another essay on the battle for the soul of the American blah blah blah.
the blessing and the curse of not having a television in my room is that I cannot watch it. It is a blessing because I no longer spend hours watching shows I am not at all interested in, but it is a curse because I no longer have access to the mainstream media. I have the internet, sure, but despite being a superhighway of information, like many others I restrict my reading to a few select news outlets– HuffPost, Salon, maybe Slate– and shun the rest. I’m sure most of the other two readers are just like me, but would probably tack on the New York Times to that list, and maybe Alternet.org, Indymedia, or Z-Mag. I read those occasionally, I guess. I generally stay away from the NYT, but only because I know that good graduate students are supposed to read it (because of its reputation of being a liberal newspaper, though I think it shed that skin long ago), and I have a stubborn streak when it comes to things I do that totally don’t matter to anyone.
(Being stubborn about things people don’t care about cuts down on conflict, and makes me feel manly).
Thus, my homogenous left-leaning reading list ultimately comes back to haunt me when I start writing posts: since I rarely read things that outrage me anymore (not counting the vicarious outrage I feel when reading Salon or HuffPost), my writing here has suffered somewhat. Also affecting me is the fact that lately, I have done absolutely nothing of interest. Sucks.
That being said, I have been thinking about the President lately. He’s black, you know. Anyway, listening to NPR, watching a bit of television, and reading the self-righteous outrage of liberal bloggers (who I happen to agree with most of the time) got me thinking about the ways in which our president is post-racial. Here is what I think:
He is not post-racial. His politics of Hope™ and Change™ were nice for a campaign, but the real reason many people voted for him in the first place is because they thought that an electoral victory for a black man to the highest office in the country (if not the world) would essentially solve all of our racial problems. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is dumb luck that he just happens to be probably the most intelligent and qualified president that we have had in at least a generation, maybe two– but I doubt much of the voting populace seriously scrutinized his voting record, or even his past (beyond the journalists sensationalistic “vetting”, which we can agree has in recent years become a joke). He is a smart, smart man. He is probably a dick, too, but I won’t hold that against him. Most politicians are, at least when the cameras are off.
My point is this: the post-racial thing got him elected, but what will it do for him now that he is in office? Well, I think it gives the administration an air of uncertainty. It is almost like race has become something that we just don’t want to talk about anymore. During the campaign, Obama was praised for a speech in which he talked about how politics must set aside issues of race and gender (spoken in the context of a couple of campaign gaffes from both Obama and Clinton) for the sake of unity and country, but such campaign rhetoric sounds a lot less poetic when there have been at least 9 high profile racially motivated killings in the last month.
A wise man (Aaron Sorkin, creator and head writer for The West Wing) once said, “you campaign in poetry, and govern in prose.” I believe that. But when it comes to the issue of race, how does one govern in prose when the candidate himself has thrown the book away? I think the biggest drawback to setting aside the issue of race is that it gives people license (particularly political pundits) to de-racialize the president, and I’m not sure that is a good thing. I mean, sure, on paper it sounds great, but in reality? In reality, the de-racialization of the President of the United States just might have the effect of de-racializing the African American community.
Nah, I’m crazy. Because the black community is too strong for that. For instance, Reverend Jeremiah Wright would never apologize for– what? He did? Oh. I guess I am just saying that this is no time to be high-minded, Mr. President. It’s no time to be above the fray. Racial politics is more than arguing over terms, name-calling, and brow-beating– it is okay to be above all that. But what we need is someone who is committed to who he is, does not back off from it, and understands how to help people who are suffering, no matter who they are. As much as I hate to say this, it is not always just a class thing.
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