What does it say when those who have held you in open contempt lavish sweet praise on one who vies for your allegiance and claims to speak for you? That's the question I find myself asking in regard to Barack Obama. In the Guardian, writer Gary Younge quoted Hardball host Chris Matthews saying, "I don't think you can find a better opening-gate, starting-gate personality than Obama as a black candidate. I can't think of a better one. No history of Jim Crow, no history of anger, no history of slavery. All the bad stuff in our history ain't there with this guy."
Let's review: "No history of Jim Crow. No history of anger, no history of slavery..." No history of "all the bad stuff."
According to the line of thinking put forward by Matthews, for a significant number of people, the fact that Obama has a white mother, a Kenyan father and no cultural relationship to the sons and daughters of African slaves save voluntary ones makes his blackness no more than a genetic quirk of the skin. Obama lets them feel "colorblind" because his color is not attached to their shame--their historical, legally sanctioned viciousness toward black men and women. When we black Americans mention it, we're accused of conjuring "white guilt." Statements such as Matthews', however, suggest that we don't need to conjure it. People are so busy projecting it onto us that they obviate the need.
Andrew Sullivan, who to this day defends his endorsement of "The Bell Curve" and its theories of black genetic inferiority as a "speaking truth to power," is another Obama fan. He wrote a wet, sloppy kiss to the candidate in the Atlantic entitled, "Why Obama Matters." In it, he claims that Obama, in classic "Magic Negro" form, will heal the divisions in America, and in the world at large.
"What does he offer?" Sullivan asked. "First and foremost: his face," was the answer.
Consider this hypothetical. It's November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man-- Barack Hussein Obama-- is the new face of America. In one simple image, America's soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy.
Note the omission. Sullivan gives us a brief of Obama's full biography, excepting one crucial, largely unspoken fact for Obama champions: Obama's mother was white. For Sullivan and people like him, Obama can be just as white as he is black. All the easier to revel in his comforting biological divorcement from Afro-American history.
There was a great deal of ridiculous noise about whether Obama was culturally black enough for black voters. In fact, the real question has always been: "Is he white enough for white voters?" In Sullivan's case, the answer is a resounding yes.
Jim Sleeper is another writer who has expressed his love for Obama. In his book "Liberal Racism," he wrote, "When Rosa Parks quietly refused to give up her seat on that segregated public bus in Montgomery in 1955, she expressed a desire to embrace and redeem society, not to rebuff it as inherently racist..."
What self-aggrandizing swill. A tired pissed off woman refuses to give her seat to a white man and faces as a result arrest and bodily harm-- and Sleeper, a white man, dares to say she did it for him; that she did it because she was a good little mammy who knew her job was to serve white folks, this time cleaning their moral toilets instead of their porcelain ones. Of Obama, Sleeper wrote:
Claiming one's identity as an American, therefore, means standing up... against exclusionary racial, religious, and other strains that have persisted alongside and within our republican framework.That is what Rosa Parks did, and it is what Obama is doing-- first by being what he has made of himself, and second by running for president. And I must say here, as one who has argued for years that Americans must let race go as an organizing principle of progressive politics-- because too much of even what passes for anti-racism only ends up recapitulating racism itself-- I can't help feeling that Barack is everything I've hoped an American leader on this problem could be.
Note that it is only non-whites who are asked to sacrifice anything here. Whiteness is presented as the ultimate normative state, the stem cell from which all else grows. Black self-interest, in other words, is counterproductive: it does not serve whites. There is no other way to read, "...what passes for anti-racism only ends up recapitulating racism itself." He ain't talking about racism against whites. Like Chris Matthews, Sleeper is demanding we sacrifice our history, our culture, and thus the principal part of our Afro-American being on the altar of America's "republican framework." It's a demand that we forego what everyone else is allowed to celebrate. We are asked to abandon our history and become nothing more than a color-- for that's the luxury Obama accords this ilk of supporter. He's nothing more than "darker."
