While I think Barack Obama has done a good job walking the tightrope of racial politics in America, I get the feeling that he is heavily constrained by racism and racial stereotypes. This was one of my reactions to the now famous speech–it is always important to think about what is, and is NOT being said. For the record, I think the speech was good as a political speech, but as a speech about race in American it was so heavily constrained by the politics of racism that there were some important points that Obama omitted. Furthermore, the reactions to the speech steer discussion in some unfortunate directions, which is where most of my critique lies. Now before anybody gets upset at me for saying this, I don’t blame Obama for the subsequent discussion of his speech. My critiques are not about the man as an individual, they are about racism and racial politics in America.
Let me start with some things I agreed with and liked about the speech. Obama (and the speech writers because I’m sure there were some) asserted that we don’t talk openly and honestly about race in America. I think that is true–people either tend to deny the realities of racism and or they exaggerate, stereotype, or misrepresent when it comes to our differences.
I also agree that history has created a great deal of racial baggage that we carry around with us as people. Moreover, there is an acknowledgement in the “speech on race” that these effects linger in the form of institutional racism. Check out these few paragraphs (I referenced the text from Daily Kos.):
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination – where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
With the exception of the comment about welfare policy, which echoes Ronald Regan, I think these are pretty bold statements for a politician to make. Of course, they are not quite as bold when they are framed as products of past discrimination rather than products of both past and present discrimination, but given the conservative nature of political discourse, I can live with it.
A Few Critiques of the Speech and Reactions to It
The comment about Obama’s white grandmother has been pulled apart and parsed by pundits, most of whom don’t have a clue about the dynamics of interracial families. Later, in discussing this speech Obama described his grandmother as the “typical white person” and the same pundits went crazy. These pundits expect people to be racially consistent and they cringe at the idea of whiteness being discussed in any way that is not exceptional1. In the pundits’ minds, people can’t change their racial views over time, and they can’t hold contradictory views. In reality, that’s exactly how people are when it comes to race. I highly suspect that Obama’s grandmother is typical of most whites in her generation–they grew up with racial segregation both legalized and informal segregation as the norm and didn’t much question it. Furthermore, intermarriage was illegal in many states during the much of his grandmother’s lifetime. Although Obama has never spoken about his white grandparents reaction to his parents marriage and his birth, we know from surveys that during the early 1970s the vast majority of whites opposed interracial marriage and this opposition was still very strong even into the 1990s, when whites were asked about a family member intermarrying. So it would be the least bit surprising if she had negative views of interracial relationships and black people. It’s pretty clear that, like many white relatives of interracial couples and biracial people, Obama’s grandmother loved him and cared for him, and she held stereotypical views of black men. That should not be hard to believe because it is the norm in many mixed race families, and in many people in general.
What bothered me about this part of the speech and the subsequent discussion of the racial dynamics of Obama’s family life is that I got the distinct impression that the underlying message Obama and some of his supporters were trying to convey was, “Hey, don’t forget; I’m/he’s white too” or “I’m/he’s not as black as you think I am/he is.” To me that was a really sad revelation about the current state of racial politics in this country.
What made this worse was when it devolved into a common stereotype of mixed race people that I have discussed in the past (here and in papers I have presented at conferences). The myth involves the belief that mixed race people are 1) signs of progress and 2) potential saviors who will somehow liberate us from racism because they understand “both worlds.” On numerous occasions, people have treated Obama in this way. They have viewed his mixed race heritage as something that bestows him with supernatural abilities, specifically the ability to transcend race and heal old racial wounds. Having a mixed race family doesn’t not necessarily give an individual a special understanding of race, and being monoracial doesn’t preclude someone from being able to united diverse groups and develop an understanding of what it is like to be from “another race.”
I don’t totally blame Obama for reminding people that his mother is white–that is politics. Obviously, his campaign thinks it will help him, and they are probably right about that. I just don’t like the handful of narratives that we have developed about interracial families and mixed race people. While the old narratives about tragic mulattos, the one drop rule, and sexually adventurous interracial couples are misguided, some of our new narratives–“the best of both worlds” and “the supernatural biracial uniter” are also misguided.
In the next post on the Obama speech, I’ll address two other problems I had with the speech and the reactions to it. The 2 critiques/points are related to the following points 1) Are white “resentments” and black “anger” really equivalents? Does the two way street anaology really work? 2) Why does “Working Class” mean white in our political discourse? And what does it say that we single out white working class resentment (racism)?
