28
Jan
First Black President?
Remember back in the last century, when Toni Morrison playfully dubbed Bill Clinton our first “Black President,” adding that Clinton “displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas?”
Back then, it was considered cool to have a “black president”—as long as he was really white, of course! But how will the race card play in the high stakes presidential poker game now doubling down, when hidden decisions taken in darkness center on the real possibility of a real “first black president?”
If the “horse race” for the Democratic presidential nomination just turned into a “race race,” Barack Obama may find that in winning the bitter battle of South Carolina, he succeeded only in losing the war against the Clintons.
Let me explain. Saturday’s primary in South Carolina came, as the New York Times noted in its usually understated manner, “at the conclusion of a weeklong campaign, where issues were interwoven with discussions of race.”
In fact race was so dominant that the less-restrained and more accurate Associated Press concluded at week’s end that Hillary had in fact won “the larger campaign to polarize voters around race and marginalize Obama (in the insidious words of one of her top advisers) as ‘The Black Candidate.’”
A major contributing factor to that campaign, of course, was the not-so-subtle manner in which former president Bill Clinton cunningly injected race into the race throughout the run up to Saturday’s vote — such as his invoking Jesse Jackson’s victories decades ago in South Carolina caucuses. The references served mainly to remind voters that:
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A) Obama, like Jackson, is African-American; and
B) Jackson’s campaigns never succeeded despite two wins in South Carolina — in part because of white resistance to the idea of any black man leading the country.
But “it was not just the Clintons who played the race card,” as the AP’s Ron Fournier noted:
“There were plenty of people dealing from the sordid deck: Obama advisers who pointed reporters to the remarks; Obama supporters who took the Clintons’ remarks out of context to condemn them; a Clinton surrogate who made a veiled reference to Obama’s drug use as a youth; the conflict-obsessed media that exaggerated every twist of the race debate; black voters who publicly declared a black man is unelectable; and white voters who openly admitted that they or their neighbors couldn’t vote for a black man.
“If nothing else, South Carolina has reminded us, sadly, that race is still an issue in America.”
A cursory look at the breakdown of votes from Obama’s victory shows that more than eighty percent of his support came from African-American voters in every category, across the board — and African-Americans made up the majority of the voters in South Carolina’s Democratic primary. Obama was buoyed in particular by strong support from black women, who themselves make up fully 35% of the Democratic primary voters there. But he carried just one of four white votes – while white male candidate John Edwards, who came in a distant third overall, garnered the most votes from – guess who? — white males.
What’s it all mean? Well, as we “now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the 22 states, including American Samoa, who will vote on Feb.5,” (as Hillary’s pithy South Carolina concession statement put it) let’s also remember that:
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A) The vast majority of primaries in those states are majority-white;
B) Most of those millions of Americans are not black; and
C) Many of them — especially white males and including numerous Hispanics — would even vote for a woman before they’d ever pull the lever for a black man.
It would be stunningly ironic if the buttoned-up, Ivy League, Law Review Barry Obama –- son of a white girl from Kansas, raised mostly in multiculti Hawaii by his white grandparents, once reviled in certain African-American circles as “not black enough” – was first marginalized and ultimately undone by his own previously marginal blackness. Although his Kenyan father may grant Obama greater claim than others to the term African-American, he hardly seems ghetto fabulous in either experience or presentation. And while it’s exceedingly odd that anyone with even a modicum of African-American blood is automatically deemed ‘black’ in our culture, it’s nonetheless true, and no doubt indicative of the deep-seated racism that still permeates every aspect of American social and political life. Those who underestimate its vestigial power do so at their peril.
Now that it has been decisively shown that calling Bill Clinton “the first black president” was just a silly metaphor—and it has also been determined that calling Barack Obama ‘not black enough’ was equally silly—the real racial dynamics of the Democratic race are beginning to emerge. Blacks have overwhelmingly decided to put aside any remaining questions and to embrace Obama wholeheartedly despite a determined and vigorous campaign to dissuade them waged by our previous ‘first black president.”
Now the Clintons — long renowned for their steadfast devotion to the Democratic Party’s African-American base—have cleverly switched tactics and succeeded in identifying Obama as the black candidate in a race that is about to be decided by whites and Hispanics. They appear to have won by losing the predominantly black South Carolina primary.
