Obama Pacifies the Whites by Papering Over the Race Issue
By downplaying racism, Obama is doing his part
in the implicit deal he made with the American public
to avoid any suspicion of playing the race card
The Rev. Wright disrupted that deal, so he had to go
Question is: What else will go with him?
The Establishment Candidate
The race issue is virtually absent from Obama's message
That's the way white America likes it
He has the role of an inadequate and ineffective balm
on the long-running racist sore
His victory may symbolize a great deal
but will change very little
Why Do We Adore Obama? He Absolves Us of Racism
For whites, Obama represents the hope that this one Negro will absolve white guilt, or he at least won't accuse "us" of being responsible for racism.
Though he is black, Obama reassures America and its rulers that race is no longer an issue.
Obama's role is to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
Most white Americans yearning for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. We can go back to the first post-war 'good' black - Sidney Poitier - to understand how much whites need a respectable black to shore up their fear of the 'uppity' Negro.
Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand.
For as with all "Magic" Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes.
If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.
The "Good" Negro
The remarkable success of power-respectful, bourgeois, non-threatening “good” blacks like Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Colin Powell helps white Americans believe that blacks have only themselves to blame on the whole for black America’s persistently separate and unequal status in the U.S.
For many whites, loving national media stars like Oprah and Barack is the nice reverse side of hating inner-city Darnell and Lakisha.
The sophisticated and opportunistic Obama knows this very well.
He’s not going to complicate his comfortable funding relationships with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Henry Crown and Co. and General Dynamics et al by substantively criticizing empire and/or class inequality at home and abroad.
In a similarly calculating and power-seeking vein, he’s not about to undermine his favorable post-Civil Rights situation with the white electoral majority by making strong public reference to the persistently powerful and pervasive role of anti-black racism in American life.
He’s going to try to ride white America’s self-serving racial confusion and denial as far as he can — all the way, he hopes, to the White House.
The New, Improved Uncle Tom
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 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 revealing terminology, Obama strikes many whites as “clean” and “articulate” — something different from their unfortunately persistent image of blacks as dirty, dangerous, irrational and unintelligible.
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.
It’s Enough to Make you Say, “God Damn America!”
Obama gives white voters a chance to feel radical and broad-minded by voting for a black candidate. Really, in policy terms, they are making a very ordinary choice.
Obama is almost as much a creature of the establishment as Clinton.
Yes, Obama will reap the benefits of the idealistic college students who don't really understand what left means in politics, and in the general election would also benefit from anti-Bush, anti-Republican sentiment which is sky-high.
But then what will he do with it? It's a good guess that he won't do much of anything, he'll play the game as it's been played for decades.
It doesn't matter who gets in, it is still going to be a very rich American, with the backing of a whole lot more very rich Americans.
It doesn't matter whether he's black, or she's female, they will not fundamentally alter the way American society operates, because their wealthy backers won't allow them to.
Remember, people had high hopes of Bill Clinton back in 1993, and he disappointed them too.
Yes, a Democrat is probably better than a Republican, but don't kid yourself that it will really make an ounce of difference.
Let's not forget "Obama" is a slick image first of all, sold to voters with lots of civil rights' kitsch.
The symbolism of his 'blackness' is about as vital as the symbolism of the repressed guilt/anger coded into his name.
Look for instance at his advisers on foreign policy. Many of the same who have presided over the murderous legacy of the past. Most of the victims of course people of color.
How can he put these people on the payroll if he really cares or if he really wishes to take responsibility for the crimes done in the name of the American electorate?
Obama has sold himself to a strategic game in which good intentions are *beside the point*. Even where there is no direct relationship to big money, he's seems fearful to challenge big money interests.
As such, he's become the very incarnation of Naomi Klein's brand politics repackaging corporate America in civil rights gloss. Too cynical? Maybe.
Perhaps there's progressive strategy folded into the branding I've yet to discern. Perhaps, perhaps.
The Bulk of Obama's Support Comes from Young,
Independent, White Voters [Original]
'Let it be recorded," wrote columnist EJ Dionne in the New York Times, "that for at least one week in American history, in a middle-sized, midwestern state, a broad range of white voters took the presidential candidacy of a black man with the utmost seriousness."
