Surf's Up!

Obama bet his fantastically successful candidacy on his ability to remain unmoored from what makes us so uncomfortable— America’s racial history, and more specifically, America’s relationship to its descendants of African slaves. As of his March 19th speech on race relations, that freely floating candidacy has been securely anchored right where he did not want it to be.

Obama told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than those of some of the other conventional candidates.”

Reminded him? Please. If he ever forgot, he certainly hasn’t the smarts to lead this country out of its current morass— and he has. He did not forget. He wanted us to forget… when it was convenient for his campaign. When he could gin up black support by accusing Clinton surrogates of racism, he remembered. Let’s face it, the man has done a brilliant job of playing both ends against the middle. Now, however, the jig is up. With the Jeremiah Wright controversy and the ensuing speech (which was far less an act of political bravery than political necessity, intelligently and elegantly handled), he’s acknowledged his ties to Afro-American culture and the distasteful light it shines on American history. He has attached himself to everything he once told America he would let them forget (Pardon me… transcend). We will not look at him the same way again.

Kevin Drum wrote:

“I think Obama’s fervent hope is that his speech pretty much closes the issue of race in this campaign. It just flatly doesn’t help him in any way to keep it on the front burner. Like NAFTA, which dropped off the radar after Ohio, I expect that after a couple of days Obama will also drop the subject of race if he possibly can. We’ll know by next week.”

No doubt that is his hope. But his aura has shifted. He has associated himself with that which, frankly, the majority of Americans don’t want to discuss, have a dialog about, confront or do the work to overcome. He has associated himself with some of the ugliest aspects of this nation’s past, things from which we’ve averted our eyes throughout most of our history. We have no desire to stop now. And henceforth, when we look at Obama, we can easily see some aspect of it.

When he first announced his candidacy, I assumed he was going to follow a successful model. I assumed he wanted to inure America to his black face and his adoption of Afro-American culture. This first run, I assumed, would allow all the poisons that lurked in the mud to hatch out. It would allow him to confront racial/cultural issues and race-based attacks. Doing so, he would make enemies, and he would lose, but the process would elevate his standing and stature. He would then spend the next four or eight years as a leader in various national and international fields, prepped to win in 2012 or 2016.

The model is Hillary Clinton’s. During her husband’s first campaign, she attacked gender issues head-on (artlessly, grant you). She talked about “standing by her man” and baking cookies, and got attacked from all sides. She made clear that she would not play the passive role assigned to her. For that pronouncement, she made enemies, most of whom still hate her with a psychotic passion. That dirty work done, however, she set about building a reputation based on the non-traditional role she had assumed. She won herself a senate seat, burnished a reputation as a hard worker, and got closer than any other woman could to becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

I don’t know if it was Obama’s bi-racial background or his knowledge of his genetic freedom from the historic chains of Afro-American culture, but he seemed to believe he could avoid confronting “race” head-on, and thus make no enemies. He was wrong. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo reports that “The co-founder of Laura Ingraham’s radio show, who now helps run Hugh Hewitt’s ‘Salem Radio Network,’ has mixed an Obama video interweaving Obama with Malcolm X, the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics and Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’.”

Yes. Obama’s aura has shifted, and this is how the game is played when you’re clothed in basic American black.

There’s an apocryphal story involving opera singers, including two black divas, sitting backstage. One of the black women reads a review. She grows agitated. “The black diva, the black diva… why is it always the black diva,” she roars and storms from the room. The others sit in silent discomfort.

“Someone had to tell her,” says the remaining black diva.