I am so much more than "darker." Chris Matthews's "bad stuff"-- Jim Crow... slavery-- it happens to be me. It is my history, the roots of my culture. In those few words, exposing what I believe to be a not-uncommon attitude, Chris Matthews spat filth on all of it-- on my father, my mother, and my forebears. It was classic projection and a revelatory insight into a larger attitude toward the American sons and daughters of African slaves. We are the taint. We are the sin many Americans want to forget. Our very existence reminds America that, for most of her history, she befouled her ideals like rodents foul their nests. And then we have the gall to walk around, signposts of their shame. How dare we insist that they remember it? And anger? We haven't the right. Jews can rightly proclaim "never again," but we dare not. White Southerners can resent their defeat in the civil war and fly their hateful flag with pride, but we dare not suggest that we remember our historical treatment in this country. We dare not show "anger." That's a right reserved for the fully human.
The "colorblind" conceit is nothing more than self-absolution. It is the product of a people desperate to whitewash their past because they are so vain that they must see themselves as impossibly good, as opposed to good and bad like all the rest of us. "Colorblind" just signifies your desperation not to see me because, you see, I am your shame-- and my glory. I am all of it. I am the scars on a black slave's back. I am the son of the white master's black slave whore. I am belief that one day I'd be free. I am the strength or foolishness to endure the unendurable. I am the unbreakable will to create a world of my own. I am the genius of music and speech, of rhythm and movement. I am blind rage. I am tears at the sound of Abbey Lincoln's voice. I am apart, yet part of. I am the glorious and misbegotten son of my past; and it is the parchment on which my future will be written.
This brand of Obama supporter demands I give that up, that I reduce myself to the generic level of dark hue on which they view their champion. They ask that I negate one of the most significant parts of my very self.
No questionably sourced chorus of "Yes we can!" will induce me to do that.
This piece is cross-posted on Pop and Politics.
You have honestly written for all the spirits of the man slave, they are all smiling with song!!!
Thank you so very much, Grandma Moses
Keep Peace in your Hearts!
as to the injustices done to them, it is the African-American
and the horror/history that brought them to this country.
Justifiable anger leads to resentment and resentment
(whether justifiable or not) is a poison that does nothing
to the evil doer. It negatively affects the injured party and
at some future point backfires to the extent of creating an
abuser of the abused. Could this account for black on
black crime? Could this account for the Middle-East
countries that abuse their neighbors as well as criminality
anywhere? Victimality's resentments breeds criminality.
As Christ cried out on the cross, "Father forgive them for
they know not what they do."
In any twelve-step program (and they abound all over the
world), resentment must be dealt with before any recovery
can take place.
In the back of the AA's "Big Book" there's a story entitled
"Freedom From Bondage" which describes a fail-safe
method to rid oneself of (hard to expel) resentments.
You decide what three good things you want (or more of)
in your life that you don't have at the present. You then ask
God (Good Orderly Direction) to give these good things to
the person or persons who's actions caused the resentment.
It doesn't matter if they have some of this things already.
What this process does is convert the negative energy of the
resentment into fuel to get you the good things you want and
need for yourself. You do this for a three week period on a
regular basis and you will be a changed person and get the
good things you want for yourself (indirectly).
Sometimes I have an many as five people on my resentment
list that I pray to have the good things I want for myself.
I pray for them to have peace of mind, knowledge of God's will
and the power to carry that out and a $ money amount. So far,
in the years since I've been doing this process, my peace of
mind has increased as well as knowledge of God's will and
the power to carry that out and $3,000, $5,000, and $10,000
have showed up in my life as a result of doing this prayer for
my resentments. At present, the money amount I'm asking
for my resentments to get is $100,000.
When first told of this by the people in the 12 step program, I
thought "What stupid people these clowns are. I will do this
and be able to tell them how wrong and stupid they are and
that this doesn't work."
Guess what? It worked like clockwork. As I prayed for my
ex-husband and his wife to have the good things I wanted for
myself (initially, I wanted to fire-bomb their home due to my
resentment) the resentment lifted and in the space created
by the lifting of the resentment, an awareness came over
me of a similar incident I had thoughtlessly done in regard
to them, in the not so distant past. I was amazed at the
change that came over me and the freedom from the bondage
of the resentment. I went back to the 12 step program and
admitted that this process worked and I truly believe it is
fail-safe.
