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Obama's been running for President since early 2007, and he's been under near-constant medai scrutiny for at least the last year. He's been interviewed by everyone from Newsweek to Mountainbiker Magazine, he's appeared in a slew of debates and made endless television appearances.
Yet the GOP folks keep claiming that we don't really know who Obama is. On the one hand, there's no reason to take the GOP at face value: they know damned well who Obama is, which is why he scares them, and why they keep trying to present him to the voters as some mysterious, unknown (therefore dangerous) quantity.
For all of the GOP's insencerity in pushing the claim, I do think there's a fairly good sized chunk of the electorate that honestly doesn't feel as if they know Obama. At least, I believe that's how they explain those feelings to themselves. I think Obama is merely the focal point, however. What they really don't know, still can't understand, is black people.
In those parts of the country with few, if any, actual black people, the only exposure to black people comes from television, movies, and music (I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most residents of lily-white regions aren't snagging this month's Ebony magazine in the checkout line). We all know how narrow and distorted the depiction of black folks is in the media. If somebody isn't doing the Mantan Shuffle, they're slanging rocks and riding on 20-inch rims. Or maybe, just maybe, they're lucky enough to be that magical, "soulful" black person who saves an uptight white person (see Bagger Vance, Legend Of; Bullworth). Where does Obama fit in all of that? He doesn't.
That, I think, is the root of the strange debate among white folks regarding whether Obama is "black enough" or "too black" to be President. They have a certain paradigm in mind for black people, and Obama isn't it. So they start thinking he's not black "enough" to win. But then he daps up his wife on national television, and talks about Jay-Z and Ludacris, so maybe he's "too black" for the White House. What box to put him in? What box?
I think that there are plenty of people smart enough to realize that what they know about black people from the media is either incomplete or wrong (actually, it's both). As this campaign has gone on, I think a lot of these people may have started to realize just how little they know about black people. Hopefully, some of them are starting to wake up. Because here's the thing: just as was the case with the Cosby Show, the only way you can be surprised by the emergence of Barack Obama is if you don't know the black community.
For decades there have been black teachers, black lawyers, black doctors. During segregation, the only people who could (or would) provide such services to the black community were other black people. There were entire economies within the larger black enclaves like Harlem: restaurants, shops, offices. Black owners, black workers, black customers. When people were forbidden from going outside the community to get what they needed, the community developed, internally, the ability to provide the necessities. If you know that black lawyers have been around for 100 years, along with black doctors and black teachers (probably even further, actually), the sight of an educated, articulate black man is nothing new or surprising.
Note, I'm not waxing romantic about the days of segregation. I'm merely observing that there has been a black professional class for some time now. But that professional class has been largely invisible to the white community. That's why Claire Huxtable the lawyer and Cliff Huxtable the doctor were so noteworthy when The Cosby Show premiered. I remember distinctly people talking about how unrealistic the show was, both because of Claire and Cliff being professionals, but also because of the range of skin tones within the family. Those two observations could only ever have been made by white folks, because black folks knew better.
Some people have a hard time believing this, but I was moving up in social class when I married my wife. In my family, I'm the first and only lawyer, from the first generation where everyone went to college. Only one of my grandparents even finished high school. We're maybe 40 years out from the tennant farm and the dockyards of the Mississippi River. My wife's family, by contrast, has had doctors and lawyers for generations. That fact is no surprise to people familiar with the Creole community in New Orleans. But for people who don't know much about black folks? They can't quite wrap their heads around it. It seems strangely ironic for them, the notion that the white person in an interracial couple would be the one moving up the ladder.
My greatest hope for Obama as a leader doesn't really have to do with his economic plans, or what he will do about the war in Iraq. No, what I most want to see from him is quiet, daily evidence of how perfectly natural it is for a black man to be that intelligent, that educated, that thoughtful. He doesn't ever have to say "You see? A black man can do all of this!" He says that by doing.
It's a message that America is long overdue in hearing.
Yet the GOP folks keep claiming that we don't really know who Obama is. On the one hand, there's no reason to take the GOP at face value: they know damned well who Obama is, which is why he scares them, and why they keep trying to present him to the voters as some mysterious, unknown (therefore dangerous) quantity.
For all of the GOP's insencerity in pushing the claim, I do think there's a fairly good sized chunk of the electorate that honestly doesn't feel as if they know Obama. At least, I believe that's how they explain those feelings to themselves. I think Obama is merely the focal point, however. What they really don't know, still can't understand, is black people.
In those parts of the country with few, if any, actual black people, the only exposure to black people comes from television, movies, and music (I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most residents of lily-white regions aren't snagging this month's Ebony magazine in the checkout line). We all know how narrow and distorted the depiction of black folks is in the media. If somebody isn't doing the Mantan Shuffle, they're slanging rocks and riding on 20-inch rims. Or maybe, just maybe, they're lucky enough to be that magical, "soulful" black person who saves an uptight white person (see Bagger Vance, Legend Of; Bullworth). Where does Obama fit in all of that? He doesn't.
That, I think, is the root of the strange debate among white folks regarding whether Obama is "black enough" or "too black" to be President. They have a certain paradigm in mind for black people, and Obama isn't it. So they start thinking he's not black "enough" to win. But then he daps up his wife on national television, and talks about Jay-Z and Ludacris, so maybe he's "too black" for the White House. What box to put him in? What box?
I think that there are plenty of people smart enough to realize that what they know about black people from the media is either incomplete or wrong (actually, it's both). As this campaign has gone on, I think a lot of these people may have started to realize just how little they know about black people. Hopefully, some of them are starting to wake up. Because here's the thing: just as was the case with the Cosby Show, the only way you can be surprised by the emergence of Barack Obama is if you don't know the black community.
For decades there have been black teachers, black lawyers, black doctors. During segregation, the only people who could (or would) provide such services to the black community were other black people. There were entire economies within the larger black enclaves like Harlem: restaurants, shops, offices. Black owners, black workers, black customers. When people were forbidden from going outside the community to get what they needed, the community developed, internally, the ability to provide the necessities. If you know that black lawyers have been around for 100 years, along with black doctors and black teachers (probably even further, actually), the sight of an educated, articulate black man is nothing new or surprising.
Note, I'm not waxing romantic about the days of segregation. I'm merely observing that there has been a black professional class for some time now. But that professional class has been largely invisible to the white community. That's why Claire Huxtable the lawyer and Cliff Huxtable the doctor were so noteworthy when The Cosby Show premiered. I remember distinctly people talking about how unrealistic the show was, both because of Claire and Cliff being professionals, but also because of the range of skin tones within the family. Those two observations could only ever have been made by white folks, because black folks knew better.
Some people have a hard time believing this, but I was moving up in social class when I married my wife. In my family, I'm the first and only lawyer, from the first generation where everyone went to college. Only one of my grandparents even finished high school. We're maybe 40 years out from the tennant farm and the dockyards of the Mississippi River. My wife's family, by contrast, has had doctors and lawyers for generations. That fact is no surprise to people familiar with the Creole community in New Orleans. But for people who don't know much about black folks? They can't quite wrap their heads around it. It seems strangely ironic for them, the notion that the white person in an interracial couple would be the one moving up the ladder.
My greatest hope for Obama as a leader doesn't really have to do with his economic plans, or what he will do about the war in Iraq. No, what I most want to see from him is quiet, daily evidence of how perfectly natural it is for a black man to be that intelligent, that educated, that thoughtful. He doesn't ever have to say "You see? A black man can do all of this!" He says that by doing.
It's a message that America is long overdue in hearing.
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