Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

The Ground Didn't Shift

By M. Shahid Alam
CounterPunch

It is perhaps a bit late in the day, nearly two weeks after November 4, to be writing about Barack Obama’s electoral victory. This want of alacrity, however, is intentional.

I thought it would be cruel to write any sooner, when whites and blacks alike were so effusively celebrating Obama’s victory. It would be unseemly to strike a discordant note when a clear majority of Americans was savoring this putative post-racial moment in their history.

Did this victory signal a shift in America's racial tectonic plates?

Memories are so short. In the weeks following his choice of Sarah Palin on August 29, John McCain began closing the gap behind Obama.  The election got closer after Palin electrified the Republican Convention with her line about how “We grow good people in our small towns…”  The message to blacks, Hispanics and Asians in America’s cities was clear: they are not “good people.”

In the absence of the financial meltdown that began in early September, the election could have easily gone the other way. Sarah Palin too may have helped Obama a bit when she began displaying the breathless scope of her ignorance.

Who should we thank for Obama’s victory?

The answer is sobering. We can thank the financial meltdown and, in some measure, the threat of an Armageddon – likely to follow Palin’s succession to a geriatric McCain – for Obama’s victory. There was no shifting of tectonic plates on this continent.

If anything, America’s unquestioning identification of Obama as a ‘black’ candidate is deeply problematic. It demonstrates that the United States remains firmly rooted in ideas of race that go back to the era of slavery and Jim Crow Laws.  

Obama’s mother was white and, apparently, so were all her forebears; while his father was a black African and, apparently, so were all his forebears. Obama is biracial – half-black and half-white. Why did that, automatically, make him black? If being half-black makes Obama black, by the same logic we could identify him as white.

Why didn’t we?

Read more to find out here.

Comments

[Ron Howell]

Some time ago, maybe a couple of years ago, I likely would have agreed with your thrust. But I do believe that the word transformative, as used to describe Obama's election, is accurate. Much of the original virus of racism persists, but the symptoms or manifestations of it have changed notably, one might even say dramatically, over the past generation.

As for the shifts, having to do with the economy or even with gaffes of the candidates, such things always influence the outcomes of races, presidential or otherwise. It's generally conceded that Obama's campaign was brilliantly managed and some have said that it could be a model to be studied in MBA programs.

Anyway. I appreciate the post.

Take care.

Ron (http://www.brooklynron.com)