President Obama: Symbol of a Post-Racial Society?

In the latter weeks of the Presidential election, I had already started to become disenchanted with Mr. Obama.  For the same reasons as most progressives – his steady accommodating shifts towards the right, as he positioned himself as a rank and file Democrat.  Don’t get me wrong.  I voted for him, and I can even say I like the guy, but so far he has not been a President who has lived up to all the “hope”.

In thinking about what his presidency means, with regards to him being the first African-American to take the office, there was much to consider.  So much talk about its historicity, and its symbolism, and the introduction of the term “post-racial” to the common parlance.

It’s mostly nonsense.

There is no doubt in my mind that had Barack Obama been anything other than African-American – even Hispanic or Asian or any other non-white minority – that he would not have won the primary, let alone the overall election.  I do not mean to take anything away from Mr. Obama – he is brilliant, eloquent, right-minded, and every bit qualified to occupy the office of President of the United States.  I mean to say that his ethnicity shone like a beacon to draw attention to his many other merits, whereas he may have been obscured by other Democrats more established around the time that he made his first mark on the public back in 2002.

Let’s not harbor any illusions here.  Mr. Obama’s ethnicity secured him much of the non-white vote – especially amongst African-Americans and Latino-Americans, which make up a sizeable portion of the electorate.  Again I am not saying that the groups voted for him simply because of his ethnicity, but because his ethnicity gained him their attention.  In terms of adequately representing the needs and interests of the non-white demographic, Obama was hardly the best candidate.  That honor goes to Representative Dennis Kucinich, who even had the political chutzpah – no, the balls – to say that he would have a discussion around the issue of reparations.  But Obama was the better politician – he knew how to navigate the waters between left and right so as not to out himself as too much of a liberal like Kucinich, accusations of being a socialist notwithstanding.

And so he won.

But what does his victory mean, really, to people of color?  To me?  Not as much as all the “historicity” and “symbolism” suggests.  In some ways, I feel that his victory may even have set us back, as a nation still struggling with its identity and attempting to reconcile the differences between its disparate ethnic groups.  The idea of a “post-racial” society is nothing short of regressive, because what it does is promote the idea that we are somehow beyond racism simply because we elected an African-American President.  Given the progress that we have made in this country’s 234 year history – full of small hard-fought victories – how could a two-year campaign and election possibly have served to completely eradicate racism?  It’s a ridiculous – and delusional – proposition.

Mr. Obama, throughout his candidacy, worked hard to isolate himself from his identity as an African-American, in that he attempted to remove race from the campaign altogether.  He was astute enough to deliver an excellent speech on race, but it was mostly to resonate with the post-racial idealism of white liberals and to placate white dissent that came in response to the Jeremiah Wright controversy and Obama’s own comments about the “typical white person” during a radio interview.  He made sure to emphasize his blended heritage, to make himself relatable to white Americans, many of whom in their “post-racial” thinking were quick to argue during discussions of race how Obama wasn’t just black, but half-white.

I am not amongst those who have ever criticized Mr. Obama for not being “black enough”.  As a person growing up in this country with his skin color, his features, his name, I have no doubts that he had the full “black experience”, and that he came through it for the better.  It would have, however, been more historic had the first African-American president been a descendant of the enslaved Africans who formed the very backbone of this country.  It would’ve served as a more direct metaphor for “how far we’ve come”.  Still, I will never begrudge Mr. Obama his heritage.

As for symbolism, what exactly does Mr. Obama represent?  He gave white Americans the opportunity to prove – to themselves, at least – that they were not racist, because they voted a “black” President.  But here’s the problem.  In the ways that Obama divorced himself from race during his campaign – such as his clever universalizing of the reparations question – and in how his policies do not reflect any particular concern for people of color, he is the United States’ first African-American President in image only, not in representation.  I do not in any way mean to say that Mr. Obama, or any other person of color, is obligated to act on or even to have such concerns, but if we are talking about how symbolic his presidency is, then he is not an adequate representative of people of color.

Even spectators in other countries have honed in on this:

But it is now time that he lives up to his reputation. Being the first black president does not mean he will automatically champion black issues, or other minority appeals.

His skin colour is slowly blurring into the background of the White House. He is being measured not on his place in history, but on how his reign will affect history.

[...]

Having Obama as a black head of state in the most powerful country in the world will not solve the crises affecting minority populations in the nation.

He is simply the face for a white establishment, who happened to support him to the top because they saw a possibility for a win.

