Lana Yoo
It’s lucky for me that Barack Obama is everywhere, because I happen to think that he’s ridiculously good-looking.
Many throughout the nation, too, are smitten with the Democratic presidential contender because of the excitement of potentially choosing the nation’s first black president (although I’m sure that others, too, give him brownie points for his charisma).
Maybe not so much the rest of the nation ““ certainly not the media and black activists who criticize that Obama isn’t “black enough.”
Time magazine, The Washington Post and the New York Daily News all have pieces assessing Obama’s black status.
Born to a white mother and a Kenyan father and raised in Hawaii, there’s no doubt that Obama doesn’t fit the “typical” black profile with slave descendants rooted in mainland American soil.
New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch charges that “when black Americans refer to Obama as “˜one of us,’ I do not know what they are talking about. … While he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own ““ nor has he lived the life of a black American.”
Interestingly, though, his ethnic ambiguity gives him the edge to succeed as a minority candidate.
Because Obama isn’t “black enough,” he can serve both poles of the racial spectrum and everything in between.
And if such a difference exists between the races that only an ethnically ambiguous candidate can successfully emerge from more racially devoted minority candidates (say, the Rev. Al Sharpton), Obama’s nomination doesn’t trumpet racial equality but rather emphasizes how far we are from truly blurring the racial lines.
“Race is still very much an issue (in politics), not in the same way it used to be, but it’s still relatively unusual to have a black candidate that draws a large percentage of white votes at any level,” said David Sears, a UCLA political science and psychology professor.
True, we’ve come a long way since Jim Crow. In 1958, a Gallup poll found that 53 percent of the respondents refused to support a black candidate; in 2003, this number was only 6 percent.
And unlike yesteryears, flaunting your racial open-mindedness is the social norm of the day, regardless of what prejudices ““ subconscious or otherwise ““ may be harbored beneath.
But Obama may be where he is today because of the very fact that he is both not quite white and not quite black.
Past minority presidential candidates such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sharpton, while gaining notable political ground, couldn’t garner wide enough support to win their nomination bids, simply because they did not appeal to the general U.S. population base outside of the specific black faction.
Such parallels can also be seen in Tom Bradley’s capture of the title of L.A. mayor in 1973.
According to Sears, Bradley was “able to avoid being stereotyped and kept his distance from blacks” unlike Jackson and Sharpton’s explicit involvement and lobbying on behalf of the black community.
What’s intriguing, though, is that higher minority representation is encouraged in U.S. politics to represent the specific interests and views of each ethnic community ““ the more explicitly ethnic, the better.
Obama can’t fulfill this, much to the chagrin of the black community, because what does a raised-in-Hawaii Harvard alumnus born to a Kenyan immigrant know about having enslaved ancestors in a land engraved with historical black disenfranchisement and racial polarization?
Minority presidents should not fit into racial cookie cutters and should not be automatically obligated to represent specific minority interests. If we need such presidents, it only means that racial differences are still very real.
The criticisms surrounding Obama illuminate just that: The demand for an “authentic” minority candidate to address minority interests is high because racial inequality is ever-present.
Come the next Democratic National Convention and perhaps even after, we’ll see if true racial equality needs to come before a minority president or whether a minority president is needed first to alleviate racial conflict.
But until then, I’ll be tuning in for my daily dosage of Obama ““ just like the rest of the nation.
If politicians are your type, e-mail Yoo at jyoo@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.