Slavery and abuse in The Americas was wrong as was the
slavery and abuse in Africa. Criminality and abuse is America
is wrong as is the criminality and abuse in all countries.
Resentment and retaliation are not the answers, if it were we
would have a peaceful universe.
Pray for your resentments to have the good things you want
for yourself and be happy, safe and content.
But I am from Rhode Island which voted for Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly on Tuesday. You would think this Northern state with its diverse population of immigrants would have a little empathy and compassion...but, quess what?
Tucked away in a tiny paragraph in a piece from the Providence (RI) Journal about the Primary results on Tuesday, March 4th, is a little perspective on what Barack Obama faced in this multi-faceted tiniest state in the country... and I quote directly ...
" The candidates closely split male voters; Clinton won the female vote, 2 to 1"...
"Though Obama won in Providence and Newport, Clinton built insurmountable margins in the Blackstone Valley, home of many older residents, Fleming said. In the most Catholic state in the country, Clinton won two-thirds of Catholic voters...
SHE ALSO WON 65 PERCENT OF THE VOTERS WHO SAID THE CANDIDATES' RACE WAS A FACTOR IN THEIR DECISION. "... (my caps for emphasis)
This had to be one of the major reasons for Clinton's victory here. When I looked into exit polling stats in all four states, one of the categories in the interviews was race...all of the pundits have pigeonholed the candidates in their 24/7 absurdities by including race in their breakdowns. No one wants to say it on the air waves...God forbid in this day and age in the United States of touting us as the be-all, end-all of the world...but racial bigotry is going to be a major factor in this election. It's out there, folks, let's face it!
Considering the genocidal tendencies of our caucasian forebears, what amazes me, as an almost seventy year old, white female, is the magnanimity and fairness of people of color when they are elected to political positions of power. They have truly had to "turn the other cheek".
We might like to think that we are a just nation of rules and laws, and we have come a long way in my lifetime. But in my consideration we sure do have a long way to go.
The distinction the writer draws between his experience and Obama's is stunning. And the reductionist attempts of the fawning media seemed so obvious once he put words to it. I actually feel apologetic that the only Black man who is considered worthy of the presidency is one that has escaped the typical experiences of Blacks in America. The thought that there must be just enough Caucasian in the African American to make him worthy is frightening and certainly a subtle form of racism.
We all have a lot to learn.
They were probably not too tolerant, as the entire rest of society, other than slaves, was in the process of oppressing them. I can't know how it has been for you, but can empathize with your heritage. But you just have to deal with it. As much pain as you've experienced and have inherited from your ancestors, Blacks in America are diminishing as a percentage of this society. Continuing to view everything in terms of racial politics, seeking the candidate of perfect color, background, gender, and heritage, is no longer possible for any ethnic group, and certainly never was for blacks. Choose from what's available or lose. It's called reality.
It's quite possible that in this election, the population isn't completely ready to move beyond such "race" based divisiveness. But this is where we're headed in the great sweep of history... and Obama is on the right side of this movement. I hope and believe that the type of racial categorizing that Gaiter is championing here is slowly on its way to the dustbin of history. Surely, it seems much less powerful among the youth than it is among most Boomers.
Stuart's "Random Thoughts" blog
Wow..that is exactly the attitude that is SO annoying in its arrogance and ignorance. What you are calling baggage, others who toted that baggage would call a struggle for those rights which "the next generation" enjoy today. That baggage cost a lot.
Thank you Leonce Gaiter for this essay.
(The revolution will not be text-messaged.)
MLK lost the battle when he was assassinated, but he won the war; you and Steinam and Freidan won your war, too. It's over. Pat yourself on the back.
I repeat: The new generation is more able than yours and mine precisely NOT to judge people by the color of the their skin, OR their reproductive organs, but by the CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER.
Not having to carry baggage, they are PAST the insidious identity politics in which Hispanics vote against a black for his color; blacks vote for their brother for his color; whites vote against a black OR for a black out of guilt, for his color; and finally, you to vote for your sister for her gender.
Thanks to your struggle and MLK's, they are able to look directly to character. And it turns out the black guy is honest, genuine and positive and the sister is a negative pandering phony.