He is, first and foremost, an American President.

— Amy McQuire, National Indigenous Times, Australia

In other words, Obama was “black enough” to be the first African-American president, to allow white people to convince themselves of a post-racial society, but not black enough to rock the boat.  To clarify, this is not a criticism of Mr. Obama himself, but of a society that could elect an African-American president so long as he didn’t call too much attention to his blackness.  Had Mr. Obama even dared to use the word “reparations” during his campaign, he would’ve crashed and burned that instant.  During that reparations question on the CNN panel, only John Edwards had the personal integrity to plainly admit that he would not even address the issue.  Only Dennis Kucinich had the courage to acknowledge that it was an issue worth discussing.  Obama – in what was undoubtedly the right move, politically – danced around it brilliantly.

I am honing in on the reparations issue not because I think it is a pressing issue, but because it is one that highlights the ideological divide between white Americans and Americans of color – regardless of their political orientation.  The candidate willing to address such an issue directly, in a country where white Americans are the majority and still ill at ease discussing race issues, risks political suicide.  It was okay for Dennis Kucinich, who has already found his niche as a hardcore progressive.  But it is for that niche, also, that Kucinich may never be a viable Presidential candidate.

What does it say about a post-racial society that a candidate who wants to discuss the most sensitive issues around race and racism, and our country’s divided legacy, is automatically removed from any chance of being our President?  It suggests a real definition for post-racial:

post-ra⋅cial

–adjective.
beyond discussions of race & racism
Origin: 2008–10, Americanism

Word Origin & History

A term used to describe a society or time period in which discussions around race and racism have been deemed no longer relevant to current social dynamics. Popularized after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America in 2009.

There is no question that people of color hoped that Barack Obama might better represent their interests – interests that have been mostly ignored by long succession of white male Presidents.  They certainly did not need a President whose election suggested that their issues were no longer issues at all, that we as a nation had somehow grown beyond those issues – which, in effect, undermines any attempt at discussing them.

The election of a female president would not suddenly resolve gender inequalities or render all feminists movements obsolete.  The election of a gay president would not suddenly mean that the entire county has accepted homosexuality.  The election of a disabled president would not suggest that we do not still have a long way to go with regards to accommodating and fairly treating our disabled citizens.  So why in the world should the election of an African-American man to the Presidency symbolize this country having overcome its deeply rooted history of racism?

You wanna talk symbolism?  It would’ve been symbolic for a white American President to issue a public apology on behalf of the United States for slavery – much like Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aboriginal Australians.  The mere idea of this apology nearly saw Bill Clinton crucified when he considered it.  In the end, he very cleverly “acknowledged the evils of slavery”, but without issuing any formal apology.  For white Americans, who love to address the issue of slavery and its legacy with the fact that they, personally, had nothing to do with it – they view such an apology as an admission of personal guilt.  They do not seem to understand it as a symbolic gesture.  And it seems to be a matter of national pride – of “patriotism” – to never acknowledge the grievous mistakes your country has made and continues to make.

The apology has been a long time coming, and it will be a longer time still before we ever – if we ever – see it.  Barack Obama cannot and should not be the President to make it, and for his political savvy I am certain he will not.  It would, after all, change what should be a symbolic gesture into an ironic one.

Personally I would have taken another white male President with the courage to have the necessary dialogues around race and racism.  A President who rather than bringing together a professor and a cop for a beer, dared to bring together an entire nation to discuss the issues that continue to divide them.  I would’ve been willing to put off the election of the first African-American for another 20 years in exchange for that kind of President.

While we wait for that President, Mr. Obama can continue to serve as a placebo solution to the problem of race and racism in the United States.  I can only hope that while the country is so busy convincing itself that we have suddenly become “post-racial”, that we do not lose the opportunity to bring about real change in our social dynamics, under the false pretext that such a change has already taken place.

The purpose was not to antagonize or slander Malkin herself – although she is deserving of every attack leveled at her – but to gain some insight into how run-of-the-mill conservatives think, and the kinds of conversations they have amongst themselves.

In a rather hilarious twist, “Michelle” posted a status message about how quickly people will jump on one bandwagon or another, if only someone uses the right buzz words. In no time at all, the facebook followers rallied behind “her”, blissfully unaware that “she” was talking about them.

