Yeah. I’m done moving. In my new flat, though, it doesn’t seem as if I have so much junk.
I’d love to regale y’all with my moving troubles, about crazy U-Haul stuff ($30 for a gallon of gas!?) and bad weather woes, but I just don’t have it in me:
No, really. I’ll get to it. I’m still settling.
Okay. Sheesh, you’re still here? Go think on this:
While Joe Biden is biting his tongue, Obama has something else to think about: Debra J Dickerson, Harvard-educated author of The End of Blackness, says in a Salon.com article he’s not black.
excerpt:
. . . . Which brings me to the main reason I delayed writing about Obama. For me, it was a trick question in a game I refused to play. Since the issue was always framed as a battle between gender and race (read: non-whiteness — the question is moot when all the players are white), I didn’t have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn’t black.
“Black,” in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can’t be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won’t bother to make the distinction. They’re both “black” as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term. . . .
Source: Salon.com you will have to watch a short PSA before you can read the piece.
Go chew on that for a while.
If you’d rather hear an interview with Dickerson, she spoke with NPR’s & WBUR’s Here & Now program a week or so ago.
(The “episode” link above is downloaded from Here & Now’s podcast in RealPlayer format. I imply no ownership or copyright; I’m merely supplying this link as a public service, for it’s no longer readily available from them.)
Happy Black History Month.
I’m confused — are you buying into the idea of there being a a voluntary and an involuntary “black” in America?
I’m generally in step with you, but to quote that article gives me pause.
First and foremost, should it matter? If so, to whom? Are “involuntary” blacks getting the short end of the stick from “voluntary” immigrants?
Between the lines, am I to read, “Well, I wouldn’t have voted for, you know, {hushed voice) a black guy. But Obama’s okay!
Isn’t that the reverse of holding us (Us, I say, because I’m from relatively recent emigration myself), all responsible for slavery?
When is it that we’re going to get the fuck over ourselves and just vote for a candidate?? It doesn’t have to be about race — I’m honestly beginning to think that it’s the Sharpton’s and Jackson’s that are holding society back. How are we ever supposed to get over race, when it’s the minority that will never give it up?
I don’t wish to sound racist here, but it’s the simple idea of stating anything like this that makes one sound racist (a catch-22 at best!) Why is it that the 98% of us (this time I mean “whites”, by “us”) who don’t give a shit about ethnicity are highjacked by the minorities into guilt about the other 2%??
I can’t speak for the black community. All that I can say is that those of us who are looking at Obama as a candidate aren’t thinking, “wow, a black guy!”. We’re thinking, “Wow, he’s not Hillary!”
Really, I wasn’t saying anything one way or another about Obama’s Blackness, per se. I was simply offering an interesting, if contentious, tidbit to the collective Obama-swoon.
Dickerson’s point in this conversation is more about his culture & heritage, not his skin color. We, as Americans, have a very precise definition of what it is to be Black. Some descriptions/stereotypes include attributes describing athleticism, rhythm, musical ability, and rap. Very few of us, Black people included, put “eloquence” or “intelligent” on that list. What does that say about Americans in 2007?
That is spot on. And I think that was my larger point. Deep in Dickerson’s book, and somewhere in the midpoint of that interview, she says exactly that–that the old guard, the Jacksons & Sharptons, etc, have stayed on the stage too long, have failed to take any sort of replacement under wing to replace them, and have been offering the same, tired old snake oil to the same effect. They should retire.
That having been said, I believe that King’s Dream of a people being judged on its merits, and not on the basis of skin color has been realized. There is no need for a Jackson or a Sharpton or a Farakkan anymore to lead a people to an illusory Promised Land.
In a day where Obama can run for president, where Alan Keyes and Colin Powell can be Republican, and Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy can pit their respective teams in the Super Bowl, we’re living the Dream.
ABH (Anybody But Hillary) in 2008!
I’m re-joining this conversation very, very late.
I think that I was embarrassed at what I wrote - not so much because I disagree with it, but because anything that comes out of my mouth after 12:00A is potentially inflammatory.
Man, you’re reply was awesome. I’d love to hear a follow-up through the lens of the Imus debacle.
And here you are writing well on to 1am. . . .
I’m not sure I have much to add here that hasn’t already been hashed over by anyone within hand’s breadth of a microphone.
Mr. Imus, as I’m understood, had his bread buttered by making inflammatory statements of bald racism, sexism and anti-gay-ism (is that a word?). Only in a slow news cycle are we shocked to hear of this!?
My cynic’s cap is on fully when I say that I was surprised to hear that he was fired. If it was good enough for the last twenty- to thirty-odd years, after all, was it really that bad what he said a couple of weeks ago?
As many of the high-roaders point out, or at least allude to in passing, what does our collective indignance over the Imus flap say about our relative silence over the poverty, and causes thereof, exposed by last year’s hurricanes? About the rest of our entertainment class that profits by using such language?
What does it say about us (the very collective “us”) that we aren’t outraged by this, too?
That’s really all I have to say about that.