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Sunday, February 11th, 2007 05:40 pm
Okay, lately there's been this big stupid argument about whether Barack Obama is black.

If this argument were taking place in an academic context, and being used deliberately to highlight the nuances of American racism and caste structure, I would be pleased as punch. This is obviously the sort of thing you can use to illuminate the parameters of categories, and the force of the verbs and nouns and adjectives that make the categories, that arise from and maintain and challenge and transform them. Okay fine.

However.

What's happening is that, since Barack Obama has a conceivable chance of winning the election, there are those who want to discredit him any way they can (I reserve judgement myself as to whether I actually want to vote for him in the primary until maybe November or so. I would have said next year, but primary insanity is welling in California and they're talking about moving our primary again, from April to February: but that's based on what he does in the next few months and on who else is running. If he makes it through the primary, I'll certainly vote for him in November next year). So you get repeated misspellings of his name (Osama for Obama): you get emphasis on his very-common middle name Hussein: you get proclamations that Al-Qaeda wants Barack Obama elected: and now you get "he's not black, he doesn't share the experience of slavery."

Garbage.

Look, Colin Powell is black by American definitions, and he shares the experience of slavery, and he's evil and I wouldn't vote for him. Condoleeza Rice is a woman, and she's black, and she shares the experience of slavery, she even has one of those stereotypical weird names that black families like to give to their daughters, and she's evil and I wouldn't vote for her. I'm not choosing my candidates by their ethnic identity any more than I'm choosing them by their sex, or where they went to college, or what state they come from.

When we talk about wanting more black candidates, more Hispanic candidates, more women candidates, more everything underrepresented candidates, we're talking about wanting the conditions that create these things. We're not -- or I'm not, and I hope the rest of us are not -- engaging in magical thinking, that if you just get the right color or the right genitalia or whatever in to office, your problems are over. We think that the kind of politics that gives you a viable candidate with ties to these communities is the kind of politics that might just get us somewhere and might just keep us from self-destructing before we get a handle on our long-term survival needs.

Barack Obama'a attraction does not arise from the color of his skin. It arises from his connections, who he's beholded to and who he's not beholden to, and his promise. I certainly hope that people don't engage in this argument for long. It's dumb and irrelevant.


The real challenge is: will Barack Obama make the right things happen? Will he work with the real progressives in his party? Will he vote right in the next few months? Will he stand with the grassroots (and not just passively accept their support while courting the same-old, same-old DLC guys)?
Monday, February 12th, 2007 02:13 am (UTC)
To sing right back at the choir, I would welcome strong voting support for Barack as a sign that the American people are a community who can be accepting of diversity. I don't think that a person's skin color or genetalia are connected to his or her comptency or judgement as President except in conditions where culture or voting pressure grant those concepts political sway.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 02:17 am (UTC)
If Barack is who I decide on for the primary, I will make noise on his behalf, I will walk precincts, I will make phone calls, as much as I hate to have anything to do with a phone.

Which is why I'm giving myself only till fall to decide, instead of waiting until after the New Year.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 02:42 am (UTC)
Delete this as too mundane if you like, but....

Hillary has a chance to win in November 2008. Does anyone really think Obama has a chance to win November 2008?

If Obama waits till Nov 2016, doesn't his chance improve, regardless of who is in the White House in the meantime?

I see it like playing bridge. Lead with the Ace (Hillary) and take 2008. Then the King (Obama) is still available for 2016.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 04:32 am (UTC)
Well, obviously, this assumes Hillary can win in 2008. Are you really that confident of her electability?
Monday, February 12th, 2007 04:59 am (UTC)
I think her chances in Nov are much better than Obama's.

For one thing, the press is touting Obama now. But if he wins the nomination, then will be time for the GOP to start smearing him. They're holding off now to give him time to push Hillary out, or at least damage her chances, imo. The same GOP people that supported Nader.



Monday, February 12th, 2007 06:09 am (UTC)
I don't believe in the "electability" standard that says that the more right-wing a Democrat is, the more electable. I think Hillary has a great handicap in the conditions created by the 2006 elections: that is, she voted early and late for Bush's war: she refuses even now to take responsibility for her votes on the war: she refuses to come out and say, clearly and without compromise, that she is committed to peace. When it comes to domestic issues, she's just not strong enough. What 2006 showed is that, while it is still possible for fake Democrats to get elected here and there, being a Republican under the mask is not a requisite or a guarantee for election. I'm really unlikely to vote for her in a primary, but of course I would vote for her in November.