Wake up and smell the new millennium coffee. Or are you too old now to have forgotten this admonition from 1963:
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
--Bob Dylan
Even if other people choose to spin Obama's ethnicity/blackness in this particular way, he is not. You used this language yourself: "this brand of Obama supporter", not Obama himself. Are you asking for him to denounce these supporters because they may not be as self actualized or aware as you are? Hell, if you did that, you'd have to throw out votes based on all kinds of ignorance.
It simply doesn't work that way. Using your logic, only the most pure of restitution supporters should be considered as a black nominee for president. And certainly, Hillary's lack of action over her husband's affair(s) is an insult to the purist feminist who would not tolerate being asked to suck that up for her husband's career.
The reasons we may support any candidate may not be pure, but that is why we seek to find out what they say they will do and match it with what we can observe about their character and then we make our best guess. Or we write ill considered pieces trying to inflame what is still, admittedly, a spot on the conscious of the US, for political gain.
that Obama is (or better be) the nominee of one of the two major political parties merely 40 or so years after a brave democratic president signed into law your right to vote, costing his party the south for generations to come is, without question, one of the singularly most magnificent events of my lifetime. i refuse to allow your box-canyon approach spoil it for me. i just hope that the virulent racism still boiling under the surface in a great part of this country can overlook the fact that he's "oneathem".
if it helps that his father's kenyan, that he was educated at private schools, that his mother is white and that he's not related to anyone who's not been a "freedman", then good. it's a step. i just hope it's not too big a step too early. i'm not sure we can stand another 4 years of the ongoing republican plot to overthrow this government.
frankly, i think you're way wide of the mark, but i'm glad you have a forum to express your view. at this point in time, i'm nervous about our (democrats) ability to pull together and actually win the general election. i'm proud of the party for running a black man. i'm afraid the country may not be ready to elect one as president --- for all the wrong reason(s).
So more movements grew from feminism.
This passionate testimonial by Leonce Gaiter is powerful, potent, and necessary. I don't claim to get the full point of the posting but I will print it out and ponder it, and journal it to try to get it as far as I am able as a white woman. In race, gender and class studies it is pointed out the unearned privilege of whiteness in a culture of whiteness, in the dominant culture that created the norms. I don't have any idea what that means or how it affects me in a sense... or how to address it or if anything can be done about it. It is the culture we as whites know and the while we can try to recognize it I don't know how it can be addressed.
Growing up white this is all we know when we are young, we are enculturated. If we don't grow up with an integrated population with a black presence we are even further removed from the reality. I don't think it is still possible to never have seen an African American these days but when I was growing up in the 50's and 60's it certainly was. We saw some entertainers on TV if we had one but it was an anomaly in the suburbs.
As I said above about being white in the dominant culture that has created the norms I don't know what it means or affects me in a sense
Here is what I mean by that. Yes, I'm white. I grew up in a big house in the burbs when that was affordable for a lower middle class family, an ex GI and a little luck of an inheritance for a down payment. The house was big but just a tract house in a "developement" as we used to call them. We left down neck Newark where I was born when I was 5 yrs. old. Money was very tight. I remember my mother saying that we had something like 13 bucks a month less than the mortgage payment... I really have no idea how she did it then. (maybe she was lying)
Anyway, we had decent furniture, we ate, we weren't hungry. not that I was always liking it...(kidney stew? ewww)
I wore hand me downs or thrift shop clothes (still do) and I have pix of me with other little girls where I definitely look like an orphan!) I was the oldest of three, I had my own room- but the rage in that house, the abuse in that house was almost unbearable. I never, ever felt privilege in my life... until I started understanding more about R,C,G, issues. I still didn't "feel" it. Maybe that is the point, it is a given, we have an entitlement that we just don't recognize.
Still, there are others who are white who still would not feel like they have privilege by any stretch of the imagination.
the poor for instance, the under educated single mother working three jobs all PT without benefits. I don't understand how she can feel privileged.
Beauty and ugliness... the cultural norm of beauty and the woman born ugly by today's standards... I mean with obvious "ugliness" that borders on almost deformity... or what about deformity? Birth defects that people have to live with, particularly iof they are impoverished... is that a privilege?
