Speaking Truth to Power: Obama and Race in American Politics

The eruption of race in the current American presidential campaign has been a reminder of its volatility in American history and politics. The decision of Barack Obama to run for the Presidency has seen him transformed from an African American freshman United States Senator to a national figure whose political fortunes have become tied to the possible transformation of American political culture and its life. As a result, a variety of prominent personalities have expressed their views about his candidacy and the news media has embarked upon a campaign designed to answer the question "Who would have thunk it?" On issues of race, the mainstream American press has traditionally had a remarkable Alice-in-Wonderland approach to the discussion of race in American politics. This approach is rooted in the wider society's custom of not discussing race as a way of denying the reality and centrality of racism in the shaping of American culture. In real terms, in the half-century and more since the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954) when the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated education was unconstitutional, American public and political discourse has demonstrated a striking inability and/or unwillingness to engage in open debate about the legacies of slavery and racism upon American life. The absence of such debate has led to the failure to forge a public culture of racial inclusiveness that would give meaning to the self-evident truth that all people are created equal. In effect, four decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the United States has yet to forge a political consensus about ways to give substance to King's dream of a society in which people can be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. Obama's candidacy for the White House has exposed the intellectual and political limitations of contemporary American culture and its congenital inability to exorcize the demons of race within the society.

Were Obama to win the Presidency, as an American of mixed racial ancestry in a predominantly white society which had been historically constructed around an ideology of white supremacy, his election would be a watershed moment in American political development. An Obama victory would open the way for Americans to have an intelligent discussion stripped of the reflexive animus towards people of color that defines the society. It would also help American political leaders to turn away from the coded and overt appeals to racist sentiment that have historically played a key role in American politics and law. Obama's election would also signal the metamorphosis of America's role in the wider world - evolving from anachronism born of European colonialism, Native American dispossession and African slavery to harbinger of a future in which multi-cultural democracy becomes increasingly viable within and outside of America. In effect, the electoral fortunes of Barack Obama will have serious ramifications for both the tone and tenor of American domestic politics.

In addition, his campaign for the presidency is occurring as there is a wider transformation occurring in the post-Cold War international system which is moving away from the centuries of dominance exercised by the North Atlantic community to one in which Asia stands at the epicenter of the emerging global order. In effect, the notions of "white supremacy" which had shaped the European/North Atlantic-dominated international order and the domestic politics of the European/North Atlantic states are on the wane. These societies have become increasingly diverse in ethnic and racial terms due to steady migration flows from non-European societies and they are all grappling with redefining their domestic politics in a world of globalized population movement. It is little wonder then that Obama's campaign has aroused curiosity well beyond the US even as it has forced Americans to confront - in Condoleezza Rice's terms - the country's "birth defect" of slavery and its legacies. Ever since the publication of Gunnar Myrdal's massive study, An American Dilemma, in 1944, American race relations have constituted a prism through which modern societies have sought to deal with the issue of racial diversity. It is a role that will undoubtedly be reinvigorated in light of Obama's campaign.

Further, the current election campaign is occurring against the backdrop of a failed American imperial war in Iraq which had been motivated in part by the assumption that Iraq could be transformed into a bastion of American military power and bases in the Middle East. The American-led invasion of Iraq was a measure of the Bush administration's nostalgia for the re-establishment of a Western-dominated order in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Britain had led the earlier effort to create that order between the collapse of the Ottoman empire in the wake of World War I and the Suez Crisis of 1956 when Britain, France, and Israel were humiliated and forced to abandon their efforts to seize control over the Suez Canal from Egypt. Thereafter, it was the superpowers, the USA and the USSR, which dominated the region's politics until the end of the Cold War. The Bush administration's turn to an imperial war as a strategy for control over a strategic region in the non-European world has served as a reminder of the failed politics of European empire in the Middle East and has led to widespread questioning of American leadership in the international system.. Obama's criticism of the invasion, and his willingness to call for an end to the American occupation has been perceived as an indication that America is capable of turning the page on the strategic blunders of the current administration.