Obama seems to have heard that, though he's not paying close enough attention to the secular mood that is growing in response to the abuses of the religionists.

But all of this will be moot if Congress doesn't act, right now, strongly, tirelessly: because there is a strong chance that there will be no election in November 2008.

I do think that if we see an impeachment, we're less likely to lose the whole Constitution.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 06:55 am (UTC)
[[ of course I would vote for her in November. ]]

It's not just a matter of who is further left/right. Hillary has the money and what some are calling the 'machine', which will be important in Nov. If Obama got the nomination, she might sit this out and save her money for 2012.

Aside from Carter (kind of a fluke), Bill Clinton was the only Dem to get the White House in /howmany/ decades, and a second term and great ratings while being impeached. A third and fourth term for the Clinton team might get the voting process cleaned up and make 2016 safe for Obama.:-)

Monday, February 12th, 2007 07:40 am (UTC)
This kind of thinking is why we've had little national Democratic success in the last twenty-odd years. If you think Carter was a fluke, and Clinton's second term was a happy accident, you're missing the actual politics part of politics.

This is the kind of thinking: "we should be more like Republicans, because they win."

But Democrats can't win by being Republicans. Republicans have a lock on being Republicans.

And I think the thing I'm looking at is not the difference between being left and being right -- I'd be delighted if that was the difference I was offered, now and then -- but the difference between being anything honest and being whatever the market seems to be asking for.

As ambitious and calculating and self-promoting as Hillary is, I don't think she'll withhold a thing from the Democratic Party even if she doesn't get the nomination. I think she'll do what it takes to win.

I'm not a particular fan of Obama at this stage. I'm still hoping for a candidate I can embrace wholeheartedly, at least for the primary. And in the primary I will vote for whoever really says and does what a Democratic candidate should say and do. In the November election, I'll vote for the Democrat.

I've only been a party-line voter since 2000 (I voted for Clinton both times, but not as a party-line voter). Hell, I haven't been a Democrat much longer than that. I was Peace and Freedom for a long while.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 07:50 am (UTC)
I'm saying the Clintons' 8 years in office was NOT an accident: they were doing something right. We may not know what they did, but it worked, so I'm betting on them to do a good job of getting elected again. (And once in, they did a good job on quite a few things in the 90s.)


Monday, February 12th, 2007 06:07 am (UTC)
What's "shares the experience of slavery" code for? Because it sure isn't directly true of any of them. Does it maybe mean "grew up poor and black in America" or some such? Or delete the "poor"?
Monday, February 12th, 2007 06:22 am (UTC)
I don't think it means "grew up poor." I think it means "belongs to the black caste." This is Ann Coulter speaking, mind. Anything she says is going to be vile in some way or another. Anyway, I think the idea is that slavery is the defining characteristic of blackness in America, and therefore of every true black person. Except that, if a person actually ran that way -- "I am the descendant of slaves and my platform derives from my consciousness of this" -- these same people would be scandalized.

I also saw on TV today some idiot saying that since 9/11 Jewish candidates are afraid to run as Jews, they're forced, poor dears, to run on the issues and their records. Because people aren't going to say "oh, she's a Jew, naturally she gets my vote just for that." And before they would? I thought that was bizarre. Every time I see something political on TV I feel like I'm in a Salvador Dali painting.

Monday, February 12th, 2007 01:00 pm (UTC)
I do think that it would be useful to have a term for those Americans whose ancestors were kidnapped and enslaved, which didn't also include other non-American people who have black skin but none of that context.

It would stop things like "African-American Klingon" and the problems British people with black skin have at Immigration with being forced to say they're not any kind of -American. It would also make it clearer what the issue with Affirmative Action actually is.

I'm also worried that the US Press, in promoting both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is delibarately trying to get the Democrats to run a black guy or a woman, both of whom would be unappealing to lots of middle-of-the-road people who voted for Bill Clinton but without wanting to say they were prejudiced, wouldn't be sure they'd like a woman or a black guy, and might go for the Republican instead. When elections are this close, this worries me.

Also, what is with this thing about dynasties, good gracious, the son of the last president and now the wife of the last president? These are the best people you can find? Just coincidentally they have these connections?

