ColbyCosh.com

I don't think Obama's being biracial has anything to do with it. I think his fans are swooning in self-congratulation for having elected a black guy, not a metis.

Wait a minute, Obama's black?

I think his fans are swooning in self-congratulation for having elected a black guy, not a metis.

Seriously, you think that each and every one of us who are hopeful about Obama are that stupid? What a sad life you must lead.

Colby, add the West Indies to that list of societies painfully obsessed with shadings of colour. cf. particularly Beyond a Boundary, which discussion of colour is particularly in mind this month as Brendan Nash makes his test debut for the West Indies (Nash has mistakenly been described as the first white West Indian to play for the Windies in a few decades, but West Indians know better... he is not considered white there.)

As to the substance of your question (sorry for ignoring it earlier), Obama's handsomeness certainly plays a role in his popularity. People wouldn't be calling him a second Lincoln if he looked like Lincoln. (They shouldn't be doing that anyway, but that is neither here nor there). And his handsomeness is not unadjacent to him being mixed-race. His father was not the handomest of men by a wide margin, neither was his maternal grandfather (see the pictures in Dreams From My Father for instance). Obama manages to tie it together, admittedly in a slightly stilted and geeky way (but the ladies seem to go for that anyway).

On a personal note... my own kids are mixed-race so perhaps I have thought about this more than most, but I doubt that the world is quite as hopeful about the future being cappuccino-coloured as you seem to indicate. While fully recognizing that he is in fact a likely picture of my future descendants, I don't see it as entering into the equation for most people on either a conscious or subconscious level.

What I do think, is that Obama's bi- or indeed multi-cultural background *does* give him tremendous advantages in communicating to a wide audience. He doesn't need to put on a mask to speak to people as they prefer to be spoken to; he can do it naturally because he's had it with him a long time, and he shakes all those approached and deliveries up in the blender and reaches over peoples' conscious minds right into their deeper experiences.

Most politicians only acquire the habit of talking to people unlike themselves late in life, if ever. Reagan and Trudeau, to name two often singled out as skilled communicators (and also with personality cults of their own), also acquired it early - Reagan as a professional communicator and Trudeau as also a bi-cultural person. I don't know if there's anything to this, but I like the thought.

Seriously, you think that each and every one of us who are hopeful about Obama are that stupid?
Ummm, most of you, yes, frankly.

He doesn't need to put on a mask to speak to people as they prefer to be spoken to...
You mean in platitudes wrapped in bromides and topped with meaningless sauce? I'd prefer some actual meaning and demonstration of intent, but if you prefer comforting nonsense, who am I to argue?

...and reaches over peoples' conscious minds right into their deeper experiences.
Oh shit, now he's got you doing it, too.

> It's a common enough opinion*
> that miscegenation will ultimately
> rescue us from the problems of race

I think A. Schlesinger Jr. used to talk about this a lot. OK, maybe not the best possible cite, but if you're making a list....

> Ummm, most of you, yes, frankly.

Love you, Dcard! But then, I've always been hopeless...

Hope! Hope!

>problems of race

Wasn't there some study a while ago that showed that Icelanders and Swedes in Minnesota didn't associate informally?

Even more locally, I was touring the BCTel main office in Burnaby the day that Telus bought them out. I often wonder what the atmosphere was in Rome when the barbarians were at the gate. The thought of Albertans of all people showing up in Vancouver of all places was unthinkable. Quite funny looking back.

So, if there are any people thinking that Obama's mixed heritage augurs some bright future, they are deluded.

Some may have voted for him because of that. Not the strangest motivation in voting history.

Derek

Yet strange enough for some of us.

I see The Big Zero's popularity as arising more from some very tightly scripted and exceedingly crafty marketing work, not his "bi-racialness."  Which is why I ultimately think the guy's an empty suit who's in over his head in an example of the "Peter Principle" writ large across the single most important political office on the planet.

