No you’re not nuts, that’s exactly what I meant when I said “her reasons for still cheering Obama [despite his non-blackness] are distinctly on the cynical side.”
There was just an editorial on NPR by Mary Curtis, rebutting the insinuation that Obama isn’t black enough. She doesn’t name names, but does say that the primary criticisms are that his mother is white and his African side of the family was never enslaved in the US. However, she states that he does identify as Black and is and always has been part of that community, and that’s good enough for her.
As a white person, I can’t imagine saying anyone wasn’t black enough to be Black. What the fuck? That’s just some hateful shit to say about someone when you don’t like them and want to tear them down. The man is what he says he is. Find something real to give him shit about.
Frankly, I don’t see how anyone, regardless of race, could prefer Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. It’s a total fucking mystery to me, and I’m a liberal woman from NY. To me, Obama is too good to be true. I’m afraid of watching how he’ll be destroyed, like Gary Hart and Howard Dean, for reasons real or imagined. Seemingly the Democrats seem destined to have completely charisma-free candidates. Ah well.
On posting, I see a comment about Obama’s heritage enabling him to open doors that people who do come from a background of American enslavement of Africans couldn’t open. Why would that be so? I’m honestly asking that. Did people who have discriminated against him in his life for being Black ask for a background check or something? I mean, how would this have made him more able to be President? And isn’t that really a horrible thing to imply, that an American Black person couldn’t become President because of his family’s history of enslavement? Maybe I’m just being obtuse here. I do hope someone will come along and explain it to me.
Because he will be able to pick up more white votes (possibly enough to get elected) from people who are willing to overlook the color of his skin but would never vote for one of “those people” with their “welfare mentality” and their “entitlement attitudes” just because their ancestors might have suffered a little bit.
There are people who do think that way.
Heck, monstro, if you were blacker you’d get it. :smack:
I don’t really get it myself. Then again I heard an interview with Kareem Abdul Jabar (I hope I spelled that right) on NPR the other day and he was talking about how black kids in his neighborhood didn’t seem to get along with black kids who had parents from outside the United States. I don’t really get it but some people appear to have a problem with outsiders no matter their color.
Marc
You know, could there be more proof that we still need to fix race relations in this country? We won’t be over this shit until we don’t actually think his race is a matter of interest. But that’s what we get. We ALL think that. “I’d vote for the guy, but being black surely isn’t going to help him.” We all perpetuate the stereotype with such thoughts. How about we quit paying attention to these people? We all know that some group of people are going to think that way, but giving them so much influence is no good. If you are going to let someone’s color influence your vote, then I frankly don’t care what you have to say. Black or white.
Secondly, what the hell is all this talk about “experience” that everyone is so fucking concerned about. He’s a smart guy, and that’s why I want him to win. What good does Washington experience do to a guy anyway. Hypothetical personal ties to others in Washington only seems like a distraction in my opinion. If he becomes the freaking president, it won’t matter what his past was, only what he can do. I think he’s smart enough to know when he needs help. The biggest sign of an idiot is not knowing the limits of his experience/intelligence. I can’t see Obama having that problem.
Finally, I love the fact that he aired his dirty laundry about 8 years ago anyway. He basically admitted to marijuana and coke (!) use when he was younger. But this way he will possibly escape the gotcha politics, because he refuses to play their games. For instance, after the madras incident, he has frozen out Fox almost entirely. This is smart, because for him to win the Democratic nomination, I doubt he’s going to need them.
But yeah, these pundits are the worst, aren’t they? Can we please borrow your press, Great Britain? I love those shows on BBC News where they have a catankerous old coot who doesn’t give a damn who you are and won’t let you off the hook until he’s got a straight answer. The American Media has started talking about Middle America as if it’s some kind of foreign country which has no face. “Some people in Middle America might not like the fact that he’s black/not black enough” STOP THAT SHIT! You’re ruining our already shitty discourse. If you infer that some people might think a certain way based on blanket assumptions about the other half of America, I repeat, IT’S NOT NEWS!
I think we ought to revoke the media’s permission to speculate about shit nowadays, and only allow them to report facts. American political analysis is in the gutter. It’s utterly worthless and only serves to bring up the basest parts of our political consensus.
Finally, I urge everyone here to check out a video parody of Barak Obama’s design for his campaign sign. It’s made by the upright citizen’s brigade. Some choice quotes…
Barak
Obama
O8
“Now this seems okay at first, but the fact that it spells out BOO doesn’t sit well, and honestly we can’t be providing the opposition with such easy material”
“Next we have a group that feels that my name needed to be less weird”
“Brock O’Bama”
“Then there was another slogan attached…”
“I’m half-black, and half-proud of it”
Unfortunately that’s just not the case. Jimmy Carter ran as a Washington outsider and we can’t exactly count his administration as one of the best of the 20th century. Whoever becomes President needs certain connections and experience dealing with politics in order to push their agendas, otherwise it becomes an uphill battle to accomplish their goals. Maybe Obama has enough experience and intelligence to be President. Hell, what experience did Bush have when he was elected? Still, I think experience is a valid issue to bring up.
Welcome to American politics of the past, well, before we became the United States. It might be difficult implementing such a plan without crapping all over the 1st Amendment.
Marc
Ding, ding, ding! Absolutely.
It’s bringing emphasis back, again and again, to his biracial heritage, to his not being “really” black so he’s not scary to white voters.
