Friday, February 02, 2007
Is Obama Black? Race, Identity, and Multiculturalism
A number of the issues Simon During explores in his discussions of race, identity, and multiculturalism surface in an interesting article in today's New York Times entitled "So Far, Obama Can't Take Black Vote for Granted." The article details the perception among a lot of African American voters that Obama somehow "isn't black" because his father was African, his mother was white, he grew up with white grandparents in Hawaii, and lived for a time in Indonesia. One person interviewed for the article even questions whether Obama is American. It seems that Obama's attraction as someone who embodies "multiculturalism" is off-set among many black voters by a wariness about his status as an "African American." If "African American" is something like a biological category, it certainly seems Obama is African American. But people interviewed in the article implicitly see "African American," or "black" as a cultural category. I think it would be helpful to reference this article and the issues it raises as we discuss During's chapters on identity, race, and multiculturalism. Feel free to comment on the article here if you'd like.
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6 comments:
If a part of the public views “African American” or “black” as cultural categories, then who gets to define what it means to be a part of these categories? Further, the people who would end up defining a cultural category of “black people” are not themselves identical; each person within that group would individually be made up of a number of identities, as During mentions: “Individuals don’t have a single identity, they have identities, and they do so just because identities are based on partial traits (skin color, socio-economic status, gender [etc.]…)" (146). So doesn’t the whole point of the NY Times article address an issue that would matter to only a very small number of African American citizens, perhaps those less concerned with socio-economic and gender issues?
I'm curious about the idea of the "black vote" in the first place. I'm not trying to be flip, but how similar is this category to "Soccer Moms" and "Nascar Dads" - categories that seem to be all but nonexistent in terms of voting behavior? And what does it signify?
And a side note on the relative Americanness of individual states: How would the conversation be different if Obama were raised in, say, Texas or Mississippi or New York or Washington State, rather than Hawaii?
This article seems to take as its premise that we vote for those we can identify with, and I’m wondering how valid that assumption is. More interesting though, is that now we know what blacks do not identify with in Obama, just what is it they do identify with in Hillary? Do they identify with Hillary because of her association with Clinton and his favor of the black vote? Do they identify with what the article’s interviewees deny in Obama: that one must be raised by a black family (not so much…) have lived an underprivileged life (not exactly), and if were are to take Powell’s words as implying what it is to be black, one must also speak English poorly (definitely not) and be confrontational (one out of four…). So, are blacks, or voters in general choosing Hillary because we identify with her? And if we are, just what in Hillary do we identify with?
Is race a biological reality or social construction? How much does one's personal identity matter in the face of the culture's perception of that identity? I find the possibilities for a disconnect here particularly interesting, especially when it comes to Obama. I was also confused as to why blacks were more likely to align with Hillary until I read During's comment about Toni Morrison designating Bill Clinton as our first black president due to his socio-economic/cultural background. The fact that he fits the stereotype of the hyper-sexual black male makes him black--isn't that a racist thing to say? That one is black by virtue of their compliance with (negative) stereotypes of the race? I guess I find it hard to understand that Obama isn't black enough because he did not grow up in the south, and he was middle class and educated. So we are to assume then that blacks are, by virtue of their race, poor and uneducated--and inarticulate while we're at it. Does it matter that Morrison pointed to those stereotypes and not Biden? Who has the authority here? Who does more damage?
A little bit after the fact, but here's a great interview that happened on the Colbert Report last night dealing with this very topic. I watched it with my black coworker and we had a great discussion about what it really means to be black...if there is such a thing. Curious to see what your response(s) to this is/are.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=81955
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