Unity
I’m not going to embed this video because it’s an official campaign product. But it reminded me of something I kept meaning to say during the primaries, to wit: When you listen to white people talk about Barack Obama, talk of “uniting the country” is almost universally taken to mean some kind of gesture toward bipartisanship or postpartisanship. Then then gets taken as either a good thing or a bad thing, according to your views on feisty partisanship, and either a ruse or a real commitment, according to your views on Obama.
But when I’ve heard Obama’s black supporters, the ones from the grassroots like the man in the video rather than the “official” black political leadership, it always sounds to me like they’re hearing a very different message. Uniting the country means, to them, something more like bringing African-Americans into the mainstream of American politics. An Obama presidency would be a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the “real” America — which is basically defined as the part where everyone is white — versus the unreal America comprised of non-whites and the white people who deign to live near them. Of course to some extent any Democratic Party electoral coalition represents a rebuke to that way of thinking. But someone like a Bill Clinton represented a very self-conscious effort to portray himself as a member of the “real” America. Obama, by contrast, is a multi-racial guy from a big city who has no real choice but to stand his ground and say, no, the America that I live in is the real America.
Of course this element of Obamaism appeals to white yuppies, too. But I think Obama’s educated, urbane, cosmopolitan fans have always been able to savor the real/unreal distinction with a certain amount of irony and non-chalance. But for those written out of the “real” America for reasons of race rather than taste in salad greens, that kind of cultural and political marginalization is much more threatening, and the idea of relaxing it is incredibly appealing.
32 Responses to “Unity”
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October 30th, 2008 at 10:22 am
But I think Obama’s educated, urbane, cosmopolitan fans have always been able to savor the real/unreal distinction with a certain amount of irony and non-chalance.
I’m not sure this is right. Speaking for myself, it was accurate in the late 90s. There was a bit of backlash humor (red-country vs. blue-country, United States of Canada/Jesusland), but I think even that was rooted in a certain amount of “are you serious?” kind of offense.
Over time, though, this strain of thought has only become more pernicious, and more offensive.
It became harder to chuckle when George Allen welcomed “Macaca” to “real Virginia,” a place that has been further expounded upon lately by John McCain’s brother and surrogates.
It became harder to chuckle when Michelle Bachmann talked about who is and isn’t anti-American, which was an extreme but predictable extension of arguments put forth in books published by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, et al.
If I never had to read, in some post on the more reasonable blogs, about how opposing torture “gives aid and comfort to the enemy” again, it would be too soon.
I can’t pinpoint when, exactly, the difference between “real” and “fake” America started bothering me, but it did. To hell with irony and nonchalance. I’m tired of having my credentials as an American challenged in ways large and small. So yes, that particular message appeals to me more tthan you might think.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Excellent, excellent observation.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I agree with Brad L.
I’ll also add that Obama has ties to rural Kansas. Obama really is a product of all of America and has a genuine knowledge of many different parts of the country.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I’m with Brad L. It was easy to chuckle about this shit in the 90s, because we knew that Hillary was really a feminist and Bill was racially inclusive, and the corndog act was just an act, and who cared?
But after the last eight years of polarization, I think a lot of white liberals are *almost* as viscerally relieved as African-Americans are to see Obama ascend that stage. When he says
“There’s not a red America and a blue America, there’s the United States of America,”
I don’t feel he’s talking about bipartisanship in a vague goo-goo way. I feel he’s saying “goddamn it, the idea of America belongs to us too, and you ******* are trashing it.”
October 30th, 2008 at 10:39 am
An interesting fact about the “macaca” incident is that S.R. Sidarth, the campaign tracker that George Allen called “macaca,” was not only born in Fairfax County, Virginia but grew up in Virginia and attended the University of Virginia. By contrast, Allen had been born in Southern California. Sidarth was more of a “real” Virginian than Allen was.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I think whites and blacks see it similarly, in part because white Democrats are disproportionately Catholic and Jewish. Similarly, white Democrats are also much more likely to have a grandparent who immigrated to the US.
