get used to blackness

[UPDATE: I no longer stand by what this post says. I wrote it in a moment of jubilation over Barack Obama's primary victory over Hillary Clinton. Although I do still think that Obama has had to restrain signifiers of his racial status, I also now think that, as some readers suggested in comments, what I've written here figures "blackness" in some objectionable and trivializing ways. My thanks to these readers, and my apologies to anyone who has found this post offensive. --Macon D]





I want to write about Obama's primary victory (finally!), and in a very specific way. I've written before about Obama's whiteness, but what about his blackness? How black is he? How black does he act, and how black CAN he act, if he hopes to win the biggest prize on earth? Will white America get used to his blackness, or will he always have to restrain markers of it aside from his skin color?

First, please bear with a bit of background explanation.

As I said in yesterday's post, white people don't usually spend significant amounts of time with black people, so they tend to perceive them in terms of stereotypes instead of as individuals. I also think they tend to do so no matter how colorblind they claim to be.

However, when white people are around black people more often, they tend to get used to them, as people who emerge beyond stereotypes to become individuals. At the same time, white people also get used to other common projections of blackness that emanate from many black people. Black people are individuals, of course, and should be treated as such, just as white people treat other white people as individuals. However, black people are also members of a group, and they often absorb modes of thought, belief, attitude, and behavior that are similar to those of other members of the group. These more genuine, group-based commonalities are different from mere, pernicious stereotypes.

And of course, this is true of white people too--just as black people have certain common modes of expression, language, bodily movements, and so on, so do white people. Again, not all whites nor all blacks project these common modes of expression, but many do.

Something else I wrote awhile back was that white people tend to restrain themselves. I meant to describe a specifically white history of bodily, emotional, and vocal restraint, and I didn't mean that other groups don't encourage restraint among themselves in their own ways--collective human life always requires various modes of restraint on the part of any community's members.

For instance, non-white people who interact in largely white settings or appear in public often restrain modes of behavior that would further mark them as different. I don't know what modes of black expression Barack and Michelle Obama are used to using in private, but they certainly must feel a need to check themselves in public.

In this wonderful moment, for instance, which is appearing all over the Internet today, the Obamas find a way to express a celebratory affection for each other that's definitely black. But also, I think, more restrained than what almost happened. It looks to me like Michelle is about to give Barack a high-five, but then he goes for the more restrained fist-bump, or dap, instead:



For white people, self-consciousness while in the spotlight, and subsequent behavioral modification, almost never occur in terms of race (unless, perhaps, a white person is speaking before a a non-white audience). White individuals don't feel in such moments like they're representing white people, but black people usually do feel like they're representing black people. George Bush's continual gaffes and mangled English don't reflect on white people in general, but any by Barack Obama will (imagine what a hindrance it would be to Obama if he spoke as incorrectly as Bush so often does).

Who knows what these two happy people were thinking in this moment, but they knew they were in public, and they probably modified their behavior accordingly. And racial self-consciousness probably had something to do with that. Maybe Barack thought a high-five would register as too black, or too casual, or maybe he just prefers the dap, though that also registers as black, to most American observers. It's interesting that although a high-five could seem undignified, it's become so widespread that the more subdued dap comes across as more black. And thus, potentially, and wrongly, as undignified in another way. My understanding is that both gestures originated in urban African American culture, but the dap hasn't spread as widely into mainstream culture as the high-five has.

One problem that many have pointed out about Obama's candidacy is that if he wins, a lot of white people will see less reason than ever for things like race-based affirmative action. The presence of a black president would make it easier than ever (though also false) to say that racism is a tiny, minor hangover from the past, that "the playing field is level," and that institutional racism is just some intellectual fantasy.

That seems likely, but maybe something of the opposite will happen at the same time. Maybe white people will get more used to blackness, and to markers of it--things like black music, and black gestures, and black words and phrases and names. Today is a day to be especially hopeful, and these are among the things I'm hoping for.

Some white Americans love black culture, or what they think is black culture (especially corporate hip hop). But very few white Americans love to see black culture in their political leaders. Here's hoping that the ascendancy of Barack Obama will expand the confines of the traditional white male model for leadership, and that Hillary Clinton has expanded it in terms of gender as well.

Finally, here's one more especially black moment, performed by Barack Obama. And here's one more hope--that we see more such moments, and that they make white America love him even more, as he helps them get used to blackness.