Obama makes people feel proud of themselves because they can look beyond the color of his skin?
The biggest problem that Obama has is this: We don't know who he is. Who are his people?
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
The other thing I wanted to say is: as if who he is and his race are two distinct questions? God, she's turning me into Richard Wright.
God-fucking-damn. If I ever said anything bad about Noel Ignatiev I take it back now. Abolish Sally Quinn! Abolish me! Long live the new flesh!
I see. The old "he's so articulate I forgot he's a negro!" has been expanded to: "He's so articulate I forgot he's a negro! Aren't I wonderful? Isn't it a wonderful day for all humanity?"
So good to see how far we've come as a nation.
3: You didn't need to say that; the rest of us are already Richard Wright.
5: Come on. You know that this is part of why he's so popular.
Well, it's just like GEOFFREY Wright in the new Bond film; he's so clean and well-mannered that I looked past his blackness and declared him a fine Felix Leiter.
There are black muslims?! I'm so confused.
It's really very enwhiteled, isn't it, that the most important thing about Obama's popularity isn't a broad point about America's changing relationship with race, or even the cheap point about another milestone for Black America, but that it makes a white woman feel good about herself.
I love how Felix introduced himself as "a brother from Langley."
Wow, I noticed Sally Quinn's whiteness immediately.
This article seems superficially to be a somewhat thoughtful investigation of oneself's prejudices, but then it turns out that the message is "Barack Obama is the first man of African descent to successfully assimilate into American culture. Finally, we did it!"
12: See, that's what's wrong with liberals: they pretend to be against racism but they themselves are just obsessed with race.
Eh. I think she said it poorly--and I think that's a function of her age as much as anything else--but I think she's getting at something worthwhile: while Obama's race remains important, it is not the single defining fact of him for many people. That's a notable change. Jesse Jackson was the black candidate. To date, Obama is or has been allowed to be the candidate who is black.
15: The problem is that saying that "race isn't the single defining fact" of something is an awfully white thing to say. Period. Because for people of color, it damn well is, if not *the* single defining fact, than one of 'em.
As it is for white people, one of our primary characteristics being the belief that it's desirable that race "not matter." Since, after all, that's what being white *means*.
Tim, point taken, but didn't he write a book partly about how being black, or "perceived-as-black-by-cabbies" has been an important part of who he is? What irritates about Quinn is the very quick jump to "his race doesn't matter to me!" Mighty white of you, ma'am.
Because for people of color, it damn well is, if not *the* single defining fact, than one of 'em.
There is an enormous difference between *the* and *one of the*; that's precisely what Quinn is trying to get at. The receding of race is remarkable; it's the thing that makes Obama's candidacy viable. It's the only really important thing, as far as race goes, about his candidacy.
The problem is that saying that "race isn't the single defining fact" of something is an awfully white thing to say.
Doesn't make it less true.
What irritates about Quinn is the very quick jump to "his race doesn't matter to me!" Mighty white of you, ma'am.
I agree, but that's a function of her age and--on her telling, anyway--where she was raised. At 66, she is who she is.
The aged will be the first against the wall, tim.
Doesn't make it less true.
No, it makes it truer--since after all, another feature of whiteness is the ability to define the dominant discourse.
I'm glad someone here is enlightened enough to tell us what white people and people of color think about race.
Eb, do you want to snark, or do you actually have an argument with something someone said?
Anything a white person says about race is an awfully white thing to say.
Even reading her as charitably as possible, letting this
I don't see a person of color. I see a really smart, appealing, thoughtful person.
make it into print is profoundly dumb. Especially in light of Biden's idiotic remark, if Quinn and her editors can't spot this kind of thing, they deserve all the criticism they get. Kill! Kill!
There are old people less stupid than Quinn, Tim. That was a sly dig at me, no? Don't think that I don't know what you're up to.
Quinn's actual career seems to have ended in 1974, but she seems to have parleyed her booty into some kind of transcendant position, where she can sail in and make occasional inane, magisterial pronouncements whenever she wants. I hadn't heard from her much since her famous silliness about Clinton and I hoped she had died of embarrassment, but apparently she just doesn't like to work very hard.
I take her to be saying "To hell with the one-drop rule. Some black people are people!" She probably like Halle Berry a lot too.
There are old people less stupid than Quinn, Tim. That was a sly dig at me, no? Don't think that I don't know what you're up to.
Most people haven't had their consciousness raised quite as far as yours has been. Not bi-theoretical, but quite close.
But you're still the first one to go, come the revolution.
27: Heh, okay. Sometimes drive-by snarking is definitely the way to go.
20: There is an enormous difference between *the* and *one of the*
Exactly. Anyone operating on "the" can go fuck themselves unless they're me. "One of the" gives us things to talk and possibly negotiate about.
"At 66, she is who she is."
Whether or not this is a sly dig at Emerson, I think it's a quite direct insult to Quinn, even if Tim thinks it's a mitigating factor. I am endeavoring to live my life so that when I get to that age, people won't use this particular insult against me.
