I think part of the problem is everything they have achieved throughout history has required confrontation. Fighting against overwhelming forces knowing they had an end to fight toward. But now ,if he wins, it would seem in many ways the fight will be over. Now what will they do?
I agree that Obama isn’t black enough. When I think of him, I don’t think of him as a black man; I think of him as a reasonable and decent man, and decency is not correlated with skin color. He has not gone out of his way to present himself as a black candidate (though on a few occasions he’s gotten lazy & gone for race-conscious punch lines).
It’s a little sad that the old guard black leaders don’t feel like they’re included in the party, but in many ways, this is because of their success. After you get to the place where race is no longer an incredibly divisive issue, people calm down and, yes, the gentle guy who comes in, having lived a life where race was not a burning issue, a life made possible by all of the suffering and effort of black leaders who cleared the path for him over the past 50 years, is going to get to come in and fuck the princess. (I’m really liking that line).
In order to make things happen, they had to be very, very angry. It was probably the only way to make the progress they’ve made in so short a time. And there are still a fair number of things they need to stay angry about, because we’re not all there yet. The first black president will not be elected in a nation that is completely free of racial tension – not gonna happen. He’ll get in in the first election where the bulk of the people are voting on issues that they perceive to be much more important than the color of a man’s skin. (This would also have to happen during an election where there was a black candidate who plausibly offered a hope that he might be able to change things for the better).
So, really, the way to get a black man elected president, you have to somehow turn the entire country into one big cluster fuck. Now, if we could only test this hypothesis of mine …
It seems to occur to none of the Obamaheads (obviously), but here’s one possibility: Obama is a dick.
I know it may come as a shock, but just because he’s tan doesn’t mean that every black leader is going to actually like HIM as a person.
They feel compelled by history, I think, to support him – everyone from Farakkhan to Armstrong which spans the entire ideological spectrum – because he’s black.
On the other hand, nobody wants to say that’s the reason because it sounds, well, racial if not racist, cliqueish, and small minded for that to be the reason.
But it, obviously, is. Story after story about the historical awesomeness of the fact of his race.
Dio, on here, instructed me to feel pride in the fact that Obama will be POTUS (…and you’ll be proud to be able to tell your kids!..etc.)
There is that historical sense. Black leaders are aware of it. They like the fact.
They happen, I think, in many cases to not like the actual MAN who happens to be the one carrying the torch. Not just because he’s a half breed. Not just because of jealousy. Though I’m sure those are the reasons for some of them and part of the reason for all of them.
But here’s the other reason: he’s a dick.
He’s a dick in that he talks down to people (of all races) as he did with his elitist comments that bit him in the ass in PA. Okay, okay you don’t want to own that. Fine, but Jackson just pointed out his talking down to black people of late as well. Coincidence? Dismissed as Jackson’s jealousy? The funny thing is that the likely fact of Jackson’s jealousy overlaps with what would otherwise be the only remaining reason to not like Obama: he’s a dick.
He’s a dick in that he talks down to people, he’s a dick in that he even literalizes the stereotype of oreos: he’s corny. Of course, being corny plays as cool to white people since they themselves are, in hip hop terms for example, themselves corny. And yes, I know hip hop is not the definition of the black experience. Relax. But it is a dominant cultural paradigm for coolness. And how endearing that the oreo gets to “assess” Bill Clinton’s black authenticity in having been asked that question at the debates to which he answered that he’d have to see Bill “dance” to determine whether or not he’s a “real brother.” Brother of whom? Certainly not you, corny half-black Obama. But everyone liked that moment, it was cute and lighthearted and that was that.
What was missed throughout all that time, however, is the fact that he’s always acted exactly the same way in that regard; that is, he’s been a dick the whole time. Every debate he acted as if he was the moderator, pronouncing his approval of what should or shouldn’t be debated, cutting off questioners, scolding them by asking them questions (the only one to do so, I believe; actually answer a question by asking a rhetorical question that is, of course, inherently unanswerable due to the nature of the debate so he gets the last word – as always), even lying about his answers such as his signature not being on that questionnaire about guns. He’s always acted bossy, superior, smug, and cocky. In other words, a dick.
