That's Real, Mixed Feelings Like A Mulatto
Thug thought he was O.G. Bobby Johnson
I played him like Benny Blanco,
Mano a mano
You ain't ready...
As the title suggests, I am struggling with some mixed feelings lately, and apparently I’m not alone. Okay, so last we met, I said something about Black America’s “golden (brown) boy” Barack Obama’s not being “ethnically black”. If you missed it, I said it here. I think that it is important that I elaborate, lest I be accused of “haterism” – which for the uninitiated is a disease whose symptoms in men include uncontrolled outbursts of “he’s wack!” whenever Puffy’s image appears, and in women is marked by the thought “I can’t stand her” whenever she is in a room with another woman.
The background on Obama – which you will hear much more of as the 2008 primaries approach – is as follows (And appears here courtesy of wikipedia . Wikipedia – when you absolutely positively have to win a bet about some useless piece of trivia. Serving geeks and nerds worldwide.):
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. [of Kenya] ... and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). ...
When Obama was two years old, his parents separated and later divorced; his father went to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies, eventually returning to Kenya. ... His mother married an Indonesian foreign student, Lolo Soetoro, with whom she had one daughter. The family moved to Jakarta where Obama attended Catholic school and public school from ages 6 to 10. ... He then returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. ... He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a large, private college preparatory school in Honolulu, which he attended through 12th grade, graduating in 1979. ...
Obama describes his experiences growing up in his mother's white, middle class family. His knowledge about his absent black Kenyan father came mainly through family stories and photographs. Of his early childhood, Obama wrote: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind." ... As a young adult, he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. Obama writes about using marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind."...
After high school, Obama studied for two years at Occidental College in California and then transferred to Columbia University ...
Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, he gained national recognition for becoming the first African American to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review. ... On returning to Chicago, Obama directed a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Now let’s look at that background more closely – he was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii in a white household, attending exclusive prep schools until college, where he MAY have gained some exposure to Black culture while attending Colombia University in NYC (where I will be going this week for a deposition. Pity me, because it is cold as hell up there. Sonny “I live in the tropics for a reason”Redd.) After Colombia, Obama moved to Chicago where he did some socially conscious work for poor folk – whom we must assume to be Black, cause everybody knows negroes are the only poor folk in America – and then he attended Harvard Law School – a “hotbed” of black awareness.
I will say this – for the record I have no real reason to indict the man as not authentically Black. As we all know, if you would have had to sit in the back of the bus in 50’s Birmingham, you’re Black. But I do rightfully question his knowledge of Black culture. And I am not talking about knowing what the 3rd day of Kwanzaa is, or who Garret Morgan was. I am talking about an understanding of Juneteenth, and why one should consume black eye peas (only whitefolks and Will.I.Am refer to them as black “eyed” peas) on January first.
And by questioning his connection to Black American culture, I similarly have to question his understanding of the “black experience”. Moreover, so does his wife. “We tease,” his wife, Michelle, said. “He had this mixed-up, international childhood, while I was Chicago all the way. ...” (Source ) And he also sent letters out in favor of Robert Byrd’s re-election. The same Robert Byrd who – along with Strom “I likes big butts”Thurmond – filibustered the Civil Rights Act. So there are things he just don’t get.
In all fairness, if you look at his issues, he has made helping the poor his priority, and he has publicly supported affirmative action – though that has been somewhat surpressed of late – so he says and does all of the right things. And in the end, I will vote for him of Hillary, BECAUSE he is black. (and really, in the end, THAT is all that matters. Condi, Barack, or “Leroy Jenkins!” I’m down with the brown.)
But it is an inescapable fact that while he married into a black family, and didn’t enjoy being black in New York (ugh, I am SO not looking forward to this trip – but I do have a pretty nice suite in Manhattan, and some fun planned) he himself is still on the outside looking in on some things.
Perhaps it is fitting to have the Obama discussion here and now, if only because the Black community needs to start defining itself ethnically as a culture, and not solely as a function of melanin deposits in one’s skin. Deciding that one is “black” simply because whitefolk can call you ‘nigger’ is antiquated and allows someone else to define ourselves.
Then again, Byron Crawford already pointed out that Barack smokes Kools, so maybe he is indeed black.
posted by Sonnyredd at 4:08 PM
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