Monday, February 2, 2009

proudly hail obama's rise as something that could only happen in america


I was delighted and honored recently to receive an invitation to write a guest post from one of my favorite bloggers, Renee at Womanist Musings. If you're not reading her blog, you should be! Her analysis consistently gets me thinking in new ways, especially about the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways that power operates, both to oppress and to maintain itself. Here's a topic that I've been thinking about, which I turned into a guest post--the original and some comments appear at Renee's blog here. As always, I invite your further comments, there or here.)




Soon after the presidential election, many Americans—most of them white—beamed with nationalistic pride over Barack Obama’s victory. “Only in America!” they said with a patriotic smile and a hand on their hearts.

Well, okay, few of them actually had their hands on their hearts when they said that. But as the Obama administration gets underway, the patriotic pride such people continue to express when they talk about Obama, especially with that phrase, “only in America,” has struck me as excessive.

What are white people really saying when they say “only in America” in reference to Obama?

When Obama won, editorial writers across the country used the phrase in the titles of their jubilant celebrations of his victory. Or rather, their jubilant celebrations of America as a supposedly exceptional country, because it chose a black leader.

In “Obama . . . Only in America," which appeared in the Orlando Senior Examiner, Tom Holbrook wrote (amidst an array of oddly irrelevant numbers),

Only in America!!! On July 27, 2004, at the Fleet Center in Boston, MA, a young Illinois State Legislator, 8 days shy of his 43rd birthday, approached the podium and before thousands of screaming Democratic National Convention delegates delivered one of the most talked about and remembered Keynote Addresses of any political convention.

Fourteen weeks later this same young man would win the election for United States Senator from Illinois. Exactly 1,493 days later we would accept his party's nomination for Presidency of the United States and 66 days after that, at the age of 47, he stood before a live audience of 125,000 and a TV audience of many millions throughout the country and the world, and gave his victory speech as the 44th President-Elect of the United States of America. As I said at the top... only in America!!!


Holbrook emphasizes Obama’s youth here, as if that’s what makes his rise exceptional, but he soon moves on to his real cause for joy, Obama’s race. Or rather, the idea that despite Obama’s race, America elected him. And so, Holbrook’s real object of celebration is America itself, not an individual named Barack Obama:

For America, with an ugly history of black oppression and suppression, this momentous election is indeed an historic one and should speak loudly and clearly that the American credo of ‘In America anything is possible for anyone, who wants it and is willing to work for it,’ is still true.

In another example of this common white usage of Obama, also entitled “Only in America,” the editors of the San Diego Union-Tribune declared Obama’s victory “a profound testament that America is the land of opportunity. Less than 50 years after Jim Crow laws kept many blacks living second-class lives, a black man has been elected president. This is astonishing and heartening.”

So what are white people really doing when they express their appreciation for Obama this way?

It seems to me that they’re not really celebrating Obama himself; they’re using him to celebrate the supposedly exceptional country that elected him. They’re doing so in order to proclaim America an exception because its people have gotten over race to such an extent that they’re even willing to elect a black president. And so what they’re really talking about, when they say that such a thing could only happen in America, is white Americans.

I think that ultimately, this claim that Obama’s story is only possible in America could be a tacit assertion, or perhaps a recognition, that white Americans are still in power, as well as a claim that because they elected Obama, their racial group in general is no longer racist (never mind, of course, that only about 43% of white Americans voters voted for Obama).

But then, if the phrase “only in America” in this context has such racial, ultimately racist undertones, why did Obama himself often uses such terms to describe himself during his campaign? As New York Times columnist Frank Rich notes, Obama often framed his own rise the same way: “'In no other country on earth is my story even possible,' Obama is fond of saying.”

‘That is true,” Rich writes, “and that is what the country celebrates this week.” In his article—a meditation on the meaning of Obama’s ascendancy for race in America—Rich indicates that what he thinks America should be celebrating is not so much Obama himself, but rather a major milestone in ever-improving relations between black and white people, as manifested in a shiny new, black president. Once again, the real message is that white Americans can use Obama’s victory to pat themselves on the back for their collective goodheartedness.