At the same time, he gets to reaffirm over and over that he sees himself as black and has married and raised a black family in a black neighborhood, so he’s not scary to black voters.
It’s a fine line, but if they can walk it and stay there, his people are probably *encouraging *this whole “not black enough”, “yes, I’m black” play.
Hey, that’s pretty catchy. I bet with a few rewrites, that’ll play well at the Lincoln Memorial. 
Amen. I’m rereading Goblet of Fire right now, and got to the bit with Rita Skeeter, the unethical reporter for the wizarding newspaper. In the first article we read, she writes something like (I’m paraphrasing, 'cause the book is in the bedroom with my sleeping husband) “The spokesman said that no one had been hurt and the Ministry was conducting an investigation into the matter. Whether this announcement will quell the rumors that several bodies were removed from the woods remains to be seen.” One of the boys snorts and replies, “Well, there sure will be rumors about that now!” 
White people are such fucking idiots.
Could it be that the issue is from white people themselves? Could they be the ones afraid he isn’t black enough. Think what would happen if a very black (whatever the hell that means) person wins the presidency?
“If a black man can become president then why the hell can’t you get off your lazy black ass and get a job, Boy?” I really think there is a lot of that type of thinking around. It’s not like I am completely unsympathetic to it, though. By that I mean that anyone, regardless of color, should get off their lazy ass and get a job if they are capable.
So, does that mean people are racist because they think that way (assuming they do), or are just tired of hearing about race all the time?
The only person I’ve personally seen saying that Obama isn’t “black” is the black* lady who appeared on Colbert. She said that because his ancestors weren’t slaves, he’s not African-American; he’s African-African-American.
A great reply on digg.com was, “So if my ancestors didn’t own slaves, does that mean I’m not white?”
Personal opinion: everyone needs to get the fuck over it.
*As I don’t know her full heritage, I don’t know that I can accurately call her “african-american.” :rolleyes:
That was Debra Dickerson. She had written in Salon last month that “‘Black’ in our political and social reality means those descended from West African slaves”. She’s a regular contributor to Salon and other publications.
What does that mean he’s not “black” enough? Would he be blacker if he was a high school dropout who wore Fubu and rolled up in a tricked-out Escalade drinking a 40oz and smoking a blunt? Maybe 50 Cent or Method Man should run for president?
It means his mother’s a white American and his father’s a Kenyan immigrant.
When everyone’s going on about Obama being a black candidate, next black President, black black black black black, it’s grating to know that that’s not the truth. If Obama’s father was a Caribbean immigrant of Indian heritage and his mother was a black American, would would Indian-Americans be perfectly comfortable with his and the media’s calling himself an Indian-American? Things would probably be exactly the same as it is now - his 50% Indian heritage would be ignored and he’d just be known as “black”, as if black taints absolutely.
And pointing that out doesn’t reveal a person’s feelings about him as a candidate, nor does it translate into claiming that he’s not black “enough”. Finding Crouch’s and Dickerson’s commentary a criticism of Obama as a candidate, rather than a criticism of the media’s and Americans’ sloppy racial categorization, shows more about the readers’ opinion of blacks than the columnists’. Crouch and Dickerson aren’t the once shoving Obama’s race in everyone’s face.
Point is, why can’t Obama just be who he is? If he must be labeled by his heritage, why can’t he just be half white American, half Kenyan? Why does he have to be shoved into some category that he doesn’t belong in?
Just for the record, Dickerson made it clear that she has nothing against Obama, and does not oppose his bid for the presidency. She just wanted to establish a strict definition for “black”.
If anyone plans on pointing to Obama as way of preaching to black people about the virtures of hard work, then they have issues, yes. There are plenty of successful, hard-working blacks walking around, so Obama is hardly unique in that regard. Only someone who believes that Africans-Americans are welfare-receiving lead-asses would think to do something like that. It makes as much sense as making Bill Clinton out to be an example to poor Southern whites. Clinton and poor whites do, and always have, inhabit two different worlds. (This, BTW, is essentially Dickerson’s point. Obama’s origins make comparisions between him and African-Americans difficult.)
Frankly, I find it sad when white people use the existence of successful black people as a way of making themselves feel less guilty. Obama’s accomplishments are great and all, but they are not proof that racism is dead and we don’t need to talk about it anymore. The white backlash Chappelle received when he suggested that race factored into his decision to quit is a lesson in what happens when rich black folks shatter this expectation. Obama, please take note.
Paraphrasing Bill Cosby: “I went to a party that was me and 15 white people. According to the U.S. government, that’s a black party!”
I’ve had that shit tossed at me by managers about “some people complain that you…” and they were always amazed when it took me seconds to break the supposed wall of anonimity (the accusers had in common not having the foggiest wth they were talking about: stupid accusations, hm, who’s the stupidest person I’m working with right now?). FFS, if anybody is going to accuse someone of whatever, have the cojones to own up to it. And if you’re going to use accusations as arguments, without even bothering to check them out or pass them through any kind of Rationality Sieve, fuck you with a sharp stick on whichever orifice you don’t like used.
Jesus, he smoked marijuana and did coke. . .what else does he need to do to appeal to blacks, rob a liquor store?
Seriously, when he said he smoked I wondered if he smoked menthols. Anyone know? Ok. that’s not too serious.
So far, I love the guy. He seems so much less political than any of the others. He doesn’t have the stink of DC on him yet. Get all the background stuff out there now so that it’s not even as issue when the primaries roll around. This is going to be a great election, I think.