I am reminded of this show on the Learning channel about these conjoined twin teenage girls. They were so "normal" I had no idea how they did it. How upbeat they were, and funny... and what was even more amazing is how accepted they were. That was mind blowing. I was picked on mercilessly to the point of being beat up and having things thrown at me when walking down the street just because I had a very foreign and odd sounding name.
at least that is what I always thought it was... who knows.
So have we come far in our culture that now a set of conjoined twins can go to a normal school, have a group of friends to hang out with, drive a car and live as normal a life as possible? They were very frank about the stares they get in punlic but they refused to be driven back by it... the way to normalize the culture I guess is to not let it push you out.
I don't know where those girls came from in my mind, we were talking about race and privilege.
I guess there are degrees maybe?
I don't know.
I remember when I was a young girl, in my teens when I first got a glimmer of an uneasy feeling that grew into feeling guilty for being an American. As time went on I began to feel guilty for being white. Eventually I felt guilty for being human spreading mayhem everywhere "I" went.
I think for me that is the guilt we all bre. It is human guilt.
Did we build our country on the backs of African slaves? Yes, we did. Did white European men go to Africa and buy other human beings to work as slaves for them? Yes, they did... but it occurs to me: Who sold them?
That does not obviate the immorality of buying them and the treatment most recieved by their "owners." But this is the deeper, further point about guilt. Who sold the slaves to the European slave traders?
Should there not be some equal rage at and guilt shared by them?
From what I have read about that time most Africans were sold by other Africans. Many were considered "lower" from what I gather and were essentially enslaved to those who had sold them to the traders. Others were stolen from their tribes and clans by other tribes and clans... even families would sometimes participate in this. So who should get the brunt of the rage? Should I feel guilty for even bringing it up? Should I feel guilty for being enraged by the African sellers?
What about the Native American First Nation tribes? We came and tore a whole continent and way of life from them, a life we cannot understand and that we are often guilty of romanticizing in a way that is far removed from the reality. We knowingly and willfully traded them blankets infested with small pox. We turned them into drunks when it was seen that there was an intolerance for alcohol. We ripped their families apart and it was legal to kill them. We stole their children to go to white schools and severely punished them if they spoke their own language. We outlawed their "religion" making it punishable to practice their spiritual traditions. We made shameful deals and then even reneged on those. We put them on barren land far from where they could be seen. We portrayed them as dumb Indians, faithful side kick Indians or savage bad guy Indians... until recently when we made them nobel savages... but not too savage.
Well they were savage and that isn't a judgment. We certainly were and are.
They enslaved other Indians, had treaties, broke treaties, caused murder and mayhem amongst themselves too AND eventually the Cherokee who were more assimilated and well to do had Black slaves. When emancipation became law they refused to free their slaves because they were the Cherokee nation, not subject to American laws. When they finally did they would not make them Cherokee citizens and there were years where they were not citizens of the US or Cherokee... they had no nation.
It goes on and on.
No one of us, no one people, no one nationality is free from the infliction of brutality against another. Even in tribes that have been relatively untouched by "civilization" (what a joke) there are usually hierarchies where one group is the alpha and the other must obey.
I don't know what I am saying, I think I went in a circle and have moved out of my original point and position of agreement if not fully understanding into a further flung viewpoint.
I honestly don't know what to make of it all.
Maybe we should all feel guilt at being human or maybe we should lay down our burdens and do the best we can for each other's humanity and suffering. Most everyone is wounded somewhere.
Were we all trying to obviate white guilt when we marched in the south? Perhaps in part but there are some of us with genuine feelings of empathy, outrage, compassion and yes guilt that we do not wish to obliterate and pretend isn't there.
Do all people who wish to ease suffering, to end suffering and injustice do so just to put salve on their conscience? Maybe what we are called to do as human beings is to alleviate suffering where ever we find it. Maybe that is the point of being human, to realize that no one is guiltless and there is a particular burden and responsibility we should pick up and carry by helping others, whoever they are to carry theirs.
i really do not know but I think it is my path anyway.
See? This way I don't have to think at all!