During the campaign, Obama seemed to recognize a common desire among white Americans to congratulate themselves and their country this way. Although he rarely spoke directly about race, he (and/or his campaign staff) clearly recognized how that phrase, “only in America,” strikes a racial chord for many white Americans. In Obama’s one major speech that did focus directly on race, which he delivered in March of last year, he said,

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. . . . I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. [emphasis added]

Obama apparently delivered that speech in response to the Reverend Wright debacle, which tied him in racial terms to comments made by the preacher of his church (never mind, white Americans seemed to say, the far more outrageous comments made by John McCain’s spiritual advisor). If white concerns about Wright’s remarks did push him to make that speech, then what he said was largely addressed to white Americans, especially those who felt anxious about his blackness. Implicitly praising America for an exceptional egalitarianism that allowed his ascent, despite his racial makeup, was one way to calm such anxieties.

It is of course common wisdom that in order to get elected, politicians must cater to various voting blocks. Obama clearly addressed white voters at times, and one way to do so was by declaring America a great country, particularly because it is, supposedly, the only country where a rise like his is possible. This strategy was especially evident last August, when Obama accepted the Democratic nomination.

Afterward, the Democratic Convention closed with a song that had already been used on other patriotic occasions, "Only In America," by the country music duo Brooks and Dunn. The lyrics to “Only In America” actually express some ambivalence about American opportunity, and the official video includes a fairly diverse cast of “Americans.” However, the Brooks and Dunn audience is pure, flag-waving, “red, white and blue,” by which I mean, almost exclusively white. So again, attaching Obama to that phrase, “only in America,” resonates in especially racial terms, and specifically for white hearts and minds, as a way to celebrate America, more so than Obama himself.

Aside from the underlying racism of white American fondness for the idea of Obama’s rise as a singularly American possibility, there’s also the disillusioning fact that this claim isn’t true. Many other countries have seen the rise of minority figures to national leadership (and never mind, the American triumphalists again seem to say, the many other countries that have also elected women as their leaders).

As Noam Chomsky pointed out in an interview with Amy Goodman, Obama’s

election was described as an extraordinary display of democracy, a miracle that could only happen in America, and on and on. . . . [But take] the second poorest country, Bolivia. They had an election in 2005 that’s almost unimaginable in the West, certainly here, anywhere. The person elected into office was indigenous. That’s the most oppressed population in the hemisphere, that is, those who survived. He’s a poor peasant.

Chomsky also cited the election in Haiti of populist candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide; Venezuela’s election of another first-time indigenous candidate, Hugo Chavez, seems to me another example. As David Berreby points out in a Slate article, many historical precedents also exist, as “people who came out of stigmatized ethnic minorities or ‘foreign' enclaves to lead their governments . . . are an uncommon but regularly recurring part of history”:

Alberto Fujimori, who held both Peruvian and Japanese citizenship, was elected president of Peru in 1990. Sonia Gandhi, born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino in northern Italy, led her Congress Party to a resounding victory in India's 2004 elections. Daniel arap Moi is from the Kalenjin people, not the Luo or Kikuyu who are the nation's largest ethnic groups and its centers of political gravity. But this did not bar him being president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002.

Obama himself may well believe that America really is the only nation on earth where a rise to the very top by someone like him is possible, but it seems to me that conceiving of his ascendancy that way is especially gratifying, and soothing, to white Americans. Like the suddenly prevalent claims that Obama (and even his daughters) are biracial, thinking of Obama's story as an "only in America" story also helps them feel like more a part of that story. It bridges a gap that many white Americans feel at some level between a president who's black and themselves as white.

As Toni Morrison writes of another cherished idea, the American Dream, "only in America" is a "well-fondled phrase." It seems to me that the Americans who fondle it most dearly are usually white Americans, and they do so because they want to hold onto a cherished and increasingly brittle conception of American greatness. They seem to feel that America’s supposed moral leadership is slipping away, and so holding up Obama as an example of America’s superiority, rather than as an individual, potentially great leader, becomes a way to use Obama’s blackness to assert a national delusion.