I hate to tell you, pf, but we'll use whatever insult we want to.
Quinn's actual career seems to have ended in 1974, but she seems to have parleyed her booty into some kind of transcendant position, where she can sail in and make occasional inane, magisterial pronouncements whenever she wants. I hadn't heard from her much since her famous silliness about Clinton and I hoped she had died of embarrassment, but apparently she just doesn't like to work very hard.
Was '74 when, out of nowhere, she was briefly co-anchor of one of the nightly newscasts? I'd never heard of her before that, and already didn't watch TV news, so she was suddenly there and soon gone. And didn't she also have a bizarre, over the top celebrity at the time of the Anthrax scare? or was it the duct tape scare? or the Washington sniper period? in one of those she was a parody of the frightened, entitled doofus, doing something outrageous like driving all night for antidote that was supposed to be strictly rationed or something. It must have been anthrax.
She's a clownish figure who occasionally makes news usually for cluelessness.
<colbert>I don't SEE color.</colbert>
35: I meant to say that I hope people won't be *justified* in using this insult. The early indications aren't promising, I admit.
Someone who is 66 today was 20 the year of the Voting Rights Act and the Watts Riots, and 21 the year Stokely Carmichael blew up SNCC. That person has had forty years to get used to the idea that race matters. There's no excuse.
Also, isn't Sally Quinn one of the crowd who joined Broder in shunning Clinton for having no class? Yeah, I think so. Sorry, Timbot, no sympathy points for the Quinnster.
And, Tim? When you're 66, we'll still be mocking you for liking Morrissey.
Sorry, I did my arithmetic wrong. It's late. You know what I meant.
he's so articulate
What Obama is, is bright and reflective. Too bright and reflective to be an American black, even. Maybe the campaign could find a matte finish for him, to tone down the glare a bit.
I dated an Indian guy in my youth who, relatively early in the relationship, asked if I thought interracial relationships could ever work. I (in my most enwhiteled liberal naivete) said something like. "I imagine there are alot of challenges, but I've never really been in that position so I don't know." At which he pointed out to me that Indian and White were, uh, different racial categories, and we were, uh, dating. I felt quite stupid.
When my daughter was in preschool, she one day commented that a classmate was "black" and I was surprised that she had already developed a sense of racial consciousness. Then she mentioned that she was purple and another classmate orange and I realized she had only developed a sense of t-shirt color consciousness.
The dilemma for me is that I truly did find it gratifying that she and her very diverse preschool classmates saw and liked each other as individuals without preconceived racial stereotypes. At the same time, I don't want my kid to grow up as naively as I did about race -- I want her to understand that one's race doesn't change their value as a human being, but does influence their experiences and interaction with the world in important ways. But what to teach her when and how, I just don't really know.
For now, really the best I've got is to counter her "I want Hillary to be president because it's about time we had a woman," with my "Well, Barack Obama is African-American and we've never had an African-American president either."
DK, PK did the tshirt thing too for a long time. Don't worry; your kid will get introduced to the idea of race when she's in school and it's February. Not only race, but white guilt, even; by then, PK was aware that some people had dark skin and some had light skin, just like his papa has dark hair and his mama light hair, but he came home one day after the standard Rosa Parks/MLK curriculum and said he felt kind of guilty because "you know," (pointing to his arm), "light skin."
At which point of course the home curriculum started branching out to include light-skinned civil rights heroes, discussions of modern-day and pre-triangle trade slavery, what was unique about American plantation slavery, the historical uses of "white" and "black" as legal terms to create precisely that gap between victimization and complicity, and why terms like "white" and "black" are still problematic today.
That person has had forty years to get used to the idea that race matters. There's no excuse.
That's precisely my point, slol. She's had forty years in which she been taught the importance of race--that it is and must always be in the foreground--and she has trouble putting into words the idea that what's important about Obama is that, while race still matters, it's receding. She doesn't really have language for that. I'm half her age, and it's hard for me to describe, too.
So this Sally Quinn person is so damn influential that it really matters what she says? Wow. Is reading such pundits the path to enlightenment?
As to the whole "race" thing, I thought from growing up in the '60s and '70s that race or for that matter sex was not supposed to be the defining part of a person, e.g., that it was not supposed to matter whether your brain surgeon was a black woman or not. That the whole point as supposed to be what a person does, not who s/he's born.
As far as Sally Quinn goes I also grew up around white people her age who never forgave Those People for getting uppity, who never considered the idea that a person's skin color might not be the most important thing about him. One could consider where people like Quinn came from and them some credit for coming as far as they did, instead of expecting a high-toned cracker from Savannah, Georgia, to leapfrog over middlebrow mediocrity to multicultural Trotskyism. Color me confused, but if the point of such comments is to encourage other Magnolia Blossoms to not rule out a "non-white" (or "half-black") Presidential candidate because of the color of his skin, hasn't she done The Cause a good turn? Or should people have refused to vote for Bella Abzug because she wasn't a black woman?