- Do you think they would have been mad if he described her as the “exceptional white person” rather than the “typical white person”? [↩]
I, too, am troubled by the “working class” = “white” or (almost as insidious) “blue collar.” The obvious connotations include the assumption that if you’re on the lower end of the income scale and you’re not white then you’re not working.
As far as characterizing his grandmother as a “typical white person” – how far would I get taking any particular black person I knew and representing their views as those of a “typical black person”? Or the views of any homosexual I knew as those of a “typical gay”? Obama talks about getting beyond race and stereotypes, but plunged into them with both feet when he needed to get out of some trouble.
Speaking of which: I thought that Sen. Obama did a tremendous job of answering a question that no one asked; “Why is my pastor a paranoid racist?” He also did a tremendous job of ducking the question that was on the minds of just about everybody I talked to: “Why did I seek spiritual guidance for myself and my children from a paranoid racist pastor?” Was Obama there when Rev. Wright took off on America after 9/11? Were his kids there when Rev. Wright held forth that the AIDS virus was created by the U.S. government to destroy blacks in America? I don’t know. But even if he wasn’t, word about stuff like this gets around in a parish pretty quickly to the people who weren’t there. And I doubt these were two isolated incidents. Of all the black pastors in Chicago (for those of you who don’t live out here; lots), why keep going to a guy like this? How about taking your kids to listen to someone who does good work in the community and DOESN’T spread nonsense like this?
Oh, sure. A guy who writes comic books is complaining about bestowing people with supernatural abilities. Yeah, that’s real credible.
Bjartmarr, You need to read more closely because I posted this one, not Amp.
Ah, dang, there goes my joke.
I don’t suppose you write comic books too?
RonF,
I’d say that you can indeed talk about a “typical” Black person. You can talk about how a typical Black person would have to deal with a bunch of racist bullshit, from being stopped by cops for no reason, to having trouble getting a cab in New York, to having to face subtle racism in the workplace. People do it all the time. In fact, Obama did it in his speech. Not every Black person has had to face every single instance of racism he mentioned in his speech, but it happens often enough to enough people that those experiences are “typical”.
Assuming that every single Black person has had the *exact* same experiences and reacts to it the *exact* same way is where you run into problems.
RonF:
I dunno. Was McCain there when the televangelists who back him took off on America after 9/11?
As for the post itself…
I kind of don’t know that it’s fair to critique Obama for brining up his white family. Dude’s biracial, he was raised by the white half of his family. It informs his perspective. I’m not sure there’s any way to talk about being biracial and have it *not* sound like you’re ‘not like those OTHER black people’. Being biracial is not really a narrative of Blackness that anyone’s really been willing to talk about as being anything other than a tragedy until recently.
I guess I see where you’re coming from since the whole controversy basically boiled down to “See! He is like all those scary Black people!” So doing anything but saying that Rev. Wright is a total nutjob who he never liked and will never speak to again is pretty much saying “No I’m not!”
Biracial people have always had magical powers. It used to be that we were going to destroy civilization with our very births. Now we’re going to bring people to a magical land filled with ponies and racial harmony.
Was McCain there when the televangelists who back him took off on America after 9/11?
No, he wasn’t. He doesn’t go to their church(es).
There’s a difference between “Robert Hayes, who has many objectionable opinions, supports John McCain for President” and “Robert Hayes, who has many objectionable opinions, has been a mentor to John McCain for twenty years.”
One is me liking him better than any of the alternatives (not much, in this case) – and he has zero culpability for anything that I say or do. (“I regret that Mr. Hayes believes the Albanian people to be subhuman monsters, and I strongly disagree with his call for their deportation to the moons of Saturn as slave labor. However, he has a right to vote for whom he likes, and I will take his vote if I need it in order to win.”)
The other is me and him being in a mutual relationship, in which case he DOES have to explain why he continues to take advice and counsel from an Albanian-deporting monster like myself.
Cola, there’s a difference between “a typical black person has these things happen to them” and “a typical black person thinks [or feels] …” Only one requires mind reading.
i totally agree about the troubling new myths about interacial people.
1) a sign of progress… towards what?
both i, and my white friend, have independently had the thought that someday everyone in America will be brown, and that a beige interracial population will be the end of racism.
But making everyone interracial is not the same as getting rid of social prejudice against black people.
2) multiracial uniter myth
racism doesn’t get to decide who’s most effective at fighting it. MLK (obviously) didn’t have to be interracial to deploy civil rights effectively against it.
