Black is back
Is Obama white or black? Who the hell cares! He's a serious challenger to the Bushian and imminent doomsday machine. Announcing his candidature in front of the old parliament in Springfield (long live the Simpsons - one can't help asking where Springfield begins and ends) was of course well advised by his Westwing-Josh-Lyman-Toby-Ziegler-style spin doctors. Here good 'ol Abraham had once made his declaration of love to all colours, shapes and sizes. Yes, he can be "all for all" according to Frank Rich, a blogger and columnist who sees Bush as a "leader".
No, he's not black enough for us, say representatives of the the Afro-American contingent. "I love the brother" says Debra Dickerson "but we have nothing in common".
So what about Hillary. No, let's...hmmm... who the hell should we vote for? There's only the Reps left... There doesn't seem to be any problems re. cultural heritage, origin, philosophy, language etc. over on that side of the field... No reference to the term "West African slaves" or to "third generation American".
The founding fathers of the 60's black liberation movement, Jesse, Al Sharpton, Ron Walters et al. haven't much to say about Obama really, have they? On the contrary. Plus Obama in his recent bestseller "The Audacity of Hope" (does he mean recklessness or bravery?) seems to denounce those times and the "dramas of the baby-boom generation" (sic).
So when Dickerson negates Obamas "blackness" and yet declares her readiness to "adopt him" you can't help the sense of tongue-in-cheek. She maintains a clear difference between "black Africans" of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd gen, and real "Afro-Americans".
Maureen Dowd sees Obama as floating between the white and black polit-world, especially linguistically, depending on where he's speaking.
Caught in a cliché-trap, the noose is tightening around Obama's neck, with party-people saying things like he's the first "mainstream Afro-American candidate that is articulate, clever, clean and good-looking".
More to this in the comments...
3 comments:
Gabe,
It's early days yet.
Let's see if Al Gore will throw his hat into the ring.
I'd vote for him again--and it wouldn't matter to me if he turned out to be a West African female with a coal-black skin,
Or a 5th generation milk-chocolate descendant of plantation slaves,
Or a mestizo with skin a light copper,
Or an Asian-African mix like my beautiful Burmese cat Thistle!
By rights,he should already be in office ...
And I think, in hindsight,
There's a good chance
that the tragedies of
September, 2001, might never have taken
place,
Had the co-opted Supreme Court Justices not
yielded,
And instead,
Had upheld the will of the
people against the
Flawed and corrupted
Florida count
of those disputed
and "lost" (so-called)
Florida votes.
Mary,
Dedicated Watcher of Hypocrites
What would you think of Hillary?
I'd vote for her, if she should be the nominee from the Democratic National Convention.
Right now, my preferences line up in this order:
1) Al Gore
2) Barack Obama
3) Hillary Clinton
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