It was about nine months ago since I was seriously considering the cultural effect of Obama on African Americans. It was at that time when the implications of his blackness were front and center - when the very idea of calling him a 'Magic Negro' was considered seriously for the last time. Perhaps it's time to pull that one out again. Here's the context.
Before Barack Obama, everyone I know did not expect to see a president of color in our lifetime. We had grown accustomed to the racial limitations of these United States. We could attend college, get good jobs, send our kids to private schools, purchase large homes, write high literature, become sports superstars, Hollywood icons and CEOs. But president? Get real.
Obama has proved us wrong.
Perhaps he had not been jaded in the way that so many other African Americans have been because of our experience with limitations. Obama grew up differently. Yes, he knew of racist barriers, and, yes, he experienced racism in his life, we learn from his memoir, Dreams of My Father.
But although he embraces African-American identity and culture, he is a biracial person whose black Kenyan father was absent and who was raised by his white American mother and grandparents. He would not have absorbed the parental racial angst like so many of the rest of us, hearing our parents' message, whether subtle or overt, about what white folks wouldn't let us do.
And he is not a descendant of slaves—at least not here in America, though one can't discount the possibility that Obama's Kenyan ancestors were raided perhaps by Arab or other slave traders who once pillaged that region of Africa. If such a history exists and Obama, who grew up with little contact with the Kenyan side of his family, is aware of it, he has not publicly discussed it.
Because of this different kind of background, he would not know that deep well of unspoken African-American pain passed down since slavery days, from generation to generation. Such cultural knowledge is both a strength, and, at times, a source of self-limitation that only compounds the corrosive effect of the limits imposed on us by white society.
And one of the most heartbreaking effects of self-limitation is its atrophying impact on young African Americans. Why try, if I'm only going to face racism? Why venture beyond my cultural comfort zone if they (the big white they) don't want me there?
If you read that slowly and evaluate where all of the first person pluralities are coming from you will, in my estimation get a good idea of some very profound concepts. Now this article is about a month old but it is in no way dated. While it's true that whenever Republicans or Conservatives challenge the electorate to explain its racial reasoning, they do so in a combative manner and are rebuffed vociferously. But the reality of this sentiment is and should be self-evident.
I think the author, Lynne Duke, puts a very fine point on it and identifies the dimensions of the racial box a lot of Americans are going to have to think their way out of. I don't talk about blackfolks much any longer. I don't think that it is reasonable for me to believe that my black context is shared much today. Sure it works for me, but I'm a minority of one with only 150 friends in Facebook, most of whom are not of African descent. So I'll not talk about blackfolks in such a personal manner very often from here on out. Nevertheless it is an interesting dynamic.
Anyway excusing Obama out of "that deep well of unspoken African-American pain passed down since slavery days, from generation to generation" is precisely the kind of blackness that is very much now in question. How could it possibly apply so aptly to blacks under 30 who were born after Star Wars, who were 8 years old if that, when Nelson Mandela toured the US?
Long story short, Duke is dating a black consciousness and identity that has more going for it for people looking backwards than people looking forwards. All that 'us', ain't us.
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