However, it is on the important issue of race in American domestic politics that Obama faces his greatest challenge. After the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating impact upon the vulnerable, poor, and largely black population of New Orleans, Obama's challenge has been to persuade American voters that he will not follow the model of the Bush administration's attitudes of preferences for the wealthy. Just as important, he has to take the lead in forging a new social contract in which equity for all Americans is seen as a legitimate right, and avenues for social mobility will be opened after years of Republican-led efforts to skew income and resources in favor of wealthy Americans. The Bush administration has become a symbol of the corruption, the nepotism, and the profligacy of that has overtaken the conservatism ushered in by the Reagan administration in 1980 and which has now outlived its political mandate.

It was particularly appropriate that Obama's effort to outline a new social contract should be anchored in his address on race. The immediate context of his address on race was shaped by the widespread distribution of snippets from "fire and brimstone" sermons delivered by Obama's long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago - remarks which his opponents sought to use against Obama and to question his "patriotism." His response was a magisterial address - "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union" - which was laden with symbolism. The address was delivered at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, yards away from the site where the American Constitution was originally drafted in 1787, and the title of the address was drawn from the Preamble to that Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Obama's description of that constitution as "stained by this nation's original sin of slavery..." was a brilliant use of Biblical metaphor to illustrate both his understanding of Christian theology and to challenge his fellow Americans to come to terms with the fact that "racial slavery" stood at the heart of America's founding as a ‘free' nation. As the 18^th century British essayist Samuel Johnson observed of the American desire for independence from Britain: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" This is the contradiction that has defined American life from its founding and Obama's address was a reminder that the United States of America has yet to be redeemed from its original sin.

The choice of venue and the exploration of the central contradiction of the American constitution in Obama's address was a reminder of his astute use of American history to shape his election campaign. Obama's declaration of his candidacy was announced in Springfield, Illinois where Abraham Lincoln had also embarked upon his race for the Presidency in 1860. Further, his campaign rhetoric has emphasized his willingness to bridge the partisan divide in American life among Republicans and Democrats. His campaign has been based upon building a coalition of progressive Democrats, Independents, and disenchanted Republicans buttressed by a determined effort bring new voters and a younger generation into the political process in an effort to revive a commitment to democratic politics in America. Lincoln's challenge was to cut the Gordian Knot of slavery to bring an end to the schizophrenic sensibility produced by an imperfect union that was "half-slave and half-free." Obama's challenge is to provide a vision of American politics that would move the society beyond "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many."

It is to overcome these profoundly anti-democratic developments that Obama has made inclusiveness a cornerstone of his campaign strategy - an inclusiveness that runs counter to the very important currents of American history that shaped the dispossession of Native Americans, slavery, segregation, anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-Catholicism, anti-Mormonism, anti-Asian sentiment, and anti-Semitism. American history is littered with exclusionary movements and hysteria, including violent outbursts, against those considered either different or deviant and Obama cast down his challenge to Americans to recognize that:

"the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper."

It was an address that Obama had to deliver, not only as a way of confronting the questions about his relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright, but as part of the rites of passage of American national politics. In 1960, John F. Kennedy gave his address on his Catholic faith and his views of the Presidency, just as the Mormon candidate Mitt Romney had to deliver a similar address in the current campaign. For "outsiders" to the "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" cultures that have shaped American Presidents, it has been important to explain why their ‘difference' would not impede their exercise of Presidential power. Obama's address was directed in part at reassuring the American electorate that neither his race, nor his religious background, made him an "outsider" of the mainstream of American life.

In choosing to confront the ‘original sin' of American life and constitutional theory, Obama showed in his address a sophisticated appreciation of American political and religious culture. That address was a reminder of his intellectual gifts and an insight into the capacity for compassion that has been key to his ability to speak with empathy to multiple audiences in America. Obama's campaign has become a mirror into which American life and culture is reflected and it will be interesting to see how Americans will respond to those images.

First published in the Trinidad and Tobago Review, May 5, 2008