Time will tell how many of the followers will recognize that they’ve been deceived.  For now, the experiment continues…

The model applies not only holistically to human behavior, but also to behavior in specific contexts, such as work and relationships. It could also be said to apply to groups as well as individuals. Although Maslow used the word hierarchy, he did not place any qualitative value on the different needs, save perhaps self-actualization, which he stated as the ultimate goal. But at that stage, behavior is no longer even dictated by needs, and in a sense the person has “escaped” the hierarchy.

But when we look at needs as they apply to groups, they do correspond to a qualitative hierarchy – the socioeconomic stratum. Generally speaking, those at the bottom of the stratum are struggling to fulfill the basic needs. This is not universal, and I do not mean to suggest that self-actualization is not possible for those in poverty. Afterall, how we define poverty varies from place to place. The people of Bhutan – in South Asia – have a per capita income of around $1300, which places them in abject poverty by U.S. standards. Yet the people of Bhutan, who hold a measurement of “national happiness” higher than economic wealth, are mostly happy. Happiness, where it is a regular characteristic of a person rather than circumstantial, is closely correlated to self-actualization.

In the United States, the hierarchy of needs is superimposed by a second hierarchy – of want. The difference between wants and needs is that needs are dictated by the bodies and minds of people and mostly on a subconscious level. Maslow’s model does not state that people knowingly act on their needs, but that needs function on a more subversive level. Wants and needs can and do align where a person becomes conscious of what they need and how to acquire it. However, all too often, wants displace needs – filler instead of fulfillment. Wants are like empty calories – food that fills your stomach and satisfies the immediate hunger need, but not the underlying nutrition need. A child may want candy, but needs vegetables.

Wants, unlike needs, are dictated not by individuals themselves, but by the external environment, from peers to the greater society. The United States economy is under-girded by people’s willingness to spend money. It is not enough to spend only on those things we need, but also on the things we want. In fact, the economy would be starved if we only purchased according to our needs. What we have is a culture of consumerism, where value is ascribed not only to goods, but to people according to their ability to purchase goods – material wealth.

The pursuit of wealth is not only a sidetrack from climbing the hierarchy of needs, but displaces it with the hierarchy of want. The hierarchy of needs leads to self-actualization – where a person is no longer acting on subconscious needs, but making regular conscious movements towards limitless personal growth. The hierarchy of wants does not ever lead to fulfillment of any sort, and in fact only leads to more and increasingly difficult to attain wants.

Individuals at the helms of the government and industries of the United States and other capitalist economies understand this dynamic well – and in fact, their positions in the socioeconomic stratum depend on it. That is not to say that people in high government positions and at the tops of corporate ladders are removed from the hierarchy of wants. They may actually be the most entrenched. As they fulfill higher and higher wants (meaning rarer or more expensive), they eventually come to a point where the goal is to attain greater ability to fulfill wants. Material wealth becomes the end in itself rather than any means to an end. This stage of the hierarchy of wants leaves people stuck within the hierarchy of needs, most often the esteem needs. The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” invokes the need for the esteem of one’s peers, or self-esteem based upon one’s status in relation to one’s peers. People stuck in the hierarchy of wants fail to recognize that wants are endless and that satisfaction can only come through fulfilling one’s needs.

With that background laid out, we can get to the real meat of the essay. I have little interest in the vices of of the materially wealthy, only in how they affect everyone else. Just like the people on the top of the socioeconomic stratum, those at the middle and bottom are also mired in a hierarchy of wants. In creating and sustaining an economy based on consumerism, we have created a veritable culture of want. This ailment of society is particularly chronic and systemic within the lower class, much to their detriment. The idea of competing with the Joneses is patently absurd when one has yet to fulfill the most basic needs.

Our era of mass communication has only compounded the problem. Whereas it should be – and at its best is – a system for educating more people and faster, it is also a medium for spreading the memes of want. Before television and the internet, the economic classes were vastly divided by both material wealth and wealth of information. The poor could not even conceive of the pleasures of the wealthy and in a way it was to their benefit. Climbing the hierarchy of needs is possible even in poverty – as the example of Bhutan indicates. Once exposed to the prospect of wealth, but without any sustainable means of acquiring it, the poor can become mired in the hierarchy of wants as well. An interesting side note is that the people of Bhutan were amongst the last to have television, as it was banned from the country until 1999. This is probably not unrelated to their ability to achieve happiness in conditions that we in the “first world” would consider poverty.

