The Tipping Point and Racial Ambivalence

The presidential campaign of Barack Obama, at its heart, has always been a calculated bet, a $500 million dollar gamble that enough racially ambivalent white Americans could see beyond tradition and precedent and measure Obama's candidacy in terms of the value it brings to the table instead of the history it makes.

Could they be wrong?

It didn't strike me how much of my life was spent around white people until I listened earlier this year as a black coworker chastised a white coworker for offering him some sliced watermelon she was sharing with the rest of the office.

"What do you look like, offering a black man watermelon? Don't you know that it's RACIST to assume I like watermelon?" He looked at me with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

The woman, a pretty feisty New Yorker, looked bewildered while she backed away from him, her normal aggressiveness reduced to a few half hearted "ums" and "ahs" as the corners of her eyes crinkled in.

When she was gone, I looked at him. "You know, in the few seconds since you said "racist", I tried to remember the last time I've used that word. And you know, I couldn't remember when it might have been."

If you have a lot of white friends and acquaintances, especially those from Middle America, you are very, very rarely going to use the "R" word. Among the racially ambivalent, it throws up an instant barrier. So long as we dress alike, drive the same cars, have similar educational backgrounds and share similar dreams, racially ambivalent white people are okay with you. You will get a pass on your politics, even if they are Republicans, so long as you are a moderate. In fact, you are accepted into the fold as a neighbor, as a golf buddy, as a fellow cigar smoker or poker player precisely because of the moderation in which you seem to take all things in life.

But behind the casual intimacy of these types of relationships lies a surprisingly complicated combination of assumptions, misinformation, emotional needs, experiences and personality traits that all bear on an ambivalent white person’s thinking about race.

Psychologists Irwin Katz and Glenn Haas demonstrated in their research that anti-black attitudes correlated with white perceptions that blacks violate values related to the Protestant work ethic and that pro-black attitudes correlated with humanitarian and egalitarian values. They concluded that racially ambivalent whites can simultaneously possess both sets of attitudes. Their investigations showed that in this group, reactions toward a single black individual could be affected by a small push in either a positive or negative direction (e.g., slightly superior or slightly inferior credentials for a job applicant).

From my own experience in living rooms of friends here in Atlanta's northern suburbs, I have listened with my own ears as people we've known for years have begun to talk out loud about why they are either for Obama or considering Obama as their presidential choice. For the few Democratic diehards around here, there has been little visible resistance to the idea of Barack Obama as president. In some of the more moderate Republican households, which is the group who people the suburbs around me, there seem to those who are at least open to giving the idea serious consideration.

The neighborhood I lived in for ten years is only about ten minutes away from where I live now. The last time we were over there, during Labor Day weekend, we ended up in the great room of our old neighbors from across the cul-de-sac, talking about politics, something that had never happened in all the years we’d known them. It was interesting to hear the husband, who is some kind of research engineer, describe out loud to us why he was dissatisfied with what the Republicans had to offer, and how he was seriously considering voting for a Democrat for the first time in his life. He sounded more disturbed by the fact that the Republican candidates didn’t seem to measure up than he was about voting for a black man.

Is he going to campaign for Obama? Probably not. Is he going to wear an Obama t-shirt or button? I seriously doubt it. But in those conversations about politics, when no one black is around, I would like to believe that he would build a case for his candidate the same way he did on Labor Day weekend. Why is this important? Because Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, in pointing out some of the characteristics of the way we exchange information, laid out a fairly plausible theory that attempted to explain "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable." This middle of the middle class, who tend to be the least dogmatic of any group, have powered a large number of the trends Gladwell explores in his book.

The biggest thing those who are racially ambiguous seem to have in common is that they have never found the need to hate black people or never were indoctrinated into a culture that promoted this kind of hatred. Extrapolating broad generalizations from specific incidents is a waste of time for people like this. If they pass one of the many black homeless people who stand at the end of in-town off ramps or in the parking lots of downtown gas stations, I am not automatically linked to that image.

But a realignment of the “natural order” of things in America can still be unsettling to people who, by and large in their day to day lives, don't have any real need to think about race. Which is why you will often hear the statement "I wasn't there when all that happened" when a conversation on race gets beyond the surface topics we've made it palatable to talk about, the ones that don't really ask any introspection from either blacks or whites, just an empathetic recitation of the Top Ten "Important Things Black People Have Done" list, or the obligatory adulation of the Top Three "Dead Black Civil Rights Leaders".

