, he might have won more support among white
women. But Obama also lost voters to racial prejudice.
The percentage of
voters who backed Hillary Clinton (or, earlier, John Edwards) while saying that
the "race of the candidates" was "important" in deciding
their vote is a fair proxy for the percentage of primary voters who were
disinclined to support Obama because he
is black [emphasis added]. That number topped 9 percent in New Jersey; in
Ohio and Pennsylvania, two crucial swing states, it was more than 11 percent.
And that's among Democratic primary voters, who are, on average, more liberal
than the Democrats who vote in general elections.
The simple fact of being African American could well cost
Obama the general election votes of 15 to 20 percent of the nation's Democrats
and Democrat-leaning Independents (John Judis, "The Big Race," The New Republic, May 28, 2008, p.24).
It's terrible and ugly that prejudice-fueled racial bloc
voting - widely evident in the last two months of the primary season - is
likely to be a factor in the general election, but it's also a strategic fact
of American political life. Maybe Obama
can overcome it. Maybe he can't. Either
way, the United States has not "transcended race" - something that should be
obvious from the exit polls in the last two months of the Democratic primary.
Veteran radical historian Paul Street
([email protected]) is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and
the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm), Segregated Schools: Educational
Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Racial
Oppression in the Global Metropolis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007);
and Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (forthcoming in summer of
2008).