To the blacks who are questioning Barack Obama’s blackness: Stop It Already.
There is a saying that goes something like this: black folks are like a bunch of crabs in a bucket. As soon as one makes it to the top, he is pulled right back down by his own [1]. While it is no secret that the path to success for blacks is an oft tumultuous one due to “the system”, what does not get addressed as frequently is the fact that some black Americans hate to see one of their own make it to the Promised Land.
I had no idea when Barack Obama announced his presidential exploratory committee that he would have to work so hard for the approval of black Americans — you know, the ones “whose ancestors endured slavery, segregation and the bitter struggle for civil rights.” Instead, I thought that Obama’s appeal, just like Obama himself, would cross color boundaries. I believed that most, if not all, black Americans would do their homework on Obama’s commitment to the black community instead of defaulting to the played out, unprogressive ‘you don’t know my struggles’ bit to justify why “Obama isn’t black” (with all due respect to Debra J. Dickerson, she’s out of her gord on this topic). Boy was I wrong.
The New York Times has an article today entitled “So Far, Obama Can’t Take Black Vote for Granted” that sheds light on the ridiculousness of some black writers, politicians and community members in regard to their perception of Barack Obama’s blackness. The article predictably starts off by building Obama up as the great “hope” and then brings his messiah like figure back down to earth, questioning why “some black voters are so uneasy” about Barack Obama. Here is what a Mr. Calvin Lanier (who, not coincidentally, was interviewed in a barber shop) had to say:
“When you think of a president, you think of an American,” said Mr. Lanier, a 58-year-old barber who is still considering whether to support Mr. Obama. “We’ve been taught that a president should come from right here, born, raised, bred, fed in America. To go outside and bring somebody in from another nationality, now that doesn’t feel right to some people.”
There are a couple of things wrong with that statement. For starters, Barack Obama is an American. Foreign-born citizens are not allowed to run for the presidency of the United States. If they were, then Mr. ‘I’ll Be Back” Schwarzenegger’s name would have come up a long time ago. Secondly, well, there is no secondly. The statement made above is about as accurate as the claim that Barack Obama was raised a Muslim (he is in fact a Christian) to discredit him as a viable candidate for the White House. And you thought Keith Ellison had it rough.
Debra Dickerson’s ‘gem’ of an article was quoted, in which she expanded on the topic with the following:
“I’ve got nothing but love for the brother, but we don’t have anything in common,” said Ms. Dickerson, who wrote recently about Mr. Obama in Salon, the online magazine. “His father was African. His mother was a white woman. He grew up with white grandparents.
“Now, I’m willing to adopt him,” Ms. Dickerson continued. “He married black. He acts black. But there’s a lot of distance between black Africans and African-Americans.”
Again, there are a couple of things wrong with that statement. For starters, Dickerson operates off of the assumption that you have to have something in common with a presidential candidate in order to vote for him, instead of basing her decision to support a candidate off of his tangible track record of helping the black community and the working class community at large.
Bill Clinton was not called the “first black president” because he had skin color or oppression in common with black people. It was because the black community felt like he gave a damn. Bill Clinton’s grandparents were white and his mother was white. Surely Dickerson isn’t performing a one drop of white blood test on Barack Obama to negate the experiences he has had as a black American. She should know better than anyone else that no matter how you grew up, you’re still a nigger to the other side when you walk outside of the house wearing black skin. (And what does “he acts black” mean anyway?)
All I can say is thank goodness Barack Obama married a black woman or every single black writer like Dickerson would have proclaimed Obama not only not black, but a traitor to the race that won’t even allow him to be called a black American. The potential cognitive dissonance is staggering, really.
The list of blacks who are questioning Obama’s “blackness” includes Stanley Crouch (I don’t know who is black like him). Too, the media continues to focus on the fact that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who both ran for president and both miserably failed, haven’t publicly endorsed Barack Obama. (As if their endorsements actually mean anything. No disrespect to Sharpton or Jackson, but they have never been, and will never be Martin Luther King Jr. reincarnates. Just because they endorse or refuse to endorse the first real possibility of a black president since Colin Powell means absolutely nothing to me.)
The only real glimmer of hope in the New York Times article is the prominent black figures who recognize Obama’s background as an appealing factor rather than a ‘not black enough for us’ factor. Carol M. Swain of Vanderbilt University notes Obama’s proven track record “for being concerned about people who are poor” (which, if you haven’t noticed, includes a lot of black people). Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP has stated that Obama is “tremendously appealing”, and many black Democrats have publicly endorsed Obama.
It is not the black politicians who support Obama that stick out to me, really. It is the black Americans who are writing that Obama isn’t black enough who make me want to vomit. What the fuck do they want from him?
Why has Obama’s blackness quotient been added to the list of requirements that some of black America needs in order to vote for him? Did they ever have this “simmering ambivalence” towards a white presidential candidate because they grew up with white mothers and grandparents?
Barack Obama is like the Tiger Woods of politics. He’s trying to get past race and he’s being skewered for it by many a black folk. I have a sinking suspicion, however, that if he were to win the presidency, every black person from here to the Canadian border would anoint him as the great black hope. They did it with Tiger in golf, and they’ll do it with Obama in the White House.
An aside: why does the fact that many whites support Obama scare black people? I don’t get it.
[1] I think I heard Isaiah Washington’s character say that in Romeo Must Die. I’m so serious.
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