And if a discussion develops, like the one about Barack Obama in my old neighbor’s den, it will only go so far, because it can be hamstrung by the boundaries of the compartment their racial thoughts reside in. In that particular discussion about the election with our old neighbors, we went around the room a few times, each of us adding our own thoughts about Obama or McCain in a casual yet slightly measured way, as if we were around an imaginary conference table, weighing in on a corporate project. We hadn’t made it to the ten minute mark when the women started talking about the obstacle Obama’s race posed to certain voters. After a couple of minutes, the husband got a look on his face, a slight scowl about the temple that signaled he was getting tired of this. The next thing you know, we were talking about the trip to the beach we are going to take together next month.

Black People/Black Issue Fatigue Syndrome, which can either mean "we've spent enough time on this and need to get back to a neutral topic" or "I am uncomfortable with the direction this is headed", is one of those things when acted upon that gives the person expressing themselves this way a sense of getting back to some sort of middle of the road equilibrium. In times like these, in a town like Atlanta, black people, including myself, can get pretty aggressive when the topic of race is on the table. Should I have pressed my old neighbor that day to keep on talking until he could understand my outsized commitment to the Obama campaign effort? Was I a "sellout" for allowing him to change the topic so quickly?

In the coming weeks, this is where Obama will draw his greatest number of “undecided” or “on the fence” voters like my old neighbor. If Obama’s campaign strategists are right, the things that make Barack Obama an appealing candidate, those traits that have been on stage front and center during the Wall Street crisis and the recent debate, will do more than anything I could say towards helping those voters “get over the hump”. So if my old neighbor, or your neighbors or your co-workers who are white are willing to talk to you for five minutes about the issues they’ve been wrestling with or the idea of possibly supporting an Obama candidacy, collect those five minutes just like they were campaign donations. Say "thank you" mentally when they look at their watch. Better yet, think of these people’s time and their growing interest as casino winnings.

Because these are the things that happen when a $500 million bet begins to pay off.

Obama and Racial Ambiguity: Acting White

Barack Obama has been accused by various black leaders and pundits, including Jessie Jackson, of "acting white’. But if Obama has been raised by a white grandmother and white grandparents, is he acting, or are his actions authentic?

The perception that Obama has been "acting white" is directly linked the assertion that he is ignoring issues germane to the black community to better cater to the ideals it is presumed that white voters must have in their presidential candidate.

To take this premise a step further, then – if Obama is accepted by mainstream America because he doesn’t exhibit any of the traits of the stereotypical African American – those of us who do not use standard English, who do not have conservatively styled hair, who are not highly educated are in effect rendered invisible to white Americans, much like Ralph Ellison’s main character in Invisible Man.

Though a staunch few of us continue to lambaste Obama relentlessly for this betrayal, this inability to be true to himself (although we often flip flop on this – one day he’s black enough, the next he’s all white), to be true to his people, most of us have rejoiced in unison as he continued throughout the primary season to attract a significant number of white voters. The undeniable fact about being considered “African American” in this country is the visual difference – it is usually so distinctive, even for guys like Obama, that there is no possibility that he could be mistaken for anything else but an outsider like the rest of us.

Are these few, these holdouts content with being outsiders forever? If the things we say we want the most from America – racial equality and equal access to economic opportunity – were here today, would we be ready? Would enough of us be equipped enough, skilled enough, able enough to take advantage of the situation?

If you take a hard look at the concept of identity, especially as it relates to Americans, you will find that the roles we all play are not as static as they appear. Five hundred years ago there was nothing that existed on this continent that defined a human being in the way we define ourselves now. The who, what, why and how that each of our ethnicities possessed we when got here have been altered dramatically over the centuries. The boundaries that we have chosen to live by, or have been forced to live by, are largely constructs of the mind of man.

Undoubtedly, Obama bumped up against some of these constructs as he began maturing from boy to man.

One of the more curious features of American life has been the ability of our citizenry to merge common customs of certain ethnicities - in particular, the characteristics of the Irish, the Italians, the Croations, the French, the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedish, the Russians, the Polish, the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Austrians, the Danish, the Finish, the Romanians, the Norwegians, the Ukrainians - into an über whiteness, a self image purer than the reality of those who wear its mantle.