And so, finally, to celebrate Barack Obama’s rise to leadership as an “only in America” story is an insult—it’s a way of using him for one's own, ultimately racist purposes, like a cartoonish, blackfaced puppet.

20 comments:

  1. This is in many ways an interesting post, but has some very serious flaws. And since the stakes are actually very high, I guess I find those flaws glaring and troubling.

    First, you don't seem to have any appreciation for what's unique about Obama's case. That is, you don't seem to understand the uniqueness of the experience of Africans in the Americas. Those other cases, the supposedly parallel or analogous ones, are completely different. Immigrants and/or "marginalized" people have no parallel with Africans in the Americas. Can you seriously make that analogy? With a straight face? The middle passage should suffice as a case for the unique character of Obama's place in the racial imagination.

    Second, exceptionalism is a political economy term that denotes a state who sets the law, but is not bound by the law. Exceptionalism does not mean "the best" or "the unique." So, that's a bit loaded of a term in the rhetoric.

    Chavez is not an indigenous person. Love or hate him (seems the only two options sometimes), he's not indigenous.

    Bolivia is majority Aymara-Quechua (in that particular part of SoAm, the term "indigenous" is actually problematic and something Aymara and Quechua people don't like applied to them), so, while it is remarkable that Morales was elected and it HAS been a huge deal, talked about so much, celebrated and marveled at, the fact remains that he drew from a democratic majority base - on racial terms. Still amazing, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Chomsky proves himself to be a blowhard again. I like a lot of Noam's conclusions, but he's often bombastic and terribly ill-informed.

    You offer no evidence or proof of your central claim: that "only in America" is invoked to make Obama a blackface puppet. Really now. That's a big claim. Don't make it unless you have real evidence.

    For now, it seems you're actually wrong. It's true. Only in America. Only in the U.S. has someone from a formerly enslaved group come to rule over the vast majority who were formerly slave owners. An Algerian as Prez in France? A Zimbabwean as PM in England? A Congolese as leader of Belgium? Someone from Angola leading Portugal? That's what we're talking about. That scale of human decimation, where the decimated come to rule democratically over the decimator. There is no precedent. I can't quite understand why you're set on claiming the opposite. What's the motive here? In the end, why care so much about what white people think? For real. I do believe that's 99% of the problem with the Obama-ain't-a-big-deal editorials, blogs, and speeches. The obsession with what white people are thinking is the problem. That's something black people have largely gotten over (a good dose of black nationalism in the seventies did a hell of a lot of work that way).

    Lastly, and for me most problematically, your post completely erases black people. The polling post-election was overwhelming: black people described Obama's election as "a dream come true" and "a realization of King's dream" and many other ways of saying: this is huge and a break through we never saw coming. Yet, non-black people from the left (I'm one, so I know my crew) started shitting on the meaning of the election from day one. That proves this other unique thing, what you call an exceptionalism about the U.S. : everybody loves to shit on black people's happiness. I can't help but see the sentiments in this post as doing just that because, in the end, this is yet another obsession with what white people think and how everything revolves around that. Makes me think this thinking needs a Copernican revolution!

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  2. "And so, finally, to celebrate Barack Obama’s rise to leadership as an “only in America” story is an insult—it’s a way of using him for one's own, ultimately racist purposes, like a cartoonish, blackfaced puppet."

    Really, Macon D? A blackfaced puppet? Arguably one of the most powerful men in the world at this moment? Do not belittle what he has accomplished just because you think there were people who voted for him just to say "look what I/we did! Aren't we great!?

    Surely you don't think that the "only in America" phrase wouldn't have been used by the the Mcain/Pailin camp had they won? Of course it would have! "Only in America could we elect a small town mother of four to the second highest position in our government!!!"

    Considering that women were not given the right to vote until 1920 (19th Ammendment), and African American men were given the right to vote in 1865 (15th Ammendment), don't you see that women have been slighted even longer than African American men? I agree that both groups had a long wait before it was socially accepted, but those are the dates when it was constitutionally granted.

