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Transcendent Hypocrisy

If you want to get the “man on the street” view of Obama’s appeal as it relates to the vexed question of whether he “transcends” race, do you suppose one of the most representative people you could find to determine the breadth and scope of Obama’s appeal would be a “native New Yorker” who “conducts diversity training in her […]

If you want to get the “man on the street” view of Obama’s appeal as it relates to the vexed question of whether he “transcends” race, do you suppose one of the most representative people you could find to determine the breadth and scope of Obama’s appeal would be a “native New Yorker” who “conducts diversity training in her workplace and is a proponent of affirmative action, a position she staked out in college”?  Why not ask Samantha Power whether she thinks Obama might be a decent candidate while you’re at it?  David Axelrod might also be available.

The Post story is almost too precious to believe:

At a campaign event in Tampa last month, she hung on Obama’s every word as he spoke to an adoring crowd packed into the courtyard of the historic Cuban Club of Ybor City. As she listened, race wasn’t in the forefront of her mind, she says later. It usually isn’t, she says.

“Kind of like, if I could compare him to Tiger Woods. When I look at Tiger Woods, I see the best golfer in the world,” she says. “So when I see Barack Obama, I see a strong political candidate. I do not see ‘Oh, that’s a black man running for president, or African American or multiracial black.’ It’s not what comes to mind first. What comes to mind first is: great platform, charismatic, good leader, attractive.”

If race isn’t usually on Ms. Lang’s mind, why would it be when she goes to listen to Obama speak?  If you have a liberal fan of diversity who doesn’t think about race, would putting her in a room with Obama suddenly evoke profound anxiety?  This is ridiculous.  What this article tells us is that coastal liberals who have appropriately liberal views on race support one of the more left-leaning candidates running for President.  If you can find a couple of progressive activists who also like Obama, you can declare it a trend: liberals want to elect other liberals!  It’s a revolution!

Incidentally, have you ever noticed how this universalist language about “transcending” race is as, if not more, condescending as any, since it treats race as something that needs to be “transcended” or “overcome” as if it were some sort of ailment or disease?  In other words, everyone (especially Obama’s supporters) acknowledges that Obama is as popular as he is in spite of his race in one sense, because the favourable reaction to him always deemphasises the identity that he has chosen, to one degree or other at various times in his life, to emphasise rather a lot as his identity.  The people who are most inclined to like Obama seem to take pride in the fact that they think they are being “color blind” about it, but this means that they are embracing their candidate as a symbol of their own universalism while simultaneously devaluing and implicitly disapproving of black Americans who might run for President in some other less “transcendent” way.  You can almost hear them sigh with relief, “Thank goodness he isn’t like those people.  Not that I think about these things much, of course, because that would be wrong.”

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