Dionne was not writing recently, following one of Barack Obama's primary victories, but in April 1988 as Jesse Jackson's primary campaign in Wisconsin drew to a close.
The week before Jackson had scored a stunning win in the Michigan caucuses, winning 55% support, including 20% of the white vote. In Wisconsin, a state with a black population of just 2%, white people were handing him their babies to kiss.
In style, temperament, agenda and biography Jackson and Obama could not be more different.
But in the extent to which they both epitomise a generational shift in the opportunities and constituencies open to black politicians and illustrate how to capitalise on them, they have a great deal in common.
How they understand their role in politics, and how they are generally understood, tells us a great deal about how racial politics in particular and American politics in general have changed.
For there are a number of commentators - particularly, but not exclusively, conservatives - who seek to portray Obama not just as a generation removed from Jackson, but the antithesis of everything Jackson stood for.
To them his success signals both the failure of "black" politics and the removal of "black" issues from the political arena. As such, his victory does not reshape our analysis of how race is understood in America; it marks a repudiation of the existence of American racism itself.
"The two big losers tonight are probably Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton," said the columnist George Will after Obama won in Iowa.
"Those who have a sort of investment in the traditional and, I believe, utterly exhausted narrative about race relations in the United States."
On CNN Ronald Reagan's drug tsar, Will Bennett, claimed Obama "has taught the black community you don't have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don't have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. Great dignity. And this is a breakthrough."
In truth, their comments really show that one of the few things that has not changed in the past 20 years is their backward and self-serving analysis of racial politics.
"Men make their own history," wrote Karl Marx in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. "But they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances directly encountered and inherited from the past."
Jackson emerged from the civil rights movement at around the time Obama started school. His trajectory was classic for a black politician who came of age in the 60s.
He rose through religion and entered the political stage from the left. His campaign was rooted in the black community (he won 98% of the black vote in New York City).
But for it to be viable he had to create a constituency - of union workers, anti-nuclear campaigners, feminists, farmers, Latinos and gay activists - that had not previously existed.
"You were bringing people together who had never been together before," a Jackson adviser, Bob Borosage, told Marshall Frady in his book Jesse.
"There wasn't any inheritance so you had to do it almost literally union hall by union hall."
By the time Obama came of age, there was no civil rights movement to emerge from and few union halls to go to.
But thanks to the gains of the civil rights era he could attend the nation's best universities (Columbia and Harvard) and get a fantastic job.
With no roots in the black politics - the soil was too barren for anything beyond community organising - he emerged from academe. Politically speaking, he was not produced by the black community, but presented to it.
In this respect, Obama shares a great deal with a number of black politicians of his generation who have come to the fore in recent years.
Among them are the Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick (Harvard); the Newark mayor, Cory Booker (Yale); the Democratic Leadership Council chair and former Tennessee congressman, Harold Ford Jr (University of Pennsylvania); and the Maryland lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown (Harvard).
Obama's trajectory is not the rule; but nowadays it is by no means an exception.
By the time these forty-somethings entered the political stage, there was little of the left actually left.
The union movement had been decimated alongside the industries that provided most of their activists. Many of the small farmers had foreclosed.
The feminist and civil rights movements had withered. In short, the forces that made a Jackson candidacy viable are themselves scarcely viable.
Obama has himself created a new constituency that is expanding the Democratic base, just like Jackson did.
Its roots are not in race, class or single issues but age and ideology. The bulk of his support comes from young, independent white voters and middle-class blacks.
In all of this, beyond some civil rights references, race is virtually absent from his message but central to his meaning. He doesn't have to bring it up because not only does he espouse change, he looks like change.
He has the role of an inadequate and ineffective balm on the long-running sore that is race in America. His victory would symbolise a great deal and change very little.
When he starts his speech, "They said this day would never come", the mostly white crowd is thinking in terms of racial history, not just electoral victory. The babies Jackson kissed 20 years ago are going to the polls.