Whiteness is as much a property, a state of being, as much as it is a trait - within the Big Tent of racial and cultural amalgamation we know as "White America", it is a badge of membership, of belonging, that supersedes individual differences.

Blackness is no less a state of being.

Today's whiteness, like today's blackness, is the last in a long line of new and improved versions - more refined, more efficient, sleeker - but not totally new. The advent of the Obama phenomenon has put on the table of public opinion an important question that many of us African Americans seem to have trouble answering for ourselves.

Is the authenticity of what we perceive to be "blackness", or "acting black" diluted or watered down if we cross these artificial boundaries?

Obama's Racial Ambiguity: A Blessing Or A Curse?

Barack Obama’s head peers out of a black and white television screen in an Al Sharpton wig, his face sweating like a Baptist preacher as he shouts rap lyrics into a microphone, his full length white robe bearing the slogan “By Any Means Necessary”, the expectant congregation before him reverently chanting “holla if ya here me”…

This is one of the racial boxes that I imagine the staunch group of black holdouts who insist he is "not black enough" want to put Barack Obama in when they see him on the nightly news or the internet – his standard uniform of a plain blue suit and unobtrusive tie, it seems, is just one more piece of evidence that Obama is not really black.

Some of us have not full accepted his motives. Amazingly, there are those of us who will go so far as to suggest that Obama has used his embrace of African American culture as a shortcut to success. Some even feel Obama has been foisted upon us by the media and the powers-that-be. For these American blacks, Obama’s "fade to black" development raises serious questions about his ability to relate to the challenges and struggles of everyday black people.

What is it that forces us to demand fealty by our leaders to some unknown rulebook of acceptable black behavior? Is the racial ambiguity that a staunch minority of us imagine Barack Obama has used to his advantage throughout his life problematic for the masses of us who have no such leeway in how we are seen by mainstream America?

To really understand the disconnect between Barack Obama and those of us who are supportive of the idea of a black president, but wary of this biracial man’s claim to his African Americanness after being raised by a white mother and white grandparents, we have to take a step back and look at our history here in America.

Most black authored racial literature here in America has been about black men and women dealing with and entering a white world -- three classic examples are Frederick Douglass, Narrative and Life and Times, Richard Wright, Native Son, and Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man.

Out of these three classic books, Fredrick Douglass, who was the real life protagonist of his autobiography, was the only main character able to successfully navigate life as an adult black male. In his recollection of his life story, Douglass was generous in his descriptions of those who helped him on his way to freedom, whether they were black or white.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man comes closest to echoing the undercurrents of the Obama phenomenon. Like Obama, Invisible has questioned the who, what, and why of his existence from a young age. There is a point in Invisible’s life, after he arrives in New York City, when he began to transform himself from a college dropout to a productive member of society, where he discovered that the world allowed him more latitude whenever he allowed those around him to see what they wanted to in him.

This year’s presidential campaign may be the true ending of the story Ellison wrote, but it was an ending even he couldn’t have imagined back when he wrote his novel. For Invisible, the point at which people stopped seeing him at all was the height of his existence.

And though we’ve had other models of self transformation by black men throughout our history, our image has become stylized, both by the media and by our own mythological reconstructions, as Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son – self hating, self loathing people who harbor latent criminal tendencies that we are prone to act upon if we are not properly supervised.

Bigger was bigger – bigger than the Chicago ghetto he was from, bigger than the manservant job he had, bigger than the crime he committed. He was all of black humanity, all of the perversities of us as a group distilled into the essence of one man, and even now, in the eyes of some Americans, he is the symbol of what a whole lot of us are today.

We have been striving since slavery to shake off the strictures of bondage and discrimination in order that we might fully inhabit all phases of American life. Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father, on the other hand, tells a story that is the exact opposite of our traditional tale of racial transformation – it is the story of a man of amorphous race dealing with and entering the black world.

A lot of the racial ambiguity claims about Obama have been manufactured by the overactive minds of professional pundits. And some of it is us, telling each other, "he’s not really black". But the reality of Barack Obama’s supposed ambiguity – an ability to traverse the boundaries between white and black worlds – is that he could have tried all he wanted to, but he could never have been anything other than black in America.

There is no ambiguity for him – he has always known he was different, ever since his eyes could focus on the image of his mother, ever since those same eyes were able to compare how she looked to how he looked, ever since he has understood what was in the eyes of the people who looked at him as if he was the one that didn’t fit in the picture they had of his family.