    Perhaps this election was decided not so much by your proposed racism as it was by sexism.
    Devil's advocate here, but couldn't a large portion of the voters out there, instead of thinking about making history electing an African American President, been thinking... there's no way I'm voting for a woman. Looking at Mcain's age and health there was a distinct possibility that she could have become President before the term was over.
    Sexism is quite possibly just as prevalent as racism. In some cases maybe even more so since it is socially accepted in many cultures.

    My point? "Only in America" overused... sure. But don't think it wouldn't have been just as overused under different circumstances.

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  3. Thanks for your comments John and Brother of another Color. I don't know if I can address the several points you made fully, but I'll try.

    John you're right, Chavez isn't indigenous, or fully indigenous. I'll have to find a better way to put that.

    I don't think, though, that "what's unique about Obama's case" is quite the point of my post. Rather, the point is how that well-fondled phrase, "only in America," gets fondled again by Americans when referring to Obama. And the question of whether white Americans tend to fondle it differently than others do. Do you really think that most of them are harkening back to the middle passage when they do so? Or even, in a sober, reflective way, to the end of slavery? I don't think so. I think they're mostly holding up Obama's blackness so they can celebrate the supposed end of white racism and the supposedly meritocratic nature of American society.

    I don't see how your point about Morales invalidates Chomsky's claim.

    You offer no evidence or proof of your central claim: that "only in America" is invoked to make Obama a blackface puppet. Really now. That's a big claim. Don't make it unless you have real evidence.

    Read the post again--the two editorials I cited are evidence, just for starters. Dozens of similar examples are available on the Internet. Holding up Obama because he's black as an example of how great and exceptional America supposedly is for electing him is a way of using a very limited part of him for one's own obliviously patriotic purposes. The version of Obama being held up in such cases is in effect a caricature of him--like a puppet.

    In the end, why care so much about what white people think? For real. I do believe that's 99% of the problem with the Obama-ain't-a-big-deal editorials, blogs, and speeches. The obsession with what white people are thinking is the problem. That's something black people have largely gotten over (a good dose of black nationalism in the seventies did a hell of a lot of work that way).

    Despite Obama's ascendancy, white people and white hegemony more generally are still in power in America. Who exactly do you think is "obsessed" with what white people are thinking? Me and "black people"? Are you seriously saying that the only racial problem now is that black people think or speak too much about what white people are thinking, and if they'd just stop doing that, everything would be okay?

    And I disagree with your claim that the post erases black people. You wrote:

    The polling post-election was overwhelming: black people described Obama's election as "a dream come true" and "a realization of King's dream" and many other ways of saying: this is huge and a break through we never saw coming.

    You seem to be agreeing with me here--I saw and heard black Americans saying such things more often than simply "only in America!" Again, that phrase celebrates America instead of a history of black resistance, and usually, when used by white Americans, it celebrates the supposed magnanimity of white Americans in general.

    BOAC, I'm not belittling Obama's accomplishment. Read the post more carefully, please--I'm pointing out, as I just wrote here, how that accomplishment is often hailed by Americans, often white ones, as an "only in America" thing, when it's not, and that they're usually doing so for rather self-serving and delusional purposes. I'm not saying Obama IS a blackfaced puppet.

    Sure, "only in America" would have been used had McCain/Palin won, but probably not as often. More to the point, it wouldn't have the same racial resonances when white people used it for them that I tried to spell out in the post.

    I agree with you that had Palin won, and especially Clinton, the phrase would have been used in gendered terms instead of racial ones. But then it would be sexist instead of racist, right? I'm not saying either one is necessarily worse (nor that "only in America" is only uttered in reference to Obama).

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  4. John said: The middle passage should suffice as a case for the unique character of Obama's place in the racial imagination.

    Note: Obama has no "personal" historical connection to the middle passage. Yes, his father is black, but his father has no historical ties with "Afican Americans" and American slavery. His father is an immigrant from Kenya. His mother's family are all white Americans. Please, do not put all people with "black" skin in the same historical pot.