It’s seldom remarked upon, but Biden would be the first Catholic VP in history.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I agree with this too; and that video brings tears to my eyes.
Volunteering at the Obama office in Evansville, IN, these past few weeks has been an eye-opening experience – young, old and middle aged of all colors sitting side by side phonebanking till our ears are ringing – it’s the American Dream, right there. An old African American lady said to me “I’m doing it for the children; it’s the children that need this.” And who knows if he’s willing or able to deliver all that is promised [or imagined] but hell I think he has a chance. I hope old Charles lives to see all four years of it!
October 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Spot on, Matt. You nail the very different universes the two groups inhabit. GOPer’s have understand them for years, consciously or not.
Obama understands them. But until recently, liberals have resisted seing them. That seems to be changing. It’s about time.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Following up on what Brad L. said, for me the line was crossed sometime after 9/11 during the lead up to the war. Having lived through 9/11, being in downtown Manhattan when it happened, and having a bunch of conservatives living well outside any real threat of terrorism saying that people like me don’t love America and want to give in to terrorists was just too much to take. Those were our people that were murdered, those were our firemen that rushed in to their deaths to save lives, it was our city that devastated and left with a burning, smoking, toxic hole in the ground. And it was our city that brushed itself off and went back to work despite the fear and paranoia of further terrorist attacks. And we don’t love America? And we’re weak on terrorism? I’m not as eloquent as Obama. All I can say in the face of that bullshit is fuck you. I’m glad we have someone like Obama with the grace to say it better. That’s why during his 2004 speech I was hooked.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Can we PLEASE stop using that horrible horrible word, “Obamaism”?? Or, at least, hyphenate, a la ‘Obama-ism’…
And this:
Is a blot on an otherwise well done blogpost: Toni Morrison, for crying out loud, called Clinton “the first black president.” I think the self-conscious part is spot on, but that’s a trait of an alcoholic (or, in this case, son of alcoholic). That’s not because Clinton was making any effort at all towards the traditional (read: hidebound) white arguments as you allege. No, the tension inherent in being such a black candidate (so to speak) can oft be mistook for self-consciousness and can lead to white people getting all nervy, jumpy and foolish.
If Bill Clinton hadn’t been such a brother, we’d be seeing this more widely played out about Obama right now. Some on the far right ARE having it out right now… those are the ones that never accepted Clinton in the first place and have never, ever, read anything by Toni Morrison. But, for the most part, Clinton worked the initial nerves out of the system.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Well stated Matt.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Ed B. is willing to place a bet on the “racial” identifications of 98% of those who insist that liberal/progressive white people feel just as excluded from the American political system as black people do….
October 30th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I think Matt’s fundamental point is correct, but like Brad L the humor has started to wear thin for me.
Obviously, “white yuppies” are not marginalized from the political process in any meaningful sense. But there just really isn’t anything funny about a political movement that’s based around fomenting hatred of cosmopolitan values and calling the people who hold those values “anti-American.” It’s just corrosive to our communitarian spirit and toxic to any hope of progressive change in this country… which is, of course, precisely the point.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Obama, by contrast, is a multi-racial guy from a big city who has no real choice but to stand his ground and say, no, the America that I live in is the real America.
Um, I don’t think so – not exactly. But it probably depends where you live and what kinds of ads you are seeing. The Obama campaign has sought from the beginning to build the perception of Obama as the candidate of middle class America – even the candidate of “middle America” or the “heartland”.
If someone’s basic understanding of Obama was derived from last night’s presentation, for example, and they were asked where he is is from, they would probably answer “Kansas” or “Illinois”. Chicago was nowhere to be seen. Not even Hawaii was in evidence. His father was brought in only to stress that Obama had an absent father, and to draw attention to his mother and grandparents, and their midwestern roots.