I liked Dean a lot, can't you try him again?
Monday, February 12th, 2007 06:29 pm (UTC)
If what the American press is doing is promoting Obama and Clinton, I certainly hope I never see a campaign against someone.

What I actually think is the source of the big push around Obama and Clinton is that either of them might well be electable and neither of them are very challenging in terms of their actual politics.

I really think that the challenge to Democratic candidates is not that there are a lot of these voters who are off to the right of the party but who could be gotten to vote for a Democrat if it was a Republican enough Democrat.

I think -- and the statistics support me here -- the largest number of votes the Democrats lose is from voters who don't vote at all because the Democratic candidate is not distinguishable from the Republican one, or whose votes don't count because of Democratic apathy and Republican corruption. And those who fall into both categories: they don't vote because the Democrats don't protect them and the Republicans wreck their vote with several types of voter fraud, so why bother? Or who don't vote because they know the electoral college is going to take away their vote. Or because they know that their vote is trumped by corrupt deals made in low-population states early on in the primary cycle, or in states that don't even have primaries but have little oligarchical caucuses --like Iowa.

The best bet the Democrats have for winning the President ever again in this country is to confront corruption and fascism head on. Impeachment: the primary system: voter fraud: these are issues which the Democrats should be working on this moment, as hard as they can.

The stakes are considerably higher than the outcome of the 2008 election (which could, as things are going now, be the last election we have for a long time, if we have it at all).
Monday, February 12th, 2007 07:38 pm (UTC)
Your lot invented dynasties. And they have some good points. But Hillary was an equal part of the Clinton twofer that worked their way up from middleclass and lowerclass.

I think it's kind of nice that our press isn't accusing Hillary of being a stand-in for a third term for Bill. They're taking the tack that he's bad 'baggage' for her (for me, he's another reason to vote for her; twofer again).

(Anonymous)
Monday, February 12th, 2007 04:19 pm (UTC)
"Look, Colin Powell is black by American definitions, and he shares the experience of slavery, and he's evil and I wouldn't vote for him."

Back when there was talk about Powell running for President, I heard some person being interviewed on NPR say something along the lines that Powell wouldn't count as a black president if he was elected. This was supposedly because his parents were from Jamaica and so he lacked the experience of slavery.

I recall it because of the immediate bogglement I experienced, since they had slavery on Jamaica too.

Deja vu all over again.

- Captain Button
Monday, February 12th, 2007 09:08 pm (UTC)
>>"he's not black, he doesn't share the experience of slavery."<<

My English snobbery is kicking in here when I point out that technically, if you haven't been a slave yourself, you don't share the experience of slavery either, no matter what color your skin is.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 09:50 pm (UTC)
Slavery didn't end when it was outlawed. Not only did it live on in the institutions of Jim Crow: it forged the American caste system which is still very much in force.

The fact is that the caste system is communicated and enforced by color (and other things, but color is the big thing), so actually, if you grow up American and you have dark skin, at some point in your life you're going to be affected by it. You can be defended and protected from it, but you can't be shielded completely, and your experience will have that effect. Even if you are a recent immigrant. I am not here espousing a deterministic view of race: I'm just saying we are children of context, and the context of the US is that its wealth and social structure derive from slavery and expropriation, and the ripples from that basic fact reach everywhere.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 10:05 pm (UTC)
Sorry, I'm really not trying to flame. :) I just get to be a literalist stickler (at the very least) when you're talking about something as horrific as slavery. As horrible as Jim Crow and the caste system are I don't think they would match the experience of personally being enslaved--or at least I couldn't make the equivalent myself.

In my own context, for example, my life has been radically influenced by several kinds of persecution my own ancestors went through, primarily religious. I would be perfectly willing to call myself a child of religious persecution, but not say that I'd shared in it, as I've never experienced any serious (certainly not life-threatening or being exiled) persecution.

Not trying to start an argument; I just think we're on separate pages.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 10:22 pm (UTC)
No, I don't think you're flaming: I think you're discussing, and I think you're saying something interesting, which I have to think about now. There's something different about history enforced by current conditions and history that's just history. But anyway, I think we agree that the whole "did/did not share in the experience" test is garbage.
Saturday, February 17th, 2007 11:07 pm (UTC)
Yesterday's WashPost had an op-ed column called Black Like Me? which took on the Obama "authentic blackness." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/15/AR2007021501270.html)