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  5. >Only in the U.S. has someone from a formerly enslaved group come to rule over the vast majority who were formerly slave owners. An Algerian as Prez in France? A Zimbabwean as PM in England? A Congolese as leader of Belgium? Someone from Angola leading Portugal?

    Out of interest, why the "competitive" thinking with Europe? Why not South America or Canada, New Zealand, Australia? I can be wrong, but I get the impression that Europe is the only continent where it is expected to demonstrate how progressive we are by voting somebody out of a minority group even if the history is different to the USA.

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  6. John, in addition, you forget South Africa for example

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  7. I think it makes all the difference in the world when we're talking about a minority group, rather than, in S.A. or across Africa, a majority group that was subjugated through force.

    It's not a competition. Not at all. But it is exceptional and without precedent. The domination of white people over black people is the single most deadly, destructive human violence in the past 500 years. I believe that. And to act like it is not exceptional, unique that a black man was elected in the U.S. - well, I'm still waiting for a real precedent that takes into account:

    a. the minority
    b. the ongoing brutality akin to Jim Crow (let's not forget that that stuff is barely fifty years out of law)

    That's it. And, sorry if you don't like the turn of phrase (I don't, but also don't care much), but it is a case of only in America. Maybe sometime in another place, but, for now, only here.

    My point about what white people thing - well, my point was the inverse of what you asked. No, I don't think myself in a position to say what black people should think. But black people don't care about what white people say about the, by and large. That's what the heavy dose of nationalism did in the seventies. It changed that relationship. The obsession with what whites are saying? I think that traps black people and subjects them to what others - racist others, often - think, say, and see. And I don't think that's right.

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  8. FEB 3RD, JOHN WROTE:

    "The domination of white people over black people is the single most deadly, destructive human violence in the past 500 years. I believe that."

    REALLY? What about the complete annihilation of the 'Native' American culture(s)? (Reservations?-ahh-such a gift from them Whiteys) Talk about deadly human violence!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!

    oh wait.......that's right.......we don't count any more do we???

    Hmmmmmmmm, a Native American ascending the American political ladder.....did you ever ponder such a thought?
    Broaden your horizons, (visions, criticisms,...WHATEVER..you come across as a bit narrow-minded.

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  9. "I'm pointing out, as I just wrote here, how that accomplishment is often hailed by Americans, often white ones, as an "only in America" thing, when it's not, and that they're usually doing so for rather self-serving and delusional purposes."

    And what, Macon, is your qualification to speak for the "self-serving and delusional" white masses? That is the group you're referring to isn't it?

    Seems to me you're looking for racism in every possible venue open to you. I voted for Obama, in the manner I have in every Presidential election before this one. I considered him the lesser of two possible evils, no more no less. Nor did I celebrate this "momentous" occasion. It was merely a change of power in our government that has happened before and will happen again.

    So tell me. Am I racist for not celebrating Obama's rise to the Presidency? Or am I not racist for treating him as I have every other President in my voting history?
    After reading some of your previous blogs I'm sure you will come up with some truly convoluted reasoning to prove racism in some form or another.

    I'm sorry, but it just seems to me that you are more sensitive about Obama's race and how it's perceived than he is, and I wonder why?

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  10. Somewhat agree with what you are saying but it comes through as if you've adopted a unipolar view that excludes many other facets linked to this nonetheless historic event.
    The "only in America" attitude pervades all Americans and not just the whites - it's the very ideal that has many immigrate to the U.S., to get a piece of that "anything-is-possible" pie, and it's long been the subject of many books and films (Great Gatsby being the perfect example). Unfortunately, it is a pipe dream which - although chanted throughout the land like some sort of all-the-rest-is-forgiven-and-forgotten mantra - leads to great frustration and painful disillusionment which produces, amongst other things, much displaced anger...such as racism. But racism on a grand scale such as what we've (historically) seen in the U.S. wherein a cultural group is severely oppressed, inadvertently leads to reverse-racism; this is just a fancy way of classifying ‘racism’ which is usually born out of subjugation – it’s normal for the oppressed to mistrust and resent their oppressors, but there is a point where this becomes an equally despicable behaviour! I do think it is wrong that blacks would vote for Obama simply because he is black just as I think it would have been wrong for all women to vote for Hillary simply because she is a woman. In an ideal world, the deciding factor should be ‘ideas’ and not ‘common minority traits’ – if we all saw people as people, there wouldn’t be any minorities, just one huge collective whole…
    These are the issues, along with white hypocrisy, which need to be confronted. Don't know if that makes sense to you?