One of the families shown was black. It was a solidly middle class, definitely non-urban family, and the segment aimed at a kind of Everyman pathos.
This might be disappointing to those who are trying to define the Democratic Party as the “urbanist” party. But Obama is boldly working to bring back the idea of the Democratic Party as the party of working America, in flyover country.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
“real” America — which is basically defined as the part where everyone is white — versus the unreal America comprised of non-whites and the white people who deign to live near them. Of course to some extent any Democratic Party electoral coalition represents a rebuke to that way of thinking. But someone like a Bill Clinton represented a very self-conscious effort to portray himself as a member of the “real” America.
Go figure — Young Matt simply has no idea what he’s talking about!
Bill Clinton’s shtick was inclusive and always about class and not the Republican’s racist definition of a “real American.” Saxophones and McDonalds aren’t exactly whites-only.
My God. When Clinton had his sex scandal he was consoled by Jessie Jackson. (This is beyond funny, but if we can stop chuckling for a minute you’ll see the point. He didn’t bring in some white preacher with a megachurch.)
What’s more, tempering or knocking affirmative-action was one of two lines in the sand Bill would never cross during his two terms, triangulation be damned. (Abortion rights was the other.)
An incredibly unfair post from Matt. I’d like to think this was the result of characteristic sloppy, rushed writing and not gross ignorance. But after the appalling post on George McGovern I have my doubts.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Excellent analysis…You must have many black friends
October 30th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
G. Don Smith, Matt has no black friends. But he watches ‘The Wire’ and likes to pretend he can talk about the NBA! Embarassing? To quote Sarah Palin: You betcha!
October 30th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
When he was running in 1992, Clinton was a chameleon. He Bubba’d it up whenever he was in rural areas. He certainly did not go as far as embracing racism, but he projected a persona of someone acceptable to “real” America. Obama does not do that. He talks about rural issues, communicates that he understands the people in those areas, but he does not act like someone he is not. He never abandons any part of himself to embrace others.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I agree with Brad L too. It’s not amusing, it really pisses me off. This month (I think it was Oct. 20 show), Jon Stewart did a show about the contrast between the “real” people of Wasilla and the “fake” city people who were attacked on 9/11. It was bitter and funny and just right, especially the closing to self-righteous republican hicks everywhere: “Fuck all y’all!”
October 30th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Would that be ‘non-chalance’ as opposed to ‘chalance’? God, I love being persnickety.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I would qualify the definition of “real america” to say that republicans who buy into this rhetoric like to believe that they are republicans not because they are white, but because they live in some embattled agrarian paradise that makes them more “authentic”. The fact that many of them actually live in the suburbs, or that rural blacks and latinos are largely democrats is just ignored.
Bill Clinton served up something of a reverse-dog-whistle in which liberals heard “I’m from the working class, I’ll fight for the proletariat comrade” and conservatives heard “I’m a REAL American (TM) I come from the rural south.”
October 30th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I’ve posted a short followup to this post over at The Ape Man.
APS
October 30th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Bill Clinton is a WASP. Not in the traditional sense of a beach “cottage” at Newport and schooling at Andover. But, when you see his face and hear his name, you’re about 99% sure about the W, the AS, and the P.
Sure, when he speaks, depending how he tweaks his enunciation, he can elicit certain responses. But, after LBJ and Carter, those responses are down in the noise.
Barack Hussein Obama is an AA. On top of that, he’s not even AA in the traditional sense. I’d wager that any while person, *any*, even Steven Cobert, goes through at least a moment of conscious adjustment when interacting with an AA that is not of long acquaintance.
So, no matter what commercials Obama has been putting out, even if he had spent his life bailing hay with Ma and Pa Durham in Kansas, it was always going to be immediately apparent that he was one of “them”. It’s a credit to him and his campaign that he’s (evidently) getting enough people to get past that initial adjustment.
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