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Saturday, March 29, 2008
Could Obama’s multiracial heritage become a political disadvantage?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Barack Obama’s thoughtful speech on race proved once and for all that he’s ready for the big leagues of politics.
Obama could have disavowed his pastor, Reverend Wright, who had been a father to the essentially fatherless candidate for twenty years. He didn’t. Obama could have ignored white anger in his defense of black anger. He didn’t. He understands this about working and middle-class white Americans: “When they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed….resentment builds over time.” After a speech that even conservatives like Peggy Noonan are praising, it’s not surprising to find Obama’s polling numbers back on the rise, following the initial shock of the Wright hubbub.
Yet should Obama win his party’s nomination, he’s hardly out of the woods. His disadvantage stems not from a multicultural background and imperfect loved ones — so many of us share that heritage, those relationships — but from battling Republican operatives who happily torpedo opponents with a swift boat of distortion. In a recent FOX News poll, 57 percent of Americans said that they don’t think Obama shares his former pastor’s more controversial views. Will they remember that come fall when the Reverend’s rants echo through endless attack ads?
This election could be decided on sound bites and whims, but I’m hoping we’re smarter than that. We all remember when it seemed important that George Bush was “the kind of guy we’d like to meet for a beer.” Well, look what happened. We’re not having a beer with him. We’re having a war.
Can Barack Obama hit it out of the park with this whole honesty shtick? Yes he can, provided he continues to prove that it’s not just shtick. For as much as we trade clips and barbs on the candidates, acting like this is all just so much Government Gone Wild fun, we’re actually starved for true leadership.
As the primary season marches into its umpteenth, ugly inning, Obama’s grace under pressure looks like the real deal. I say, enough already with the minor-leagues. Let’s send him up to the show.
Commentary
By Shaunti Feldhahn
Barack Obama’s multiracial and international heritage provides him an amazing empathetic advantage. And to say the man can speak is an understatement. Unfortunately, we have seen how easy it is for his cultural heritage to also become a political disadvantage.
Unless you’ve recently been on a wilderness trek without television, you know that Obama has long attended a church pastored by a “fiery” figure in the black liberation theology movement - a movement that can be seen as uncomfortably racist by whites.
To be fair, the church’s mission statement emphasizes a desire to “eradicate” the “color line.” But before being altered, their website also included this Reverend Wright comment: “The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of . Black Power and Black Theology.” This worldview explains why he would call our nation the “U.S. of K.K.K.A.” or say “G_ d_ America.”
The problem now confounding even Obama supporters is that he apparently didn’t find that worldview repugnant. Fiery rhetoric isn’t uncommon in African American churches - but it’s usually about the gospel, not “The United States of White America.” Thankfully, Obama disavows Wright’s controversial messages - but was also so saturated by the culture that he apparently didn’t realize how strange it would seem that he could tolerate even one minute of it. A Franklin and Marshall Pennsylvania poll found Obama’s “favorability” rating dropped 10 points in March.
I too grew up in an international, multi-racial environment, find racism of any sort offensive, and want the same for my kids. My 2nd-grader is the only white child in her class, and is totally color-blind. I’m grateful Obama calls for unity, and says “There is not a Black America and a White America . there’s the United States of America.” But, many now wonder, since color-blindness should be our goal, how he could surround himself with hyper-color-awareness?
While racism undoubtedly still exists, Obama has proven more than capable of overcoming it. His disadvantage isn’t arising because he’s half black, but because he has spent years being comfortable in a non-mainstream, race-based cultural community that doesn’t appear to see reverse racism for what it is. And, ironically, any kind of racism is something that most Americans find very uncomfortable.