    If you're interested, here's my own view on the subject (which asks more questions than it answers)
    http://downmystreetandupyours.blogspot.com/2009/01/obamas-victory-so-what-if-hes-black.html

    Perhaps the piece "Humanitarian Aid - A Necessary Evil" (also on my blog) will interest you; I apply the same logic on a grander scale.
    Thanks for the post; good blog idea!

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  11. BOAC: And what, Macon, is your qualification to speak for the "self-serving and delusional" white masses? That is the group you're referring to isn't it?

    I'm not trying to speak for the white masses. I'm trying to point out common tendencies among some of them. I don't see them as a monolithic group that all have the same tendencies. My qualification is a lengthy term of study of such matters (including the posts on this blog), combined with a lot of listening to others who have studied such matters. My general goal is to get white people to think more than they usually do about what it means to be white. I hope it's clear to you why that's a good thing?

    Regarding your stated reasons for voting for Obama, it sounds like you're not one of the whites who used Obama to proudly hail his victory as something that could only happen in America, and thus as evidence that America, white Americans that is, have gotten over racism. Again, I don't mean to say that all white Americans do this, but many did, and still do, and when they do so, I think they're usually doing it differently, for different reasons, from how African Americans commonly hail Obama's victory. That said, these are my observations, not the results of an extensive empirical study, a difference that I hope is evident in the post.

    So tell me. Am I racist for not celebrating Obama's rise to the Presidency? Or am I not racist for treating him as I have every other President in my voting history?

    Racist? I'm not sure, but your questions resemble common white claims to colorblindness. I don't have space here to explain how that's a form of racism, so I'll refer you to this post and its comments, "Things You Need to Understand #5 - Color Blindness," and to this one, ""Being 'colour blind' is NOT a solution". Google could help you find many other explanations of this common white tendency, and to figure out whether you tend to enact it.

    I'm sorry, but it just seems to me that you are more sensitive about Obama's race and how it's perceived than he is, and I wonder why?

    Just because Obama doesn't speak at length about his race doesn't mean that he isn't sensitive about it. Just how sensitive he is about it isn't for me (or you, if you're white) to say, since I can never fully or truly know what it's like to be a member of another race in America. Also, I think of myself less in terms of being sensitive about his race and more in terms of trying to become more sensitive about how white people treat and react to his race, and I think that's important for the reasons I stated above. I hope that doesn't strike you as unnecessarily convoluted?

    Hello Pascal. Your blog post raises some interesting points about Obama's race, though I'm not sure what your main point is there . . . Your comment here also covers a lot of territory, so I'm not sure what part of it to address, but I might refer you as well to the articles I just linked about the pitfalls of claims to colorblindness.

    Yes, I agree that "the 'only in America' attitude pervades all Americans and not just the whites," but don't you think that it has a different meaning and resonance for many whites, who have had greater access to "the American Dream," and who also sometimes use Obama, because he's black, to celebrate the greatness of America? I agree that "only in America" is a pipe dream, but I think the dream is different in the heads of many white Americans than in those of many non-white Americans. And I think their usage of Obama in this way may well exemplify that difference.

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  12. >It's not a competition. Not at all. But it is exceptional and without precedent.

    My question also was, why the comparison with Europe/European countries? Europe is the original place of Europeans.
    Canada, Australia, South America are places which were stolen from indigenous people. The average expectancy of the indigenous people of Australia is about 30 years. Who is talking about this, who is asking Australia?

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  13. John, Brother of Another Color, I couldn't agree with you more. Obama's victory is certainly without precedent for the reasons John cites, and I also think that John makes an important point when he notices that it's whites on the far left who seem to want to downplay its significance as a milestone in the racial history of the country.

