Why Does This Man Make Me Uncomfortable?
09/12/07 07:34
At first, I thought he was in it for 2012 or later. Frankly, I didn't imagine Americans would cast a vote for president for any candidate of any color who had as little national experience as Obama. I thought the press would kill him on that issue alone. I grossly misread his appeal. I had acknowledged the Reaganesque qualities of his candidacy--the reliance on vision and charisma vs. policy, but I truly thought that the experience issue would be a killer blow.
However, I see the speeches and watch the news reports and fail to see what so many others see in him. I read breathless hosannas to him suggesting that he will transform the world by simply showing his face, that he will bring back the true spirit of the 60's, and my jaw drops. I just don't see it. I see a very bright, promising politician with the chops of a good talk show host who has learned to co-opt the language of the motivational speaker for the political realm, which is huge, for that is language that America reads as "authentic" and "uplifting." It is the language in which folks like Suze Ormon and Oprah Winfrey are utterly fluent. However, it's a language I, as a marketing executive by trade, have always found hollow. It usually places the speaker at the center of your betterment. You are not the focus, nor is the end result. The speaker is. You become the passive recipient of the speaker's knowledge and wisdom (usually personal, not professional or academic), through which you will make a better you.
M.J. Rosenthal suggests that Obama refreshes the promise of Bobby Kennedy. But back then, folks weren't sitting at Starbucks musing about some vague notion of change. They were in the streets demanding and working toward the specifics of it. Kennedy did not offer himself as the vessel through which we could achieve our unspoken desires. He offered himself as the agent of the desires we had shouted to the rooftops.
Perhaps Obama is the answer for a society that trends toward the voyeuristic--the reality show, the celebrity obsession, etc... yearning for something, yet detached from any means of achieving it. Just as George Bush provided us a war without sacrifice, Obama promises movement without the huff and grunt of a push. All we have to do is cast a vote, and he'll take care of the rest. Kenneth Bear writes, "Also to Obama’s credit, the speech is much more about the audience, and less about him – “I believe in you” is his explanation for why he decided to run." However, "I believe in you" just leaves the rest of the sentence unspoken, which is "to vote for me." The motivational speaker's solipsism does seem to be there. It's just a few unspoken words below the surface. And I can't tell you how many speeches I've seen and helped executives write that drool all over the audience in similar ways while designed specifically to burnish the exec. The common purpose around which he lauds his audience for coming is... himself. There seems to be no other interpretation. He IS change. It is his brand.
Perhaps, also, I just don't see the value in "bringing us together." Black, gay and Afro-American (the American descendant of African slaves), I have always watched a country grossly divided on the issues of my very existence. I have no room for those who expressly or tacitly display contempt for me and suggest that my life and rights are less valuable than theirs. I don't wish to be "brought together" with them. And I don't believe that Barack Obama or anybody else can change them. I don't foresee their success in changing me, either.
Perhaps that means I don't have "hope." If the definition of hope is that the divisions which have marked this country throughout its history will suddenly disappear through the force of an individual personality, as opposed to through the willingness of masses of people to do massive amounts of work, then I have none, and stand glad of it, for that, to me, is not hope. It is fantasy.
I'm sure I am not the voter Obama is seeking. He may know his audience extremely well, far better than I, who cringe at reality shows and find motivational speakers and game show hosts who promise enormous return for precious little effort quite creepy.
Perhaps in today's America, it takes a motivational speaker to compel people to do the work for a change the specifics of which they can't yet articulate. Perhaps. But I will continue watching the Obama phenomenon with fascination. I don't believe that anyone has yet come close to getting to the bottom of it.
3 Fears on Obama
05/12/07 10:47
I
am one of those black folks about whom Village
pundits like Juan Williams whine. I am
Afro-American, yet I am not a rabid Obama
supporter. I have not yet picked a Democractic
candidate, and I admit that Obama raises fears in
me, and has a tendency to rub me the wrong way.
First fear: White reaction to Obama often disgusts me. There was a quote from one Iowa voter who supported him as a way of congratulating him for believing in whites -- that they would vote for a black man for President. We have Chris Matthews--the whitest white man alive--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."
This slice of white Americans, in their support for Obama, tacitly express contempt for those like me, those of Afro-American culture--the American descendants of African slaves. Because America's behavior toward us rightly discomfits them, they laud as savior a man of color who has no congenital connection to us. This allows them to maintain their levels discomfort and/or contempt, yet prove their freedom from racism.
I believe it is fair to say that Andrew Sullivan, champion of The Bell Curve and its eugenicist antecedents, holds such contempt. Yet, he pens a paeon in the Atlantic Monthly painting Obama as the second coming. You see, Obama is simply showing us that it's not so much our skin color that frightens and discomfits America, it's her treatment toward us--treatment that still perverts her image in her own mirror. America has not forgiven us for consistently reminding her of her past actions. (Our very existence and our attachment to our history suffice). Obama is, in this sense, just proof of that.
How whites perceive him is only partially under Obama's control. Thus far, he's simply ignored the distinction that's presented between him, a "good negro" and the "bad negroes" or Afro-Americans (American descendants of African slaves) who pale by comparison. Does he embrace this outlook, or is he willingly to tacitly accept it? I don't know.
