In the bizarre and obsessed relationship between Hillary Clinton and the media over the last two news cycles, the earth shaking reality of the first African American being nominated for president has been somewhat underplayed.
In the months to come, however, even as Barack Obama wants to run a campaign that rises above race, the reality of Barack's ancestry and how it factors into his success will be looked at from many different directions. So before all the big hitters write stories in the WSJ and the NYT, I want to put in my two cents.
It is no small thing that Barack Obama is not an African American in the sense that we usually define African Americans in this country. Nor is it a mere side issue that he is bi-racial.
Barack is not called "African American" because he is the descendent of slaves who were kidnapped and brought by white men to America from Africa. Barack does not have ancestors who were slaves. Barack is the son of a free black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. Barack was raised, except for a brief time in Indonesia, by a white mother and white grandparents, mainly in Hawaii. Until his college years and especially his time in the South side of Chicago, Barack has little connection to the black American community. In fact, it can be and has been argued that Barack's membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ was, in part, a deliberate attempt to educate himself in black culture so that he could understand a part of America, a part that people saw reflected in his skin color but that had not been part of his upbringing or personal history.
Previous black candidates in the presidential primaries have been African Americans in the traditional sense. Born in this country to black parents, descendents of slaves, and steeped in the culture of the black community and the civil rights movement, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton could not identify with the white community and vice versa. Their presidential runs were important and helpful to the black community and to the cause of equality and justice, but each knew they would not win without the white vote, which they could not get for many reasons, one of which is that they had never been part of the white community.
Barack has been part of that community. It was his earliest community, and while he has made the choice to see himself as black, he embodies and to some extent understands both races. This is the real psychological key to his ability to unify people. He had to unify the reality of two races within himself, in much the same way we hope he can help unify the two races within the country. It was a personal struggle for him, and he understands that it will be a struggle within the country. It is not, however, a struggle he shies away from.
Barack says he is something of a rorschach test; people see in him what they want to see. Blacks see a man who understands them and their struggles. Because of his skin color, he has experienced racism. Because of his participation in Trinity United Church, he can identify with the fear and anger of black members, even as he rejects some of the more outrageous statements and views of the church leadership.
While some whites reject Obama out of the fear, ignorance, and resentment that fuels racism, other whites embrace him because he seems to understand them. He doesn't resent them, nor see them as oppressors nor relate to them as anything but equals. Even his joke about "my cousin Dick Cheney" which he rattles off to amuse his audience, is seen as funny not because Cheney is white and he is black, but because Cheney is a neocon, a Republican, and Obama is anti-war and a Democrat. Race has nothing to do with why we laugh.
Obama often says "we are the ones we have been waiting for" because he knows all of us must renew America. But in a very real sense, Obama is the one - the first potential black president - we have been waiting for. Obama's very identity and heritage - as half black and half white - has at least been partly responsible for his rise to power. Each one of us can see something of ourselves in him and know he can identify with us, regardless of our race. And that makes him, in this year and this time, more electable than someone like Jesse Jackson.
My hope is that this is merely a step towards the day when someone who is considered 100 percent black (I say "considered" because DNA studies are teaching us that none of us is 100 percent anything), or Hispanic, or Asian, or Native American, will be able to rise to the presidency, because race and identity is no longer an issue in a country where everyone is truly equal to everyone else and racism and prejudice no longer exist.
But in the meantime, hopefully, we will have President Barack Obama.