I also thought the whole problem with anarchist "utopianism" is that the "broad masses" have to be brought along gradually. How can they be brought along gradually if they're always getting damned for being so damn gradual about it? This Quinn person's comments are less racist than the least racist thing my grandma (a generation older) ever said. Those good things about Quinn's comments are that she represents progress over what came before and that there has been further progress in the generations since, e.g., here in Kentucky I see a lot of young (20ish) white women (whose grandpas and dads might have Confederate stickers on their pickups) marrying and having kids with black men. (My grandma would be apoloplectic if she'd lived to see how common and accepted that is around here.)
At least Quinn's not saying "He dresses nice and sounds articulate and all, but I'd still be uneasy about being alone in a room with him, if you know what I mean." Maybe one problem with the liberal milieu is that you never get to know what an admitted racist is like?
Speaking of which, the reason terms like "white" and "black" are still problematic is that people still problematize them, that they remain "race-conscious." Is a person's continent of predominant ancestral origin the most important thing about her or isn't it? If you think it is then you're practicing racism, regardless of the ideological bunting you dress it in or the color of her skin or of yours. And if you try to move beyond that you're trying to move beyond that, also regardless of the ideologies or "races" involved.
But then please don't mistake this for a personal defense of Sally Quinn personally; I know little of who she is and why she matters and I care even less. (And unlike my grandma she never made me cornbread.)
I see through the whole Obama campaign anyway: the point of having a (half-) "African-American" candidate Presidential candidate this early, especially one who doesn't problematize "race" over every other issue, is to bolster and "legitimize" the corrupt U.S. political machinery -- that like Kucinich in the 2004 show he's a shill to lure "idealistic" people into voting "idealistically" in the Democratic primaries and then settling for whatever muddled milquetoast the Democratic Party's central committee eventually pushes forward. That is, instead of voting for an outsider like Nader, or making even more radical changes. While the POTUS is really just a sideshow figurehead, you can bet that the Democratic Party has already decided that America is not ready for a President who's only half-white, like you won't lose any money betting that the eventual Democratic front-runner won't be someone who insists on an immediate unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan (if not also say Kuwait and Germany). Another way of putting this is that the problem with "progressives" is they're not progressive enough, they allow themselves to be held back by the "voices of reason" from the "real world." So, for example, the reason Nader didn't win is that not enough people voted for him because media pundits told them he couldn't win because not enough people would vote for him. Maybe the true lasting value of Obama's candidacy is that it shows that in another few generations the majority of the American people might be ready to participate in genuine democracy.
the reason terms like "white" and "black" are still problematic is that people still problematize them, that they remain "race-conscious."
Mmmm, no and yes. Part of this is just the problem of the relationship between culture and the individual. The reason those terms are problematic isn't that people problematize them; it's (I would argue) that historically they were invented to fulfill certain purposes. If they no longer filled those purposes, they wouldn't really be meaningful--inasmuch as, in fact, people are neither "white" nor "black," except perhaps (as little kids use it) if you're describing them in terms of their clothing.
That said, yeah, one of the problems is that we *do* teach those same little kids what "white" and "black" mean when applied to people. We do this because we have to equip them to function in the world. But yes, it is a sad thing to do, and it does, to some extent, perpetuate racism. Socializing people is always going to, to some extent, perpetuate the culture into which they're socialized.
Ugh. This seems like important context to Quinn's article.
CBSNews.com has no plans to disable comments on stories about the other presidential candidates, according to Sims
Nothing like ensuring a level playing field, is there?
46 gets it right, especially the last paragraph.
I heard a bunch of black college students talking about Obama recently. They kept saying "I respect the man", "I respect the man", "He doesn't seem like he just loves publicity, like Sharpton or something"; "I think he knows what poor people go through". Then one guy who's in the Campus Democrats said, "You know, from what I know about getting involved in campaigns...if he's got this kind of status, and the media takes him seriously...it means he's already sold out." And then everyone agreed with that too.
So, for example, the reason Nader didn't win is that not enough people voted for him because media pundits told them he couldn't win because not enough people would vote for him.
Hard to believe you're agreeing with the above, Ned.
Nothing like ensuring a level playing field, is there?
It's probably the best available solution for the Obama campaign. If that's not true, he and his campaign people are sufficiently well-situated in the various networks of power to press the point and get a better, for them, solution.
That's the reason why Nader didn't get the 5% of the vote that he was pretending to want and the Green Party actually did want.
I never notice a person's color, because those whose color I notice don't count as people.
So, for example, the reason Nader didn't win is that not enough people voted for him because media pundits told them he couldn't win because not enough people would vote for him.
Okay, in #46 I popped off again. What I should have said is something like "one of the reasons Nader didn't win is that not enough people who'd heard of him and were willing to try to listen voted for him..." That is, I do recognize that the problem is not so much the idiocy of the American people but the machinations of the corporate hegemony (which, e.g., owns most mass media in most markets) that fosters such idiocy to further its interests. But (alas from my local Gannett outlet) here's a glimmer of hope. (See? I too can be articulate when I haveth not my head up my ass.)