    I've been thinking about this a lot, and I really believe that one reason for this has little to do with racial politics and everything to do with the resentment of the farther left for the Democratic Party. I think that it has been very, very hard for your average Chomsky-quoting, Nader-voting dude to accept that this incredibly gratifying event has been brought to us not by leftists but by liberals, and so there's a desire to downplay.

    But the important thing is that debates over whether racism is alive or dead end up in abstraction and don't finally matter much (something Obama himself seems to understand in his reluctance to enter into such debates--his Philadelphia speech basically pointed out that both blacks and whites in America fail to be very imaginative when they deal with one another). I'll put it this way: right now, as we type these responses to one another, the US Senate is preparing to deal with what will potentially be the largest, most progresssive stimulus package of the past fifty or so years. This to me is much more important than deciding whether Obama's election "could only happen in America." Either this package goes through in a way that brings health care to impoverished people, that begins to improve the school system that is failing poor children, that brings mass transit to people who, lacking it now, can't commute to jobs (as in the city of Detroit, where there is now no public transportation) ... or the package fails, and another generation of American children do not get a fair start in life.

    So I want to suggest that everyone here who says they care about the plight of victims of racism now take the energy they would have put into blogs like this one, and now turn it toward writing their congressional representatives in order to indicate your support for the president's stimulus package.

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  14. This Anonymous commenter is just talking out of his ass and is ignorant as all get out:

    ...(something Obama himself seems to understand in his reluctance to enter into such debates--his Philadelphia speech basically pointed out that both blacks and whites in America fail to be very imaginative when they deal with one another...

    So I want to suggest that everyone here who says they care about the plight of victims of racism now take the energy they would have put into blogs like this one, and now turn it toward writing their congressional representatives in order to indicate your support for the president's stimulus package.

    =============================

    One -- Obama's Philadelphia "race" speech was a "don't frighten the whites folks and make them feel good about themselves and let them know that people of colour, blacks especially, ain't angry and if you vote for me [Obama] I [Obama] promise that I [Obama] won't make you white folks upset by stating the truth about America's history and that I [Obama] won't take away any of the privileges bestowed upon those of you with white skin, and that I [Obama] shall maintain the status quo for all you white folks, so you don't have to worry about voting to put the scary black man in your white man's White House."

    Two -- The stimulus package ain't gonna work. It is over before it even gets started. Fortunately, for the folks who read this blog's comments, there are a lot smarter people in the world than that ignorant Anonymous commenter and me. There is no reason to remain ignorant:

    http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

    ...When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability. At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished.

    Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed. How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out...

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  15. So apparently, redcatbiker, we can't count on you to chip in to influence our government at this particular moment, since you've got some important and highly original analyses to carry out. You are such a powerful anti-racist!

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  16. So apparently, redcatbiker, we can't count on you to chip in to influence our government at this particular moment, since you've got some important and highly original analyses to carry out. You are such a powerful anti-racist!

    Hey, Anonymous, when you don an identity other than the cowardly one with which you post, then I shall think about answering/responding to your question/comment, which, by the way, further illuminates your stupidity and silliness.

    Ciao!

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  17. Well said, Macon.

    "Only in America" is undoubtedly loaded with White guilt.

    And they've seem to have forgotten about Obama in the mix. There's so much clamoring to sweep the big, fat, unaddressed-due-to-fear elephant in the room under the rug.

    "Only in America" can history be so cheesy, ugly, and offensive (e.g., Sasha and Malia dolls, those wack Obama plates and gold coins, Obama chia pet, Obama bucks and waffles, etc.).

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  18. Anonymous said: 'debates over whether racism is alive or dead end up in abstraction and don't finally matter much'

    Racism will forever be alive, no doubt about that, it's just a matter of degree. And pinpointing the degree can be as abstract and tedious as pinpointing Obama's race.

    Whether you like it or not, much of the world does have a more favorable impression of America thanks to Obama. Bush is out, and it's icing on the cake that Obama's black. The world's a racist place. For some whites, it does lessen the degree of white guilt that a black man's president - good for them. This isnt true for other whites.