After winning South Carolina, Obama told his supporters, “I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina.” But are America’s politics truly that color-blind? Are the days really gone when we could correctly assume “that African-Americans can’t support the white candidate; whites can’t support the African-American candidate; blacks and Latinos can’t come together?”
Or will long-entrenched racial dynamics and deep-seated prejudices instead decide the Democratic race? Will white and Hispanic voters have the audacity to vote their hopes – or their fears — on Super Tuesday? If the latter prevails, Obama’s only remaining hope may be to try quickly to convince white voters he is “white enough” to win!
Is always easier to go after Big Bill.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:12 pmCable has wall to wall pundits talking about how evil the Clintons are and what an angel Obama is.
Interesting essay Rory and mercifully brief. But you say that Toni Morrison was “playfully” calling Bill Clinton “our first black president.” I don’t know the context of the quote but I’d be very interested in knowing: Does she still feel the same way? If she wants to be a public figure in 2008 I think it is a vital question to ask her because her quote is so vivid and is such a representation of the victim theory (we are all creatures of our backgrounds that we can’t do anything about them). At his best Obama as a human being and at his best as a candidate can transcend this victim bag.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pmIt is naive to think that our nation is colour blind or a melting pot. We are more like a stew or a salad; many different tastes coming together yet maintaining their individual flavour. The Clintons are doing what any politician who is losing would do…whatever it takes to win! No matter how dirty or devious. Just because Hillary was married to President Clinton does not make her qualified to be President anymore than my marriage to a doctor qualifies me for surgery! I am an African-American female and I am voting for Obama because I feel he will bring the change needed to mend this country and renew our reputation with our allies (and enemies) oversees.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:57 pmThe level and tone of the Clinton bashing has been fed by the Obama political strategists, the media echo machine and the Obama-maniacs. Obama’s team has continued to exploit his “blackness” for political gain and then pleading racism if anyone doubts Obama’s qualifications. Would he even be running for president at this point in his career if he wasn’t identified as African American? Isn’t that what’s it all about? The man is not qualified to be president - not because he is multi-racial but because he is a freshman senator of with no experience in domestic or foreign affairs, was a state legislator with an undistingished record, and has shown no experience of dealing with REAL pressure under fire. I cannot vote for him because he is not qualified. Clearly, that is why he wants to distract voters away from that issue.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:08 pmJust a lefty RACE RACE RACE vote for the person and the politics of that person.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:13 pmthe last entry was right on except the need to be an xxxx-American.
of course if you are going to look at integraty that would let any Clinton out and most other polititions also.
Obama is no victim. Look, he’s done more with his life than most of us will ever do, despite the kind of start he had. So, no tears for Barack. I wish him luck in his run for the presidency. After the disastrous occupancy by the current incumbent, we’ll need someone with a vision as to how we can regroup as a nation and return to the family of nations. Right now we are a pariah, and a continuation of the current nonsense will doom us, period.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:23 pmThankyou, How soon we forget, What you see is what you get. Bottom feeders everywhere. The Blacks will vote on race, because they have always been told,” No black man in the White House, Boy,why do you think they call it the white house”. N.R.A will now go under ground and encourage Whites that normally don’t vote, to vote. Black or white, many have felt that their vote wouldn’t matter, now they have reason to vote. How about a Hispanic vice President? As long as what you see is who you vote, race will always play a major part, just as religion. We haven’t really separated church from state, every speech, every appeal begins and ends with God on their lips. And now race mixed with religion, and gender. Next election we will see a Gay female chinese running for office or maybe Trans sexual. What you don’t see, that can hurt you. Thankyou, vote on issues, track record, character.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pmA great and to the point analysis.
I may not agree with Obama’s, nor Hillary Clinton’s professed policies, but you hit the target by ‘decoding’ The Clinton’s backhanded attempt at marginalizing Obama among Democrats.
Being a staunt Conservative, I might ‘enjoy the show’. However, it is too familiar to us; not of the ‘D’ persuation, to enjoy. One might have hoped that giving a fellow Democrat ‘The treatment’, normally reserved for Republicans, was beneath even the Clintons but … Hope …
… springs eternal; probably beyond November- 08. Before then, some Americans, even of the D persuation, might notice; ‘D’ for Demagogery and ‘R’ for the Republic, we still are.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:29 pmSP
If by any I hope not chance that Obama should become President we should change the name of the Whitehouse to Disney Land or World, Then all he needs is Miney mouse and the rest of his crew so that we will have another Disney Land because I believe that Mickey will make a better president
January 28th, 2008 at 2:45 pmOOliver
January 28th, 2008 at 9:35 pmhas a screw loose. Hillary’s campaign is losing? The last time I looked, and things may have changed in the last few days, Hillary had a 13 point “lead” at the National level. If that’s losing, she’s certain to be the next president.
