What Obama isn't: black like me (Stanley Crouch Eats His Own)

If Barack Obama makes it all the way to becoming the Democratic nominee for President in 2008, a feat he says he may attempt, a much more complex understanding of the difference between color and ethnic identity will be upon us for the very first time. Back in 2004, Alan Keyes made this point quite often. Keyes was the black Republican carpetbagger chosen by the elephants to run against Obama for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. The choice of Keyes was either a Republican version of affirmative action or an example of just how dumb the party believes black voters to be, since it was obvious that Keyes came from the Southeast, not the Midwest.

That race was never much of a contest, but one fascinating subplot was how Keyes was unable to draw a meaningful distinction between himself as a black American and Obama as an African-American. After all, Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan. Other than color, Obama did not - does not - share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves.

Of course, the idea that one would be a better or a worse representative of black Americans depending upon his or her culture or ethnic group is clearly absurd. Even slavery itself initially came under fire from white Christians - the first of whom to separate themselves from the institution were Quakers. The majority of the Union troops were white, and so were those who have brought about the most important civil rights legislation.

Why then do we still have such a simple-minded conception of black and white - and how does it color the way we see Obama? The naive ideas coming out of Pan-Africanism are at the root of the confusion. When Pan-African ideas began to take shape in the 19th century, all black people, regardless of where in the world they lived, suffered and shared a common body of injustices. Europe, after all, had colonized much of the black world, and the United States had enslaved people of African descent for nearly 250 years.

So when black Americans refer to Obama as "one of us," I do not know what they are talking about. In his new book, "The Audacity of Hope," Obama makes it clear that, 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.

Will this matter in the end? Probably not. Obama is being greeted with the same kind of public affection that Colin Powell had when he seemed ready to knock Bill Clinton out of the Oval Office. For many reasons, most of them personal, Powell did not become the first black American to be a serious presidential contender.

I doubt Obama will share Powell's fate, but if he throws his hat in the ring, he will have to run as the son of a white woman and an African immigrant. If we then end up with him as our first black President, he will have come into the White House through a side door - which might, at this point, be the only one that's open.

This Crouch is an idiot, and his column is written for idiots.

You obviously haven't a clue about Crouch. He is a refreshingly clear thinker and speaker about matters racial. He's the opposite of a racial demagogue, he's the anti-Jesse Jackson. Oh and he's also an expert on jazz ... and a public denouncer of rap.

Here's an amazon listing of "the idiot's" books.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-7507539-4200004?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Stanley+crouch&Go.x=11&Go.y=15&Go=Go

Here's a review of one of his books .

From Booklist

Crouch, contributing editor to the New Republic, once a jazz critic for Village Voice, artistic consultant to Jazz at Lincoln Center, and author of Notes of a Hanging Judge (1990), is not an easy person to relate to because he is one of those "in-your-face" thinkers whose very smugness seems meant to alienate and provoke. He refers to himself and other blacks as "Negroes" and Amiri Baraka as LeRoi Jones; surprisingly, Malcolm X is not recognized as Malcolm Little (mustn't give him ideas). One gets the feeling from his numerous television appearances that the conservative Right consult only with Crouch on questions about black Americans, for no black critic attacks liberals, feminists, and black power leaders with the flair of Mr. Crouch. This self-conscious flair extends to his writing in spades, as in the opening essay on the role of the outlaw in American democracy, where at one point he writes of a "set of appetites focused on the exotic, bedeviled by a nostalgia for the mud, given to a love of sensationalism that completely hollows out a pretentious vulgarity." So, imagine my frustration as I continued reading to discover a creative, at times, eloquent thinker who will lead readers through many subtle discoveries if given the chance. The book is a collection of pieces Crouch prepared for diverse purposes: essays printed elsewhere, converted talks, and reflections on cultural happenings. His interests are wide ranging--film, literature, politics--all informed by a keen analytical mind that, at times, transcends the liberal or conservative labels. His analysis of films vis-a-vis his concerns for the challenges black filmmakers "need to meet" yields startling results when applied to the work of Quentin Tarantino, Albert and Allen Hughes' Menace to Society, and Leon Ichaso's Sugar Hill. This in-your-face Negro, this provocateur, talks a lot of interesting stuff. Bonnie Smothers --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Here is what Obama said about himself:

"And I speak with some experience on this matter. I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.

I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship -- the grounding of faith in struggle -- that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.

And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends. "

http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060628-call_to_renewal_keynote/index.html

From an interview by Steve Malzberg in 2004 of Alan Keyes:

". . . Barack Obama and I are of the same race, but we are not of the same heritage. And there is a distinction. Race is something physical. Heritage is something that may have an element that is physical or biological, but that also includes other elements of history and experience--the kinds of things that have helped to shape the mind and heart of an individual and that are not determined by physics and biology. And we are of different heritages. I'm of a slave heritage, and he is not. I have wrestled all my life with the reality of the injustices done to my ancestors, and it has been deeply important to me. It's influenced fundamental choices that I have made in life, things I take seriously, things I am still, to this day, preoccupied with, like the question of justice and liberty. So, I think it makes a tremendous difference, and if we just look at it with racial blinders on, we will miss the fact that these are two people of the same race, but they are not two people of the same heritage."

I believe Keyes made this point a number of times during that campaign.

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