Obama and Race

I've done a lot of reading on the subject in the past few hours. I don't know how much it will affect his electoral prospects (although it certainly will) or how it will affect his presidency. I feel like a lot of people haven't thought about that second question, which Matt Bai muses on in the NYT:

Should they win in November, Obama and these new advisers will confront an unfamiliar conundrum in American politics, which is how to be president of the United States and, by default, the most powerful voice in black America at the same time. Several black operatives and politicians with whom I spoke worried, eloquently, that an Obama presidency might actually leave black Americans less well represented in Washington rather than more so — that, in fact, the end of black politics, if that is what we are witnessing, might also mean the precipitous decline of black influence.

The argument here is that a President Obama, closely watched for signs of parochialism or racial resentment, would have less maneuvering room to champion spending on the urban poor, say, or to challenge racial injustice.

The entire article is interesting and paints a nice series of portraits of various black politicians. However, like Ta-Nehisi Coates says, the title (Is Obama the end of black politics?) is stupid. I don't buy the Freudian stuff, though.

Then, New York has a very good package on Obama and Race, starting with this Patricia Williams piece. It basically argues that the national conversation about race is stunted and awkward because blacks and whites don't see the conversation starting in the same places. Money quote:

[B]lacks and whites tend to differ in their very definition of racism. Some years ago, researchers conducting a study for the Diversity Project, at UC Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Social Change, asked black and white college students about their perceptions of racism on a given campus. White students tended to say there was none, but blacks and Native Americans said it was everywhere. In fact, the study documented an interesting phenomenon: As Diversity Project sociologist Troy Duster put it, “White students see diversity as a potential source of ‘individual enhancement,’ ” while African-American students were more likely to see the goal as “institutional change.”

When the white students were asked to give illustrations that substantiated their positions, they spoke of their own experiences and of personal intentions. “Last night, I had dinner with a black friend,” they might offer. Or, “I have a black roommate, and we get along”; “I play basketball with a couple of black guys”; “I’ve never used a racist epithet”; “I treat everyone the same.”

The black students cited instances of relative privilege, things that were more structural, institutional, atmospheric. “The campus police are always stopping us”; “I get followed around in stores”; “Most of the white students don’t have to think twice about how much it costs to take prep classes for the LSAT or to spend spring break skiing in Aspen or partying in Cancún.”

They follow this up with a piece on the "Obama Kids," and one on the politics of Obama's marriage, which contains this absurdity:

Outside a Subway in Atlanta, a bunch of white kids parse Obama’s lineage, at least the fanciful one that they learned about on the Internet. “It’s such a crock that Obama keeps saying he’s going to be the first black president,” says one of them. “He’s half-white, first of all, plus 44 percent Muslim, and only 6 percent African.”

What. The. Fuck.

Meanwhile, John Heilemann continues his election-long hot streak with a piece on race preventing Obama from doing better in the polls. He is able to state the obvious:

Obama, after all, isn’t having trouble with African-American voters or Hispanic voters or young voters. Where he’s lagging is among white voters, and with older ones in particular. Call me crazy, but isn’t it possible, just possible, that Obama’s lead is being inhibited by the fact that he is, you know, black?

It also contains this nugget, which is probably bad news for Obama:

In October, Obama’s former pastor, Wright, will publish a new book and hit the road to promote it, an occasion that might well place the topic of Obama’s blackness (along with his patriotism and his candor about what he heard in the pews in all those years at Trinity Church) squarely at the center of the national debate. How Obama handles that moment may determine whether he becomes the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This thought also makes sense, unfortunately for Obama:

For many Democrats, Obama’s eventual residence there has long seemed a foregone conclusion. But cast your mind forward twenty years and imagine looking back on this election. Would it really seem strange from that vantage point if the first black major-party nominee—a guy with a thin résumé, no foreign-policy credentials in an era scarred by terrorism, a background alien to much of Wonder Bread America, and the full name Barack Hussein Obama—lost? No, it would seem inevitable.