Obama's American nightmare
THOSE CRAZY birthers who insist that Barack Obama is from a foreign country are not completely lunatic. The America of Obama's youth is not the mainland United States (US). And it's not mainstream. Hawaii, Obama's state of birth, was not admitted into the union until 1959. That's almost two centuries after the American declaration of independence from Britain, and only two years before Obama was born.
The most absurd 'fact' I've heard about Hawaii is that it has the highest racial minority population of any state in the union - 75 per cent, according to US census figures. How can the majority of people in Hawaii be counted as a minority? Only in the racist United States where whites consider themselves to be the definitive Americans! Forget about the indigenous people. White is the default race and all others are minority. That's mainland racial politics. But in Hawaii, whites are the minority. That's what the US census figures actually mean.
In a 1999 essay for the Punahou Bulletin, published by his high school in Honolulu, Obama acknowledges the impact of the years he spent in his homeland: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered - to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect - became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."
Obama's Hawaiian 'world view' is fundamentally at odds with racial politics in mainstream America. Born to a black African father and a white American mother, Obama doesn't easily fit into a box. He isn't simply African-American. The hyphen does make a difference. Obama comes to mainland America as an outsider whose personal history does not include the African-American trauma of enslavement and all it entails. Despite Michelle, it is a struggle for Obama to claim the hyphen.
And African-Americans are struggling to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, especially since he's president of all America. Obama is a biracial, multicultural American who embodies many of the ideological contradictions that constitute the US. The unofficial national motto asserts unity: 'E pluribus unum' ('out of many one'). But America is a divided society. Trusting in God seems to make no difference.
The cold-bloodied slaying of Trayvon Martin and the contested ruling that has freed his assailant have become yet another test case of the fundamental fairness of the US justice system. On all sides of the angry debate about what went wrong, there's the shameful knowledge that race remains a provocative sign of both criminality and innocence in a supposedly 'post-racial' America.
President Obama has been caught in the crossfire. In a much-analysed speech two Fridays ago, he revealed his somewhat ambiguous identification with Trayvon Martin and, more broadly, African-American culture. This is how he began: "I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday, but, watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit."
That's the first problem. Obama's initial pronouncement on the judgment, appealing for "calm", appears to be his instinctive reaction. The expansion of his thoughts comes a little bit too late. And it's really just a little bit too little. Obama shouldn't need to watch the debate in order to realise that, as president, it was his duty to make a much more nuanced and expansive statement on yet another American tragedy.
After affirming the "grace and dignity" of the Martins' response to the contested ruling that freed their son's killer, Obama tried, yet again, to identify with the victim: "You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago.
"And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognise that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away."
It is precisely this set of experiences and history that Obama does not own. This "set" is not in his DNA. And it's not only African-Americans who are looking at the issue through the lens of a history that doesn't go away. Euro-Americans have their own set of experiences and history - of lynching, for example - that influences how they view the death of Trayvon Martin. Furthermore, people of goodwill, of all races, are agitated about the killing and the judgment.
Obama gives three examples of racial profiling of African-American males. In each successive instance, he becomes more and more distant. The first example is "being followed when shopping in a department store". Obama says, "That includes me".
The next example is "walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars". Obama says, "That happens to me". Present tense. He quickly qualifies it, "at least, before I was a senator". That's a big leap away from racial profiling. Not to mention president.
Obama's final example is "getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off". Obama doesn't even pretend that he's had that experience: "That happens often".
The race of the generic woman is unmarked. If she's white, it's fear of the predatory black man. If she's black, it's the same thing. But, in the latter case, it's now black-on-black crime. Why don't we ever talk about white-on-white crime? Because white is normative and black is pathological?
In his expanded thoughts, Obama does give some prescriptions for the disease of racial profiling. He pays particular attention to the dilemma of African-American males. But he cannot identify with them fully, no matter how hard he tries to be Trayvon. It's the hyphen again. Obama inherited his mother's American nightmare. But he also possesses distant dreams from his African father.
Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Vist her bilingual blog at http://carolyncooper.wordpress.com. Send comments to; email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.org