The Race To Erase Race
…AND WHY THE 2008 ELECTION WILL BE A LET-DOWN
By Mande Wilkes
FITSNews – August 4, 2008 – Barack Obama is like a milkshake, the frothy smoothness of which is born of his mingled genes, decades of diversity initiatives distilled in his perfectly whipped cocoa-vanilla amalgamation. And like any true amalgamation, it’s impossible to parse the ingredients, to discern the beginning of one and the end of another.
Obama’s seamless melding of his roots, thought to be the hallmark of racial fusion, is in fact the reason why he’ll never achieve the goals pinned on him by the idealists.
That’s because there’s an inconvenient truth in race and politics, namely that the achievement of those goals relies on highlighting – not downplaying – the racial divide. When such a candidate comes along, we’ll know it because black people will see their reflections in his shadow, and whites will not see theirs – precisely the opposite of Obama’s every-man, any-man effect.
In fact, Obama is the mitigated version of the voting segment he hopes to represent – toned, tony, and toned down.
Perhaps because he’s the product of miscegenation, Obama has the capacity for broad appeal – the ability to elicit that shock of recognition that is so important in politics. That broad appeal will get him elected, but it will do nothing to improve the lives of blacks.
That both whites and blacks so readily warm (swarm?) to Obama means that he’s not the man for the job, if the job is to hasten the healing of the racial scar puckering Americans’ collective skin. And make no mistake, it’s skin that we’re talking about, no matter how many times we’re admonished otherwise.
People – blacks and whites – know this intrinsically. That’s why the hum persists – that muted whisper that Obama’s “not black enough” – coded to seem like a jab at Obama’s tightly-wound persona but in actuality a nod to the fact that there is a “black enough” requirement at all.
There shouldn’t be such a requirement, of course, because every American ought to vote on a candidate’s positions as opposed to their pigmentation.
But the fact that they often don’t isn’t something that’s going to be resolved by an Obama victory or an Obama defeat.
Comments
By BMW: Blackness, Multi-Racialness-Whiteness on August 4th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
The inability to regard Mr. Obama as a human being who happens to be multi-racial genetically, and black culturally, misses the message he brings.
And the message that I hear has very little, if anything, to do with blackness, multi-racial-ness or whiteness.
The message I hear centers around leveling the economic playing field now controlled by corporate and political giants (often one and the same) and restoring dignity of the individual person.
When Mr. Obama is elected President of the United States of America, I doubt that he will be offering a “Black State of the Union” address.
By Karl Marx on August 4th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
“The message I hear centers around leveling the economic playing field now controlled by corporate and political giants (often one and the same) and restoring dignity of the individual person.”
Yes. We must wrest the means of production away from the owners of money and hand it to the working man.
By CL on August 4th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
The idea that there is some kind of shadowy boogeyman (e.g. corporate giants) responsible for all our ills is as old as civilization. Ask yourself, would you be comfortable with this statement if you substituted “corporate and political giants” with “Jews”? I should hope not. But I think this little thought experiment reveals how sinister and dishonest the fearmongering of populist politicians truly is.
The fact of the matter is that corporations create jobs and wealth, and are part of the unprecedented wealth and prosperity of this country. It is also a fact that big corporations love government regulation of their industries because they can afford the compliance costs (which are passed on to the consumers) while smaller competitors cannot. Obama’s talk about reigning in corporations is music to a CEO’s ears.
By Barry M on August 4th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Oh Mande,
Well you wrote and you left my brain empty
And I’d send you away, oh Mande
Your ideas are insane and mistaken
Please stop it today, oh Mande.
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