I've been meaning to blog on the discourse surrounding Obama's mixedness for a while, but since I'm not quite sure about what I think at this point, I just kind of want to think outloud and hear what you guys think.
What bothers me most about the whole thing is this assumption that the US is black and white. First of all, it's just not true and it ignores so much about the complexity of our history. Secondly, I think the black/white dichotomy is perfectly in line with reductionist ways of thinking which is why everything is us/them, republican/democrat, etc and it ends up just being rhetorical and getting in the way of the actual issues that need to be dealt with. Thirdly, the white/black dichotomy is often conflated with a rich/poor dichotomy that then associates blackness with poverty and everything that goes along with it (drugs, crime, prison, etc), which, aside from just being way too simplistic, essentially reinforces stereotypes, mostly cuz they're not just stereotypes, its more or less true that poverty is closely tied with crime and low education levels and unemployability, but when black=poor then we forget that black people arent the problem, its actually poverty that we have to deal with. (which is why as of now i think im opposed to race-based affirmative action because its way too superficial and doesn't address actual problems, though it pretends to.)
Anyway, back to Obama. A recent NY times article says, "But while many whites embrace Mr. Obama’s melting pot background, it remains profoundly unsettling for some blacks who argue that he is distant from the struggles and cultural identities of most black Americans." I'm going to try to articulate my problem with this...it's something i thought a lot about last year when i was writing this paper on the use of "race" and "ethnicity" boxes on US census/govt forms, and I found this woman who was trying super hard to get them to create a "multiracial" box (which they've done in GA, but im not sure where else) and basically her explanation for it was that she didn't want her mixed daughter to have to say she was black at all. So my problem is how blackness has been, and continues to be constructed and reinforced as basically the worst thing you can be. Not that mixed people should have to identify as black (I'm all for the "check all that apply"), but it really upsets me that people have developed soooo many ways to distinguish themselves from blackness ("acting white", "talking white", colin powell saying "I ain't that black", calling Barak "colorless", "you're not really black", the list goes on...) because even tho it might work for some people, it still reinforces the black/white dichotomy, though maybe with more exceptions, but the bottom line is that until its not seen as some kind of freak accident that Barak considers himself black AND smart, this dichtomy is still going to exist and it's going to continue to be just as harmful.
And when I say harmful, I don't just mean for people's own little identity crises (which are important, but in the scheme of things not that huge of a deal), but more importantly I think focusing on "race" diffuses concern for actual issues, and by actually issues I mean the real issues that divide societies, and by that of course I mean capitalism. Ok, let me slow down.
I think being in South Africa is making me think about this a lot differently. Mostly because apartheid was not just about racism, it was about socialism! So apparently, the point of apartheid was to cater to the white poor/working class and the way they did that was to basically eliminate black people from any kind of labor competition. So what this shows is that we can't dismiss these things as racism, because they just used the idea of race to draw distinctions between segments of the labor force, and color was an easy way to do that.
Ok, so let me try to relate this back to Obama. basically all I have to say is that although it'd be cool to have a mixed president, mainly his policies are good and take a reasonable stance on workforce development (which we talked a lot about in my child support task for last semester), and he recognizes the distinction between poverty and minorities, plus all of his rhetoric is about not sticking to the status quo and thinking beyond the dichotomies and dualities that have been constructed.
so yeah...ill stop now. but i want to hear what you guys think about anything I said, or the article i was talking about http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/politics/02obama.html?ex=1328072400&en=38b60b4769f06eb6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
but basically my thesis/conclusion is that talk about "race" just distracts people from real inequality and where it comes from and how to deal with it, and talk about whether barak is black enough or not does the same thing and divides people along ridiculous lines instead of thinking about his policies and what they'll actually do for people.
:)
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1 comment:
yaay I love your rant and it's true and I agree with everything you said.
I also think though, that theres a key difference between black as a cultural identity/group and "black" as a social identity/construction. I put the latter in quotes because like you suggested, it's the "black" that conflates social problems and cultural identity and thereby demonized the black population in the U.S. by suggesting that race is the cause of poverty or violence and are a bad influence and are a cause of crime etc. I especially see that mode of discourse represented in spatial issues, like the notion of "white flight" and social issues such as Affirmative Action, which has its own problems and I've always kind of had a problem with it but never knew enough about race relations to rant about it.
Like you said, the real issues are poverty, worker's rights and social welfare, the lack of which have disempowered the black community since the end of time, it seems.
In a way also though, I think the fact that Obama is very specific about his heritage and the fact that he doesn't hide his mixedness is what has allowed "white" (remember my "" are to indicate social identities and constructions) voters as a whole to divorce Obama's identity as a politician from the "black" identity that might otherwise hurt him, because of the negative social stereotypes that have grown up around "blackness" and which have lead to the confusion between class and race. Paradoxically, I think this is also related to the hostility that Barak has faced among some black voters who claim he is not "black" enough, because that same hostility results from a confusion of the two categories I'm talking about - black the culture, and "black" the social identity.
I have more to say but I'm just going to put it in a different post because it's a tangent
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