He’s pronounced on the correct interpretation of scripture, mocked his opponent as “running around” like Annie Oakley when it suited him (despite his claim to be a new kind of politician, he really just changed the tone from outright triangulation and pandering to…snide sarcasm and pandering – including lecturing people for accusing him of pandering by saying golly you know don’t assume that I’m moving to the center for political posturing – PERISH THE THOUGHT! – but just because I disagree with you, left wing, about the telecom bill…even though I explicitly said I’d filibuster it…and then voted against the filibuster…umm, but yeah how dare you accuse me of pandering…or…having pandered then to get your support only to switch on you now…umm…how dare you! This reminds me of my time my uncle saved the Jews…).
He’s stated that the Supreme Court “came” around to his position on gun control (verbally patting them on the head for having, I guess, finally seen things the way the Messiah sees them…even though, of course, he gave the impression of having thought the DC gun control bill was constitutional when asked about it earlier in the year, but doing so in a typically deniable way since his entire primary strategy was to take all positions and no positions at the same time then promptly switch everything from his church registration to flag pins to policy positions on everything from Iraq on down while touring our “57” states as he said.)
He, of course, ended up lecturing his own semantic inspiration for launching his entire book w/ bonus political career: Jeremiah Wright. Demeaned him as having put on “a performance.” As if he hadn’t attended those performances for 20 years to legitimize his claim to blackness. Got the black vote? Check. Pimped them, time to dump the Black Liberation Theology dude. Fuck him. Grandma? Throw her under the bus too. Wesley Clark who? Just “some guy” on a cable tv show. Etc., etc.
He has thus far explicitly or implicitly lectured everyone else in the primaries that was on the stage – and beyond – on how they should act as politicians (referring to Hillary as merely “shouting” at Republicans), implying he is better than everyone else. He’s lectured McCain on military benefits (!) LOL
He’s lectured blacks on, well, everything. He’s lectured black comedians on, well, doing the exact same comedy they’ve always done (ironic, by the way, considering the same guy that scolds Bernie Mac by saying “clean up your act” because “this is a family affair” is the same guy that had no problem – during the pimping black people phase of his absurd candidacy – having Jay Z’s “I got 99 problems and a bitch ain’t one” song played at a party for his campaign and candidacy when he was battling that, um, “bitch” Hillary I guess. Then, at the time of course, Obama tells Bernie Mac “I’m **just **messing with you” as if to suggest he doesn’t really mean what he just said. The following day? His campaign states that he did mean what he said and it was inappropriate. Wanting, of course as always, to have it both ways. That one incident encapsulates his entire way of dealing with black people: be down in their presence insofar as is needed, lecture when in mixed groups, denounce when away and politically dancing for white people as the Magic Negro).
And, of course, lectured blacks on being better.
There’s a reason Jackson said what is on the minds of many other people, black and white and everything else, about cutting his balls off: it’s because he’s a dick.
Dicks make people upset.
And black leaders, in particular, are stuck between two testicles because they have to support him by virtue of his being black but of all POSSIBLE black candidates a man that’s a dick is the one that ends up carrying the torch?
It’s not merely jealousy, though I’m sure that plays into it.
It’s not merely that they’re afraid they won’t be able to race hustle once he’s POTUS, though I’m sure that plays into it.
It’s not merely that he’s an oreo (they’d not feel the same, I’d bet, about Colin Powell) though I’m sure that plays into it.
It’s not just fear of obsolescence, being trumped, or the crabs in a bucket syndrome.
It’s also, at least partly, and at least with some people, and at least to some degree: BECAUSE HE IS A DICK.
Just because he’s cooler than you doesn’t mean he’s cool. And just because he’s black doesn’t mean he can’t be a dick.
When a man has to be told by his own (little) daughter that you don’t “shake hands” with her children friends when you meet them (as she said she told him), you know a man is corny and tone deaf to the cultural rhythms of, well, everything racially or otherwise.
And when a man lectures the planet – to the point of even getting conservative lawmakers in Germany pissed off at the idea that he was going to try to give a speech in front of the unification structure over there which, as one German official pointed out, he had absolutely nothing to do with and would be stunningly presumptuous to want to use as a political backdrop – you know the man is a megalomaniacal, self-involved, self-loving, smug prick. In other words, a dick.
I know, dismiss that because the lawmaker is a conservative. LOL
But don’t overlook the other aspect: HE’S A DICK.