Garth

I agree with Garth - Obama seems more about style than substance. I've always been struck by the similarities between the hype surrounding Obama in 2008 and that of Bush in 2000. Both were billed as moderates, "uniters, not dividers", came to the job promising change, and both had relatively slim resumes (although Bush arguably had more executive experience, having been a governor for 6 years.) Obama may end up being the left's version of Bush in 4 years. It's sad that a lack of accomplishments has become more an asset than a liability in politics.

George,

A lack of acomplishments, or a thin resume, provides less ammunition than an actual history. Any accomplishment, no matter how great, will have its critics.

As we saw with the last election, you can say empty suit in only so many ways.

So then, lets talk about his accomplishments thus far? I'd say reversing the Mexico City Policy was no small feat. Well done, Mr. Obama.

"I don't know if there's anything to this, but I like the thought".

Bingo! You want to believe, therefore you believe.

dkite,
Obviously Swedes and Icelanders have other issues that make them hostile to each other. The point about miscegenation is not that it augurs a bright future but that is makes society less racist all else being equal. I don't think Brazilians being obsessed with different hues is the same thing as racism.

"Mexico City Policy was no small feat"
You're kidding, right? Signing an order that no one can do anything about is an accomplishment? How about getting an actual Republican house member to vote for your stimulus?

Contrary to what Colby has suggested, I found that a significant number of my colleagues were completely unaware that Obama was half white.

Although precious few people will ever admit this, I think a large part of the fawning over Obama stems from white America congratulating themselves for having elected a non-white president. Having gone to a university where I, a white guy of Scottish ancestry, was the visible minority, and living in a neighborhood where a was the only guy who wasn't Asian, I find this to be a dubious "achievement," and rather see at something that was going to happen sooner rather than latter.

I guess my point is, Obama is almost exclusively referred to as being Black; his mixed ancestry is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Seriously, you think that each and every one of us who are hopeful about Obama are that stupid? What a sad life you must lead.

Well most of you are pretty fucking naive, no offense.

Mclea is probably correct. In fact, Obama himself did little during the campaign to highlight his mixed ancestry. He called himself a mutt once, and said his DNA made him a uniter of people, but that's about it.

Weigh those two statements against the hundreds of times he referred to himself as black. And the media almost exclusively called him black, which he never contended or called for qualification on.

This virtually exclusive depiction of Obama as "genuinely" black probably helped him pull the black vote away from Clinton in the primaries. And it reflects his own desire to be as black as possible, clearly shown in his autobiography.

Until Obama comes around to Tiger Woods style honesty on the subject of his mixed race ancestry, he will remain a distinctly non-postracial figure.

"In fact, Obama himself did little during the campaign to highlight his mixed ancestry."

In truth, Obama launched himself on the national stage at the 2004 Democratic Convention by devoting the first 380 words of his keynote address to detailing his black and white bloodlines.

When he talks about his parents’ romance, you can practically hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic being hummed in the background, like at Disneyland’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” attraction:

"Tonight is a particular honor for me because—let’s face it—my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father—my grandfather—was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

"But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance, my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.

"While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. … My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or “blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.

"They are both passed away now. And yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with great pride. I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible."

Whatever their reasons, conscious or unconscious, white Obama zealots are prone to assume that Obama is the Tiger Woods of politics: as the postracial product of a happy mixed race family, he must be the anti-Jesse Jackson. His election will enable America to put all that tiresome tumult over ethnicity behind us.

Since 2004, Obama has himself stoked the popular hope among whites that his admixture of black and white genes means that “trying to promote mutual understanding” is “in my DNA,” as he asserted at the April 29, 2008 press conference in which he finally disowned his longtime pastor.

Obama’s 2004 keynote address tapped into an omnipresent theme in our popular culture, which is currently dominated by fantasy and science fiction epics largely about orphans predestined by their unique heredity and upbringing to save the world, such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Superman, Terminator, Lord of the Rings, and Batman.

