The race card

When Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controversial views on America hit prime time, Barack Obama took a plunge in the polls. Rather than denounce his longtime friend and pastor, Obama took the time to write and deliver one of the most honest speeches on race and racism I could ever imagine coming from a politician. I admit I was somewhat shocked. Up to this point in the campaign, Obama’s attitude toward race had been nothing less than transcendental, to the point that I wondered if he was actually in touch with the real state of racism in this country. His speech left no doubt in my mind that Obama has an incredibly clear understanding of race in America, and moreover his own biracial upbringing has given him valuable insight into both black and white racial identity.

As much as I was impressed with Obama’s openness about the racial issues that continue to plague our country, honesty is not always the best policy, especially when you are running for president of a country deeply embedded with racism. And Obama’s optimism about helping us heal and move on may prove to be too optimistic, if the backlash against Reverend Wright’s comments is an indicator.

Obama’s reprimand was gentle yet firm:

We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

True words? Absolutely. But watch out, because all your Fox News viewers just turned off the television. Because while a certain subset of white people have a thing for guilt, most white people are just plain sick of hearing about slavery, and they sure as hell don’t believe that they owe Black America a damn thing.

At the top of the list of white privileges, after all, is the privilege of not seeing racism as it operates in society. That includes, of course, our own role in upholding racist institutions and the benefits we accrue from them. In a column last week NYT columnist Maureen Dowd made a good point when she warned Obama to “stay away from the phrase “typical white person” because typically white people don’t like to be reminded of their prejudices”. Dowd points out that at a key tenet of Obama’s “feel-good appeal” was that it made white people feel like they were “allowed to transcend race because the candidate himself has transcended race.”

Indeed, the beauty of the Obama appeal was that supporting a black candidate allowed us to feel smugly superior to the Geraldine Ferraros of the world, but at the same time, we weren't threatened by a "racial agenda." For much of white America, Obama was boy wonder -- here was a (well-spoken and educated!) Black man who was not playing the race card. In fact, he wanted to overcome the divide and unite America! Up until last Tuesday, Barack Obama was not only a shining example of a “model minority,” he was proof in the pudding of a postracial nation. If Obama could transcend race and win the presidency, we would finally be able to pat ourselves on the back and say “racism is a thing of the past.” We could tell Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the NAACP exactly where to shove it.

After all, what could be better for the liberal vision of a colorblind America than a black president who doesn’t have any of those annoying habits that black people seem to have, like complaining about “racism” and sitting with all the other black people in the cafeteria?

But Obama did have a skeleton in the racial closet, in the form of his longtime friend and pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose views on race are a bit more materialist. And we discovered that while Obama believes strongly in the hope of uniting this nation, he refuses to disavow the history of suffering and struggle that has made this country what it is.

It is a testament to that suffering and that struggle that in the year 2008, one of the best leaders in our nation today may lose a presidential nomination because of the racism that he has no choice but to acknowledge. It is remarkable to me that someone who has experienced the brutal racialization this country bestows on black men is ready and willing to help lead our country to a better place. If I were religiously inclined, I would be tempted to call it something like salvation. But for white people, acknowledging the realities of racism has proved too threatening. Instead, like a child to its tattered security blanket, we doggedly cling to the scant comforts of whiteness, retreating into the rhetoric of victimization and “reverse racism”.

Bitch PhD has some interesting views on the phenomenon of white people getting extremely angry about black people being angry, namely that deep down, white people actually believe that black people do have a right to be angry. The spectre of his “anti-American” pastor plays on our own anxieties: “Obama (who is black) hates America (because really, if you were black, wouldn’t you?)”.

Like the white South Africans who fled the country when Nelson Mandela was elected, we have been so indoctrinated with the philosophy of racial superiority that we can’t imagine any other alternative. According to this logic, if blacks gained power they would turn the system on its head, and whites would be the new oppressed class. Ebonics would be taught at Harvard and Maya Angelou would replace John Steinbeck as The Great American Novelist.

Ridiculous, yes, but also quite indicative of the anxiety white people are experiencing over not only a potential loss of power, but also the loss of a worldview whose adoption has required significant sacrifice on our part. For those of us who have bought in to the system wholeheartedly, who truly believe that hard work and sacrifice are the key to the American dream, acknowledging an ongoing legacy of racism suggests that first of all we might not actually deserve what we have worked so hard for, and secondly that all we've given up may not in fact help us attain the unattainable.

The American dream may be a myth, but it is a hopeful myth, and one that has endured for centuries, despite remarkably thin evidence to back it up. Since our nation’s inception, wave after wave of immigrants have traded their languages, customs and cultures for a stake in the American dream. In the process, they have been both de- and re-racialized into the disciplinary norms of whiteness, less a racial category than a system of power that relies on constant surveillance and regulation in order to maintain its boundaries.

Like gambling addicts who spend their life savings on the chance of winning the lottery, many of us who have bought into the system simply refuse to believe that our dream is a lie. We are the ones who have been consistently playing the race card, but in the end, the house always wins. The anger toward Reverend Wright is based in the profound resentment of what we have lost on the racial gambling tables, and moreover, the intolerable fear that the jackpot might not actually exist.