Did I mention he’s a dick? LOL
That’s the reason – or at least **a **reason, among other – to answer the OP.
There’s quite a bit of aggression in that post my friend. You seem like a person who had his princess woken and fucked, while you were out slaying dragons.
With all the mention of pricks and dicks, one can easily see what’s driving this.
I mean, “half-breed”, “Oreo”? I would give you points, but you left out “High Yellow”; what would such a screed be without calling Obama that, at least once?
9thFloor was anti-Obama from the very beginning of the primaries, so I’m not surprised at the vitriol. However, it is a bit silly to be calling Obama a halfbreed, especially in view of the fact that he’s probably got more (and more recent) African genetics than the average African-American. In other words, Obama is, technically, a halfbreed (though that’s a horribly derogatory term and has been for decades), but the average African-American probably has considerably less than half of his or her genes from directly African sources, and most of those at a considerably larger remove than Obama’s.
Huh? Most African-American have more than 50% non-African in ancestry? I’d need a cite for that. I could believe ~20%, but not 50%. And I could believe that there are many African-Americans who have < 50% African Ancestry. But most? Not a chance.
Although I’m not sure what you mean by “direct” African sources. Is it indirect if I get genes from my grandfather but direct if I get them from my father?
I don’t have a cite for that, unfortunately. I admit right here and now that I pulled it out of thin air. But it makes sense to me…most African-Americans have been here for at least 200 years (since the importation of new slaves became illegal in the very early 1800s), and “miscegenation” has been going on for at least that long. “African-American” is really a genetic mish-mosh (as is white American, for that matter) of white, black and Native American. I have no problem believing that a majority of AAs are on a genetic knifeblade…may be a tiny bit majority one way or a tiny bit majority another.
And yes, I would consider a father who moved here from Africa, where his family has lived for the last several thousand years, to be contributing African genes more directly than a grandfather whose great-great-great-grandfather came over on the Amistad’s sister ship.
I said you should feel this way because he would be a great President, not because he’s black. It seems to me that the Obama haters are far more preoccupied with his race than his supporters are and project motivations which don’t exist. Your whole, long post is pretty much you imagining things.
I think that hucksters Jackson/Sharpton feel they are being cut out of the revenue stream, if Obama becomes president. Their treasured charitable organizations (scams) are directly threatened-who will pony up if Obama is president? Jackson’s sole reason for being goes away, as does Sharpton’s.
Not a good prospect for these guys-they have spent their lives getting rich-and they don’t want the gravy train to end!
Scientific studies have shown that the “average” A-A gets about 75 -80% of his or her genes from African ancestors. The amount of Native American ancestry, while not insignificant, is generally over-estimated by folk knowledge. Of course, there is a big standard deviation to that “average”, and the % is also a function of geography. But the average does tell us something about “most” A-As.
OK. But there is no scientific basis for that opinion. Genes are physical entities that don’t change significantly over a few generations. They are not like cultural memes that can change considerably in short periods of time when people are displaced.
One might argue that Obama is culturally more African than most A-As, but even that argument wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny since his African father was not part of his life in any significant way.
You are right…I injected a lot more opinion into that than I should have in GD. I apologize and withdraw the whole branch of discussion on it…
I’m uncomfortable with catering period, I won’t deny that’s it’s been done in the past and will continue in the future. However, wouldn’t you agree that the president should make policy decisions based on ONLY the good of the nation as a whole. In many ways lobbying groups are as democratic as it gets, a crowd of like minded people assemble the resources they have to make their voice heard (ala MADD), but it is also true that that force can far surpass the amount of influence they SHOULD have (i.e. tobacco, oil). Should our policy decisions be based on catering to a small minority however that group distinguishes itself?
Just to clarify, I was describing how I perceive Jackson and Co’s motivation, my feelings on this matter aren’t really relevant.
Well, yes but Obama was not a civil rights leader. Nor do the “black political leaders” in general support Justice Thomas. Likely becuase of his politics, of course.
But that’s the point- you- and the OP- seem to be making the point that “black” people should support Obama simply because of his race. When it is suggested that white people support McCain becuase of his race, that is called racism. I see no difference. Supporting a man (or not) simply becuase of the color of his skin is racism.