    But it's a fact that America is looked upon in a much more favorable way now that a black man's in the White House. It might be racist ...

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  19. I would like to add my input to this discussion based on my first-hand experiences I had when working on the campaign. I moved from Los Angeles to rural Virginia to work on the campaign for the last four months. In doing so, I realized that the American people were not electing a black president at all, but a man whose story they twisted to allow him into their realm of belonging. They removed him from his category of otherness (otherness on many different levels beyond his race) through the ways they focused on his "American story", his accomplishment of the "American Dream" (also problematic in that the American Dream is apparently still considered a viable plausible opportunity by large numbers of white Americans who don't realize their inherent privilege). I can almost guarantee that had Barack Obama EVER lost his cool the way McCain continuously did he would have lost...white voters would have seen him as an "angry black man" (I think the excessive criticism of Michelle as an "angry black woman" can testify to this). Please do not misconstrue what I wrote to mean that Barack Obama is not black, but that many white voters did not see him as "black" the way the see other African-Americans as "black." I draw this conclusion from the large majority of volunteers in our office who openly spouted racist remarks and stereotypical understandings of, for example, the black attendant in the parking garage or the black neighborhood they were about to canvass. Moreover, referring to Obama as black was silently considered taboo in our office as it made volunteers feel "uncomfortable". Only until the night of the election, when newscasters began discussing the historical importance of his winning did the media and Americans begin to call him black. I have felt deep emotions of surprise, confusion and pain since Obama's election. This sting is especially hurtful when I hear white people slinging about the "only in America" epitaph.
    While my experiences are limited to one small portion of the country and BY NO MEANS represent all whites in the country or in rural Virginia. I find this posting to be extremely important. Regardless of whether or not "only in America" would be applied to other candidates, regardless of the fact that Obama's election IS a beautiful historic moment, the importance in recognizing the use of "only in America" helps us to understand how racism continues to be subverted in our society.
    Now, turning our 44th President into a commodity of collectors plates, t-shirts, and special-issue coins...ONLY IN AMERICA.

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  20. @John

    Your arguments are really confusing me.

    Look, when you raise the 'only in America' idea, you have to specify what event it is you are referring to.

    Are you saying the following?

    'Only in America can someone with the same skin colour (more-or-less) and genetic ancestry (sort of) and general culture (in a fairly general sense) as a people who have present in/part of the country since its birth, and formed a large proportion of its population, but were once held there as slaves, and suffered centuries of oppression, come to rule over the entire nation including the descendants of the slave owners'

    Because if so, that may be true, but its also baffling because what countries are you comparing it with?

    What other countries have a large population of people who have been there since the birth of the nation but were once slaves there (but don't form the majority, otherwise the Caribbean nations would qualify)?

    If no other countries have had the specific history needed to raise the question, then the statement, while true, doesn't mean a lot.

    It's like saying 'only in the Caribbean nations can a descendant of a slave come to be the elected leader of a nation composed mostly of other descendants of slaves'.

    Or 'only in Russia can a former intelligence officer become President after communism collapsed and capitalism didn't work out as well as expected' (not that that's something to cheer, but still)

    Or 'Only in the UK can someone from a country that was once forced to merge with the dominant country because it bankrupted itself in a colonial adventure in the Americas, end up as its leader and preside over the whole country going bust'

    Once you have come up with a selection of countries, including the US, that meet the set-up criteria you seem to have implicitly specified, then you can ask whether the US is the only one that pulled off the 'punchline', i.e. that has elected as leader someone who, though not literally part of the former-slave population, is at least racially and socially virtually a part of it.

    But I don't know of any countries that meet the specific set-up criteria, so its a ridiculously rigged question. The only way to match the US would be to replicate the terrible crimes that formed the set-up to the pay-off in the first place.

    To congratulate yourself for that would mean congratulating yourself for having the crime of slavery in the first place.


    Your reference to a Zimbabwean PM in the UK just seems to make the point that you are not clear yourself what event you are talking about. There is no large and long standing Zimbabwean community in the UK let alone a former slave one You seem to have switched to talking about 'an immigrant becoming leader'.

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