This is a mini-post. I have had so
many ideas running around in my head, and some writing I've been
doing for other projects that I'm now reduced to a mini-post, with
possibly others to follow. Who knows? I've never been one for
planning, sometimes to my detriment. My redeeming quality has been
persistence and the capacity for hard work. I keep coming back.
Anyway, mini-post. Toni Morrison in
1998 reflected on the impeachment of Bill Clinton. (Amazing how that
has receded, isn't it?) She said, “White skin notwithstanding,
this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black
person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After
all, 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.”
She said the message of the
Establishment to Clinton, as to any African-American, was this: “'No
matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn
for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you
have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be
fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and—who knows?—maybe
sentenced and jailed to boot.'”
She continued: “This is
Slaughtergate. A sustained, bloody, arrogant coup d’état. The
Presidency is being stolen from us. And the people know it.”
Today, a phrase in Paul Krugman's
trenchant column on how the Republican Establishment has conned its
way through the decades caught my eye: “after seven years of an
African-American president (who the establishment has done its best
to demonize)....”
This is not new, but when I heard it
this time, I thought: you know, racism is so pervasive that there is
no magic bullet, it really has to be taken on in stages. Clinton was
stage one, a white man with some familiar African-American
characteristics, according to Morrison. And Obama is stage two.
Only stage two because being African-American isn't just about skin
color, it's about culture and experience. Obama's skin color is
dark, but he was raised by a white mother and white grandparents from
Kansas living in Hawaii. True, not the total white experience –
Indonesia and Hawaii are not Kansas.
The ambiguity was sufficient for many
African-Americans to say he wasn't black enough to qualify as a Black
President. But certainly prejudiced whites viewed him as plenty
Black. And that was the label he embraced. If he was viewed by
white society as Black, then let's be Black, he said. He chose a spouse who
was fully African-American. And then he populated his government
with many true African-Americans. One step further than Bill
Clinton, I'd say, maybe a step and a half. Black he was but he still was raised by a
non-prejudiced white family – his grandparents were really
remarkable, both of them, the way they raised that boy. I'm all
admiration.
Then as President he got the full
illegitimate treatment from Mitch McConnell and other Southern
friends – we'll break this Black boy, essentially. We'll challenge
his birth, we'll block anything he wants to do. We'll put him in his
place.
Well, it didn't work out that way,
Mitch. The Confederacy may still live, but it's still shrinking.
Anyway, like I said, a mini-post. Just
an observation. My own view is optimistic. Obama has clearly been a
superior President in so many ways, and his no-drama temperament has
been perhaps the strongest weapon of all. What a gift it is.
Basically, I think Obama is step two or two and a half in a three
step process. Next time, no more illegitimacy; next time, it will be
just on the merits.
Hopefully.
Budd Shenkin
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