Likewise, in politics, a fascination with breeding is both very old (going back to the days of hereditary monarchy) and very contemporary. The main qualifications for the Presidency of the current Chief Executive, Mr. Bush, and the Democratic runner-up in 2008, Mrs. Clinton, consist of being, respectively, the scion and consort of ex-Presidents.

More subtly, Obama launched himself on the national stage at the 2004 convention by devoting the first 380 words of his speech to detailing the two stocks, black and white, from which he was crossbred. He implied that, like the mutual heir to a dynastic merger of yore—think of England’s King Henry VIII, offspring of the Lancaster-York marriage that ended the War of the Roses—he is the one we’ve been waiting for to end the War of the Races.

-- From the first chapter of "America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's 'Story of Race and Inheritance'" by Steve Sailer

http://www.lulu.com/content/4576443

I don't think Brazilians being obsessed with different hues is the same thing as racism.

I realize the R-word has a strong tendency to ruin all discussions within which it is raised, but you don't think a society being organized so as to endow lighter-skinned people with certain privileges and preferments is in some sense "racist"?

Wow! Brazil or India are full of brown people yet they don't all get along! Who knew?

And this proves that "miscegenation" (as you so quaintly put it) is not the answer to the world's problems.

Thanks for the insights.

Maybe, just maybe, Obamamania exists because he projects competence and sincerity and manages to string together words into coherent sentences. You know, in stark contrast to his immediate predecessor?

So profound were Bush's personal deficiencies and political failures, we would currently be experiencing "Doddmania" if a series of miracles had intervened and he'd somehow made it to the presidency. (You can insert the lackluster Democratic politician of your choice in the previous sentence.)

Steve Sailer,
Thanks for clarifying Obama's mixed race references.
However, Obama has never taken exception to being called black. During the election, only about a million references were made to Obama being black. He has called himself black hundreds of times in print and broadcast. His few mixed race references appear to be politically targetted. He clearly approves of being viewd as black.

Obama's life before politics was one long obsession with blackness. In school he sought out black friends and a black mentor, in college he purposely hung mostly with black classmates and took part in black political causes, he chose a job as an organizer for black communities, married a black woman, wrote an autobiography overwhemingly devoted to his black ancestry, with the story rarely straying from that topic. The last third of the book (a hundred and thirty pages)is devoted to one month he spent in Africa.

He wrote a few drab sentences about his Indonesian-American sister Maya, in spite of being raised with her. Compare that to the dozens of sentences in which he lovingly worships his black sister Auma, though he only spent a few months with her. The book is infused with Obama's obsession with blackness and Africanness.

The precedent exists for honesty on the mixed race identity or black identity question. Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Lenny Kravitz and many others have taken exception to being identified as black instead of mixed race. I'm still waiting for Obama to be honest on the topic.

Maybe, just maybe, Obamamania exists because he projects competence and sincerity and manages to string together words into coherent sentences.

Maybe. Of course, coherence is easy when you strive to be devoid of meaning; it's combining the two that's tough.

Wow - lots of pessimism and anger here. I mean, there are valid reasons not to like Obama, but is his treatment of race really it? Really?

People quibble with the book - but my God, he wrote a whole goddamned book about his mixed background, and how everybody projects onto him identities he's not entirely comfortable with.

And it's totally predictable that a person of mixed ancestry will focus on the minority aspect of their ascribed identity, since that's the part everyone around him's ever considered noteworthy - do we think his friends in high school ever referred to him as "their white friend Barry?"

I'm a libertarian type, so I don't think race should be important. But since liberals have multiculturalism and identity groups, and old conservatives have racialism, and Obama wrote a whole book about race, and then used race as leverage in the election, the treatment of the idea of race becomes important. So if people will talk about it, let's get the story staight.

Obama seems to prefer being identified as black, not mixed race.

It may be predictable for a mixed race person to "focus on the minority", but it is still dishonest (and weak) for him to identify himself as that minority. Obama is neither black nor white.

Tiger Woods and others of mixed race have spoken more wisely on the subject of race and identity than the President ever did.

