I am convinced that Obama is pursuing a sort of liberal radical chic acceptance. That this half-black Harvard grad has gone all Patty Hearst on us. That he deliberately chose the most distressed blackfolks in his ambit to align himself with their desperate hopes in a paternalistic way in order to develop the kind of credibility and ‘authenticity’ he believes that he needs as a politician.
Both he and Michelle are very clueless as to what their privileges in America mean, and the fact that they keep bringing up the “He could have had a Wall Street job but instead came to work in the projects” is their story and they’re sticking to it, like missionaries in the jungle trying to convince themselves of the righteousness of their mission. They expect to be respected as long suffering souls who have made their sacrifices for the most noble of causes, and believe me they want the rest of us to sacrifice too - they’re after that tax.
Black politicians have accused Obama of cherry picking, and that is what I take to be his career. He was made by an old school first generation black pol, and took all the glory.
Yes, there is a fraction of the desperate black electorate who are in a strange psychological state and who need ‘get whitey’ to get through their day. I think Obama has taken 20 years to ‘feel their pain’ and speak their language and understand their frustration and that this is very deeply his connection to his blackness - that ultimately he is alienated from both communities he straddles and does not truly believe in either.
You know in black upper middle class circles, there are parents who grew up in the ‘hood who despair that their kids are growing soft. I’ve heard the confessions that they want to send their kids back to grandma in the South to toughen them up on grits and okra, or back to the ghetto to get ‘real’. I happen to be one of those who finds little ennobling in poverty itself, I don’t believe that the poor in spirit will inherit the earth. I’m not down with this sort of immersion program, but I recognize that there are millions of Americans who have no idea how wealth and privilege can be moral in its own right. Surely the Obamas haven’t done the hard work of meeting a payroll, what with board memberships paying their bills - they are strangers to all but academic hard work. They actually needed to see what the meritocracy of Wall Street was all about. Oh but they’re making sure that their kids don’t grow up overprivileged. They are professionally slumming.
Half-white, growing up in Hawaii, Harvard Law, light skin, non-jive talking Barry would be absolutely devastated by the label of Uncle Tom. His relationship with black demagoguery is absolutely crucial, but does he believe it? About as much as Oxfam volunteers believe in the witch doctors in Africa they feed. If Barack Obama had married Shaniqua instead of Michelle, I’d take his attraction a lot more seriously, but now I think he’s managing his obsession quite well.
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