What a bad joke the dems have fallen for. Obama, we’re told, has been stung with the race card by evil Hillary. Charlie Rangel, who supports Hillary, and, the last time I looked, was Black, more Black than Obama, claims that Obama raised the race issue, in precisely an effort to turn Blacks away from the benefit that accrued to Clinton, as the first Black president. Who’s right, the writer of the essay here, or Charlie Rangel?
January 28th, 2008 at 9:40 pmThe proof is clear for all to see, now more than ever. Media are owned and operated by republicans, who will do whatever they can to destroy Hillary’ campaign, and boost Obama. They’ll boost him, that is to say, until he, they hope, wins the nomination. After he wins the nomination, we will see Obama massacred by the same media the propped him up, like we have never seen in the history of presidential politics.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:45 pmHillary Clinton has the endorsement from 7 of 10 black women in Congress, for starters.
But, on that ridiculous red herring about Bill pulling out the race card mentioning that Jesse Jackson won the ‘84 and ‘88 primaries in S.C. — would you so-called journalists please check the COMPLETE transcript on that comment!!!??
A reporter asked Bill Clinton a question and he responded, with an historical fact. That’s ALL IT WAS.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:42 pmNobody has addressed the issue of wisdom or vision. Take a look, people, Hillary Clinton is an excellent senator–a hardworking functionary, who knows the rules and how to get things done. But she does not have innate wisdom or vision–ie, the big picture. That is not her fault; it is her temperament! In Barack Obama, I can see a person with intuitive wisdom–who can see America and the world in a larger, visionary, inclusive way. In a word–a person with executive capabilities! For that is what is required of a really good executive. The functionaries are important and needed, but they are not true leaders! We need a visionary to lead our country, and in Barack Obama we have one. That he also has a kind and generous heart is important, for there are many visionaries who can see clearly, but do not understand the “heart of the matter!”
January 28th, 2008 at 10:46 pmcongratulations Rory! great text, as always, have been passing it around the school.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:21 amDushi!!!
janine
To clarify…I meant that Clinton is losing her lead, she isn’t the “shoe-in” everyone thought she would be. There are those that will vote for Clinton because she is a woman and Obama because he is black, but (hopefully) not everyone is that limited. We are all witnesses to a great era in our history whatever the outcome. I was around when Geraldine Ferraro and Jesse Jackson were running for President and I remember all the patronizing commentaries that were the norm. For the first time, we have 2 different candidates that are being taken seriously as viable nominees and we can get excited about going out to vote for (a) change.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:07 pmToni Morrison dubbed Clinton as the first black President because he was able to understand black struggles having come from similar childhood circumstances with the equivalent of a single parent, and the social problems that often afflict black families with alcoholism and domestic violence.
Obama, on the other hand, may be candidate as a real first black President by skin color, but not the childhood background that helps him to understand black struggles - which is why he may be the first black President who is actually white inside, a mere front man for black America.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:35 amI would prefer a female president any day. We are waiting for the “first black president”….For what! Will he really make any difference then the one we have now. He is still a man!
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:13 pmi don’t think any should vote for obama
June 29th, 2008 at 3:59 pmNO OBAMA…. i would rather have a women president then a black man beenin our president!!!
June 29th, 2008 at 4:03 pmhey i think tht obama would make a good president….and tht a girl president would not b good 4 our country….thanks every body out there who have voted 4 him or is goin 2 vote 4 him!!!bye :)
June 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pmobama is trying to b a good president…. give him a chance who didn’t vote 4 him…GO OBAMA!!!!
June 29th, 2008 at 4:19 pmobama would not be the first black president of the usa. lets get it straight, their were 5 other way before him including the one who had children by him and the one who freed the slaves
August 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pmhttp://www.diversityinc.com/public/1461.cfm
yes obama should be the frist black president who are we as people too say that we should not have the frist black president. change is good try to see were he is comeing from. and black people come on now every day you wake up and say i dont like this or that this is the chance too do something about this so what are you going too do.
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Tom
May 28th, 2009 at 5:08 am