Tiger and others didn't retreat into a minority, defining themselves in racial terms, but chose to do their own thing. And as an important part of doing their own thing, they eshewed the "black" label the media, and perhaps society, tried to place on them.

Obama has been given the best opportunity ever to help put race behind us, but as of yet has hardly tried.

I think that his campaign downplayed all those black moments--after the fuss about his church, he wasn't photographed clapping along to gospel, eating ribs in some shack or grinning foolishly at a R & B concert. Remember the big deal Jesse Jackson made about Dukakis having him for dinner and serving salmon, the yuppie white meat? Obama would never do that. IF anything, his campaign was pretty careful to show him as upscale, not downhome.

Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Lenny Kravitz and many others have taken exception to being identified as black instead of mixed race.

Also include in there Dwayne Johnson, former failout of the Calgary Stampeders organization. When somebody asked him how it felt to be the first black WWF Heavyweight Champion he instantly took offense on behalf of his Samoan mother. Anybody holding their breath waiting for Obama to do the same is welcome to write me into their will.

Scarlock is right. Obama's 1995 autobiography "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" is obsessed with his 25 year struggle to prove he's black enough to be a black leader (his dream from his father, via his mother) despite being half-white and having been raised sequestered away from black communities out in the ocean.

He fled Hawaii, where being mixed race was a norm, and settled in Chicago precisely because in the 1980s it was the site of the most strident black-white animosity in the country, so he could prove he was black enough by becoming a black activist.

Obama's dream of becoming the second black mayor of Chicago was shattered in 2000 when he was badly beaten in a primary election by an ex-Black Panther because black voters didn't find him black enough. He and David Axelrod then concocted a new campaign image as the post-racial candidate to appeal to whites. Was this sincere? Who knows? Nobody in the press ever asked him during his 20 month-long Presidential campaign about the vivid contradictions between his 2004-2008 image and his 1995 autobiography.

My new book, "America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's 'Story of Race and Inheritance'" explores the discordance between his own memoir and his current image, with my title referring to his post-2000 manipulation of popular culture tropes and the subtitle being borrowed from the subtitle of his 1995 book.

http://www.lulu.com/content/4576443

There is also the cultural aspect. In america, half-black, half-white people consider themselves black, or "more black," than they do white. eg. how many people know beyonce knowles (also a subject of a recent cosh post) is a halfer as well. Yet in numerous interviews, she gives the impression of being full-black, rather than half and half. I'm sure its not done on purpose. I think it goes back to when she (and obama) were in high school and which group did they fall into on the playground.

Grey wall,
I like you post, but one problem. When you say being culturally black is not done on purpose, it very often is.

In my high school in the mid 80's there was a guy named Gerry who was as white as snow. He caught the black wave to mainstream early, listened to Rap, tried to play basketball, hanging with any black kids who tolerated him.

He started to wear a big floppy hat to hide his hair, always had a tan, walked around with permanently flaired nostrils and pouted lips. He even tried a black American accent cloaked in a stoner's drawl.

People laughed behind his back, yet by the early 90's, there were tens of thousands of little Gerry's wandering suburban North America. You've seen them, and they are white.

Like Gerry, Obama had a very white upbringing. And like Gerry, Obama (and thousands of other part blacks raised in "white" American culture) chose black culture and companionship, deliberately. For Obama, as Steve Sailer points out, this required extra effort living in Hawai'i.

This retreat into a minority probably reveals a degree of weakness, perhaps a mild cowardice on their part, and a racialized mind set as well. Tiger Woods did it better, and more honestly. Why can't Obama?

"... post-racial future in which the varieties of humanity have been whipped together in a big sexy blender...."

See the science-fiction short story "Dark Interlude" (1951) by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds.

Grey Wall, in response to your post: Beyonce is not half-Black/half-White. She does, however, have Creole heritage - as do many Black people in my home states of Louisiana and Texas.

please dont offend obama worshippers or risk rebuke from the 'obama street'. soon, that will not be tolerated in USA. in fact, hey, death to those who insult - its the new black.