Secondly: Obama has never run a campaign against a viable, well-financed, legitimate Republican candidate. He has never run, much less won state or national office against a white Republican. That means that he and his campaign machine have never been tested against the Republican machine. Say what you will about Edwards and Clinton, we know what the Right has to throw at them. We've seen the mud. It's been liberally flung (pun intended).
We don't know how Republicans will attempt to capitalize on Obama's color, his record, or his background. More importantly, we don't know how he'll handle it. I'm a marketing consultant, and I sincerely believe that I could devise ads that would make Obama look, in the eyes of many a mainstream white voter, like a spear carrying Mau Mau. If I could do it, so can Republicans. Will Obama's bi-racial background and skillful manipulation of the soothing Magic Negro role inure him to such attacks, or can the former be neutralized, forcing him to abandon the role to fight back? Can he remain a viable candidate outside that role?
These are all unanswered questions. Of course, anything can happen to any candidate, but considering Rovian Republican tactics, can Democratic voters afford this many unknowns in a Presidential candidate? They ate John Kerry alive for God's sake.
Finally, Obama himself gives me pause. His insistence that he can bring us all together is, of course, a major aspect of his candidacy. How, though, do you "bring together" a Republican congressional caucus with an ideological fixation on 1920s style laissez-faire economic policies, and a Democratic majority who believes that regulation is necessary to protect ordinary Americans? How do you "bring together" a vocal conservative Christian faction who insists that creationism be taught alongside the scientific principle of evolution? How do you bring together a Republican right who believes that the 4th Amendment needs shelving, and that any American can be locked up indefinitely, without charges, without trial? I don't know how that's done. I do know, however, that in order to try, you have to accept that there is merit in the aforementioned right wing positions. That's what his protection and embrace of the homophobic pastor Donnie McClurkin suggests. I do not believe there's validity in their positions--any more than they believe there's merit in mine. In a war of ideas, you can't fight on both sides.
First fear: White reaction to Obama often disgusts me. There was a quote from one Iowa voter who supported him as a way of congratulating him for believing in whites -- that they would vote for a black man for President. We have Chris Matthews--the whitest white man alive--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."
This slice of white Americans, in their support for Obama, tacitly express contempt for those like me, those of Afro-American culture--the American descendants of African slaves. Because America's behavior toward us rightly discomfits them, they laud as savior a man of color who has no congenital connection to us. This allows them to maintain their levels discomfort and/or contempt, yet prove their freedom from racism.
I believe it is fair to say that Andrew Sullivan, champion of The Bell Curve and its eugenicist antecedents, holds such contempt. Yet, he pens a paeon in the Atlantic Monthly painting Obama as the second coming. You see, Obama is simply showing us that it's not so much our skin color that frightens and discomfits America, it's her treatment toward us--treatment that still perverts her image in her own mirror. America has not forgiven us for consistently reminding her of her past actions. (Our very existence and our attachment to our history suffice). Obama is, in this sense, just proof of that.
How whites perceive him is only partially under Obama's control. Thus far, he's simply ignored the distinction that's presented between him, a "good negro" and the "bad negroes" or Afro-Americans (American descendants of African slaves) who pale by comparison. Does he embrace this outlook, or is he willingly to tacitly accept it? I don't know.
Secondly: Obama has never run a campaign against a viable, well-financed, legitimate Republican candidate. He has never run, much less won state or national office against a white Republican. That means that he and his campaign machine have never been tested against the Republican machine. Say what you will about Edwards and Clinton, we know what the Right has to throw at them. We've seen the mud. It's been liberally flung (pun intended).
We don't know how Republicans will attempt to capitalize on Obama's color, his record, or his background. More importantly, we don't know how he'll handle it. I'm a marketing consultant, and I sincerely believe that I could devise ads that would make Obama look, in the eyes of many a mainstream white voter, like a spear carrying Mau Mau. If I could do it, so can Republicans. Will Obama's bi-racial background and skillful manipulation of the soothing Magic Negro role inure him to such attacks, or can the former be neutralized, forcing him to abandon the role to fight back? Can he remain a viable candidate outside that role?
These are all unanswered questions. Of course, anything can happen to any candidate, but considering Rovian Republican tactics, can Democratic voters afford this many unknowns in a Presidential candidate? They ate John Kerry alive for God's sake.
Finally, Obama himself gives me pause. His insistence that he can bring us all together is, of course, a major aspect of his candidacy. How, though, do you "bring together" a Republican congressional caucus with an ideological fixation on 1920s style laissez-faire economic policies, and a Democratic majority who believes that regulation is necessary to protect ordinary Americans? How do you "bring together" a vocal conservative Christian faction who insists that creationism be taught alongside the scientific principle of evolution? How do you bring together a Republican right who believes that the 4th Amendment needs shelving, and that any American can be locked up indefinitely, without charges, without trial? I don't know how that's done. I do know, however, that in order to try, you have to accept that there is merit in the aforementioned right wing positions. That's what his protection and embrace of the homophobic pastor Donnie McClurkin suggests. I do not believe there's validity in their positions--any more than they believe there's merit in mine. In a war of ideas, you can't fight on both sides.