I was disappointed that he had to use his grandmother’s race as some sort of racial “proof” or assurance he wasn’t racist. What are we? 18th century dectives looking to his race for evidence of the rationality of his decision to support rev. wright? Yes, if a white person could sit in wright’s congregation, it means something. It means more if Obama can explain it to us, which he did, however hard it is so summarize another man’s body of thoughts created over 20(?) years time on a complicated situation in a context unfamiliar to many who don’t attend black churches.
— maybe pulling the white grandma card was more succinct.
.
Let’s not forget that a number of Blacks (mainly descended from slaves), Native Americans and Latin@s are already interracial (or interracially descended if you want to split hairs) to begin with (and not always by choice), which also debunks that stupid myth.
I believe certain patterns of language are acceptable when applied to traditionally advantaged people but not when applied to traditionally disadvantaged people. It reminds me of that time when I saw a group of friends in wheelchairs at the community center making jokes about the able-bodied people around them. The reverse situation would have been unthinkable. I do think “typical white person” is a more acceptable phrase than “typical black person”. Is this a useful asymmetry when we talk about race? I don’t know, but I do know it’s common, and that Obama is not alone in this.
I can understand people who say “Obama is a presidential candidate, and should thus be more careful with his words”. I don’t consider “if Obama is so transformational and god-like, why does he make mistakes like other people? Whatever happened to hope?” to be a credible argument. I’m sorry your own candidate is not considered inspirational.
Rachel, I’ll go you one better. Veneration of biracial people is actually the common cover for polite, yuppie racism. Since they’re Not Racists, they must like some of the Others. Ooh, which ones, gotta pick fast… I know! The ones who have some white in them.
I believe certain patterns of language are acceptable when applied to traditionally advantaged people but not when applied to traditionally disadvantaged people. It reminds me of that time when I saw a group of friends in wheelchairs at the community center making jokes about the able-bodied people around them. The reverse situation would have been unthinkable. I do think “typical white person” is a more acceptable phrase than “typical black person”. Is this a useful asymmetry when we talk about race? I don’t know, but I do know it’s common, and that Obama is not alone in this.
Well, I don’t think it’s acceptable. If it’s unacceptable to stereotype one race, it’s unacceptable to stereotype any race. It’s also just as inaccurate. You’re right, Obama’s not alone in this. It’s common to all racists. In fact, it’s one of their defining characteristics.
On the contrary, the most racist people are actually those who are least likely to follow this unspoken rule. The average person I meet is willing to make jokes and generalizations about white people that they wouldn’t make about black people. KKK members have no such reservations. Your statement could be true, in the “all people have some racism in them” kind of way, but if your statement was yet another attempt to slime Obama, this time accusing him of being more racist than average, then make that claim yourself rather than pretending it follows from my comments.
From the tactics I’ve seen displayed so far in this primary season, Clinton takes the cake with her willingness to use race-baiting tactics. For McCain, I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to a man who once lost a candidacy due to the most sinister race-baiting ploy in recent memory.
Just out of curiosity, Ron, do you think it is just as wrong for people in wheelchairs to crack jokes about everyone else as it is for able-bodied people to crack jokes about people in wheelchairs? Many here have stated that racism is the sum of prejudice plus a top-down power differential. I agree with the basic principle. I don’t believe Black people are quite as disadvantaged as people in wheelchairs, but I believe the same idea applies to an extent – certainly for me, the comment “substitute [random comment about white people] with ‘black’, and you’d never say it” elicits agreement in some cases, a big yawn in others. What’s your take?
As far as I’m concerned, to characterize his grandmother as a “typical white woman” because of her particular attitudes towards black men is just as racist as to characterize someone as a “typical black man” because of some attitude that particular person may have towards white people.
Many here have stated that racism is the sum of prejudice plus a top-down power differential. I agree with the basic principle.
I don’t. I disagree that racism = predjudice + power. Racism is predjudice on the basis of race. What power the racist has to act on the object of his or her racism certainly changes the consequences of their racism, but a lack of any power to act on the object of their racism doesn’t make them non-racist.
Just out of curiosity, Ron, do you think it is just as wrong for people in wheelchairs to crack jokes about everyone else as it is for able-bodied people to crack jokes about people in wheelchairs?
The same thing goes for any “-ism” based on predjudice against someone on whatever basis. So my answer to this question is “yes”. It’s certainly understandable and human, but it’s wrong nonetheless.