Obama

So Barack Obama became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party yesterday. I bet you knew that already, though. Did you know that he's the first black man to ever win the presidential nomination of a major party? Yes, it's true: no black men ever were nominated as presidential candidates for the Democratic-Republicans or Whigs (I checked).

Did you know that he was black? For all intents and purposes, he's run as "a black man", though a year ago Time said he wasn't black enough (err, well, it finally concluded he was too black). And after Iowa, Christopher Hitchens was his usual crumudgeony self, declaring "The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a 'breakthrough,' the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought."

You also probably already know that Obama is half-white, and his father was from Kenya, which in some circles (e.g. this piece by Salon a year ago) by doesn't make him "black" as in "descended-from-slaves". On that point, The Guardian's Gary Younge tries Hitchens' argument without being so mean, but maybe by being too liberal arts:

Most intriguing, in all of this, is how those who wish to police these racial borders claim that Obama's mixed-race heritage denies him essential blackness. They certainly must be forgetting the famous black people who are of mixed-race parentage, from Bob Marley to Halle Berry; or the basic truth that race has no basis in biology or science; or that, thanks to mass rape during the slave trade, nearly all African-Americans are actually mixed-race

Or, as someone said during a school-wide meeting at Conn a few years ago, "when I see the ceiling, I don't see white, but I see beige". As a professor put it to me afterwards, "after the artists started talking about the color of the ceiling, I was outta there."

But Obama is definitely black enough for people to be afraid he could get shot -- an early Secret Service detail, his wife talking about it candidly on TV (then getting misquoted). As our history shows, these aren't unsubstantiated fears. Though, if Wolf Blitzer's "best political team on television" was right, Obama's nomination was historic... by of course, trying to one-up each other on important dates, such as:

- 1808, the year the slave trade was abolished (initially stated as "200 years ago, slavery was ended)
- 1968, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated (40 years ago)
- 1961, the year of the Freedom Riders. "And in that year, Barack Obama was born."

All of those were followed with "we've come so far." Yes we have, thank you.

Actually though, I think those of us young minority types in our twenties might look at Obama and go both "damn, finally" and "oh, shit, is THAT what I'm gonna become in twenty years?" Because seriously, while he's my candidate, the guy is a goof. For example, how many forty six year-old people can pull this off with cheers instead of laughs? Exactly one: Barack Obama. Or, manage to do a fist-bump with his wife at a 20,000 person rally (Slate did a nice little summary of how the press tried to figure it out, proving that the press is white). Yes, yes, inspiring (I'm inspired), a leader (he's leading), etc., but come on. This isn't "street Obama" leaking out, this is an upper-middle class, Harvard-educated lawyer doing shit that he does at home, maybe in his underwear when no one's looking. It's hilarious, or bemusing, or quirky, but not ironic -- he's not Rainn Wilson at the Grammys (whom I guess plays himself?). In other words, none of this is Obama looking for street cred or him being black or white, but someone on the tail end of our generation -- just cool enough to be charming, innocuous enough for all you oldies to think highly of him: the psychic projection of all us hopeful youth, but with enough stiffness to nag at our subconscious, pre-midlife midlife crises.

Remember, he doesn't bowl well, which has much less to do with his race as it does his class. Though speaking as a Filipino who's only bowled over 110 once in his life and can't hit a pool ball for shit (though I can play basketball. So can Obama, incidentally: "I've got skills", not, btw, "skillz." Oh, and he could dunk.), I may identify with Obama more than I can make fun of him. But what I'm really saying is that when he's misunderstood, we're all pretty much misunderstood, and while we can treat race matter-of-factly in our own lives, explaining that experience it is still a minefield instead of hopscotch.

We already know he's sort of an elitist, but then again, most of us believe that the working class is being duped (prolly not). But the race issue was enough for Clinton to carry West Virginia, so while it's not guns or religion that has allegedly swung the "middle class" to the right, lay down another race mine and watch your opponent spend time trying to defuse it, while Americans -- whom, like all humans, are capable of thinking harder about race -- would rather just walk around instead of help.

So anyway, to make this long post end, I'll say this: if the Clinton era is over -- meaning cynical liberal democratic calculations are out -- then we have to try a little harder to open up.