It’s offensive to the extent he wants to imply that Obama has no right to identify as a black man. It’s offensive to any extent he wants to snicker about someone’s so-called “mixed” racial heritage or use a special name to identify them as such. It also has to be recognized that he’s talking to a largely bigoted audience and that he knows he’s using code.
I guess maybe we’re getting a preview of how the right is going to deal with Obama’s potential to be the first black President. They’re going to say he isn’t really black, therefore…therefore what? I’m not sure. That’s what puzzles me about this. Does Rush think Obama should identify as white? Does Rush think that Obama has not immediately been a “black guy” in every room or restaurant or 7-11 he’s ever walked into in his life?
There’s something insidious about how Rush (and others too apparently) are going after Obama on this. They’re effectively setting things up so that they can accuse him of being somehow dishonest or phony no matter how he acts or identifies. It’s race-baiting pure and simple. They want to go right up to the edge to provoke a reaction and then act all innocent when they get one. It’s like when your older brother puts his finger millimeter from your face and then says, 'I’m not touching you." Look at Shodan’s post for another particularly witless example of “I’m not touching you.”
Exactly. According to Lush Windbag, Obama’s being racially dishonest. That fucker. The most distressing part of the whole thing is that this asshole is employed. That any company would give this half-wit airtime so they can get ratings just illustrates what a bunch of whores they are. I’d love to see him broadcasting out of his basement, nodding from the oxy between rants.
By the way, I haven’t seen Obama trying to make an issue of his race or going around saying he’s martin Luther King. He’s talked about being the son of an immigrant a lot and in Dreams from My father he talks extensively about his difficulty in finding a racial 'community" to fit in to (he used to be afraid to tell his friends his mother was white for fear they’d say he wasn’t black).
One thing he has not done, as far as I can see, is hold himself up as a spokesman for the black community, so Rush and his ilk are attacking a pose that Obama has not adopted.
I didn’t get that interpretation from his remarks, but perhaps I’m missing something.
Posters on this very board have suggested that Halle Berry isn’t really black because she has a white mother. Rush is certainly not the first person to suggest Obama is “different” because he has a white mother. And although I disagree with these viewpoints, I don’t think those opinions are racist. It shows a failure to recognize what it means to be black and may even reflect a well-intended (if not naive) desire to correct the “inaccuracy” posed by the one-drop rule, but I don’t see it as racist.
I’d be surprise if that is what those in the Rush League would be saying. If anything, I’d imagine they’d want to emphasis his blackness. Rush’s audience will never see Obama as a white man. If that was a possibility, then they might actually elect him. And that’s not what Rush wants.
Except that that quote is about a kid using it to try to describe himself racially, not labeling someone else based on that person’s ethnicity, so it’s not the same thing at all. Thanks for playing, though!
-If it is true that Obama was raised in Hawaii by a white family with no general contact with black culture
-Then it is true that it is at least problematic to identify Obama as “black” in a culturally and politically meaningful way?
They don’t just want to emphasise his blackness, and they don’t just want to emphasise his biracial-ness. They want to emphasise both. They want to make the question of his race appear:
-Important
-Confusing
-Scary
-Sneaky or Dishonest
(How can a question be “sneaky” though? Well anyway, hopefully you see what I meant.)
Why would it be problematic? The guy looks black. His father was a black man. He sees himself as a black man. So it makes perfect sense for him to call himself black. In fact, it makes a lot more sense than not.
I got your email. Officially, I’m waiting until Hillary formally files with the FEC. Unofficially, I’m waiting for my next paycheck. You’ll get your money in the next 7-10 days. I’m not going to weasel any longer than that. Don’t worry. I’m going to honor this thing.
I agree with you that it makes more sense to call him “Black” than it does not to call him so. But I do not think it necessarily makes alot more sense, and I also do not think that just because it makes more sense it thereby makes unproblematic sense.
“Black,” esp. in the USA, is used not only as a term denoting a level of melanin, but also as a term denoting a range of cultural identifications.
So, identifying Obama as “black” is problematic
politically because it invites challenge by some of the very people his “blackness” is supposed to appeal to.* ontologically because it may be a cultural identification which presumes false facts about Obama’s cultural state.**
-FrL-
*Of course it would probably be even more politically problematic to ignore the question of race in this case. And to identify him as “white” would, of course, be politically ludicrous.
**Note the “may.” I don’t know that much about Obama, which is why I put my original post in the form of an if-then and why I am talking in the subjunctive rather than the indicative here.
He talks a lot about this stuff in his first book. Ultimately, he says he always “gravitated towards the black community,” and that he feels that’s where he belongs to the extent that he has to belong anywhere. He fully acknolwedges that his experience is not the typically “Black American,” one, though, and, like I said above, does not try to sell himself as the voice of Black America.
But that’s how he identifies himself. And that’s how the world perceives him by appearance (which has a lot more to do with how one self-identifies than culture does). I don’t see how it is problematic in the way that you are saying it is.
I don’t think he calls himself black to appeal to anyone. That idea is actually counterintuitive, since being black is usually considered a political handicap. If he wanted to appeal to anyone, it would be those who have a problem with him calling himself black.
There’s a lot more to identifying as black than appearance and culture.
I am reminded of the GQ thread about what the term African-American means, in which Askia, and some others, argued that the term should only be used to denote the descendants of slaves. That thread went on for at least 5 pages. With the recent influx of African immigrants, I guess this is more of an issue these days. While I can see that someone who had immigrated here from Africa (especially as an adult) would not self-identify with that term, preferring Nigerian-American (or whatever), I would suspect that the next generation, born in the US, and having grown up in this culture, would more likely self-identify as African-American. The term has become synonymous with “Black”, and they certainly would have been treated by society as a whole no differently than those Blacks who are descendants of slaves.
Did Obama have a life as rough as some poor kid growing up in the projects? Of course not. But so what? How many African-American politicians did?
Anyway, I think our friend **Dio **has deconstructed Rush’s usage beyond what is necessary. I would not attribute that level of intelligence to the guy. It’s most likely a joke to make him appear to not have the street cred to claim to understand the African-American experience in the same that most American Blacks do.