Through television and the internet (radio to a lesser extent since it lacks the crucial visual component), the middle and lower classes were delivered images of seeming wealth and prosperity that are based on the hierarchy of wants. False associations were made between material possessions, social status, and happiness – again a displacement of needs by wants.

In rare instances, a member of the lower class may see a near instant teleportation to the top of the socioeconomic stratum, foregoing the natural and healthy progression of climbing the hiearchy of needs, and taking a shortcut through the hierarchy of wants. As a result, many of the needs remain, and like the already wealthy, they remain trapped in the esteem needs. The hierarchy of wants continuously changes the status quo for esteem needs – bigger and more expensive houses, faster and fancier cars, ever gaudier jewelry.

Worse yet, these individuals become an exemplar for other members of the lower class, who identify with them on the basis of their once-shared socioeconomic status. As mentioned before, the sudden leap from the bottom to top is exceedingly rare, but as the mass media constantly inundates our society with accounts of the materially wealthy, their stories seem more prevalent than they actually are. In fact, the prospect of skyrocketing from bottom to top overnight is mostly a delusion, and it is in pursuit of this impossible goal that leads many individuals and groups towards self-destruction.

Although the terms “culture of want” and “hierarchy of want” have so far been used interchangeably, but it should be understood that the hierarchy is merely the foundation for the culture. The culture of want is a memetic cancer that has extended into every sector of human life. The best way to understand it is to examine the different instances where wants displace needs and continue to inhibit personal growth. As mentioned earlier, at the base of the hierarchy of needs are the physiological needs such as nourishment. The body needs certain substances – like proteins, vitamins, minerals – which can be fulfilled by eating the right kinds of foods. Originally human beings collected their food directly from the surrounding environment, but today we rely on a food industry.

The trouble, however, is that the food industry, in seeking to increase its wealth by expanding and speeding up production, has taken numerous shortcuts. If you recall the distinction I made earlier between wants and needs, it was that wants are dictated by the external environment. That is the case here, as the food industry – through massive advertising campaigns – tell people what they want. Fast food in particular satisfies our immediate hunger – a want impulse – but falls short in providing nutrition – a need. Worse than that, these products are often detrimental to our health. Those at the helm of the food industry decided that it was more important to fulfill their want for more wealth than to continue to supply us with what we need. This wants-over-needs initiative is amplified in poor communities, where fast food outlets are disproportionately allocated.

Another example of the culture of want phenomenon can be observed amongst lower class African-Americans. The causes behind the chronic poverty amongst African-Americans are numerous and beyond the scope of this essay, but I would like to highlight an important shift in how many perceive their plight and envision the way out of it. During the so-called Reconstruction era, in the aftermath of slavery, African-Americans – both newly emancipated, and the freemen of the north, conspired to elevate the status of what then was an African-American community of mutual plight and aspiration. Education was the cornerstone of a movement towards personal and community growth. One product of this movement was the foundation of institutions today known as “historically black colleges and universities” or HBCUs.

However, due to the prevailing blight of racism, which maintained a distinct separation between the races in terms of access to resources and influence, a glass ceiling was set that placed severe limitations on just how high most African-Americans could aspire. This barrier was not only physical and social, but emotional. It was not only that African-Americans observed and lived within very real limitations, but that they also internalized those limitations. These emotional limitations remained even after the physical and social limitations were no longer imposed by law.

Compounding upon this emotional limitation is the ideal of the “American Dream”, where anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough. Except that the American Dream was not inclusive of African-Americans, and completely ignores any concept of inequality. An added consequence to the rosy American Dream “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideology is that when one does work hard, but due to the very real social inequalities does NOT make it, it results in a psychological backlash in which the person blames him/herself for their inability. After all, they are told that it’s all a matter of “personal responsibility”. The idea becomes that if you didn’t make it, you just didn’t work hard enough, or to hear some tell it, you just weren’t “smart enough”.

Many African Americans, who as a group are disproportionately lower class, subscribe to the overall American standard of high-materialism and excess – the culture of want – in spite of the fact that they do not have the means to sustain such a lifestyle. Because education – once recognized by forward-thinking African-Americans as essential to personal growth – is so inadequate in many poor areas where African-Americans are the majority, it does not appear to offer a viable path towards success.

This is particularly relevant to young people in the lower class, regardless of ethnicity. Students who stay in school all the way through – and this is a particularly daunting challenge in poor communities – are not seeing opportunities that are much better than those of the people around them who didn’t finish. They see drug dealers, athletes, musicians, or even people who quit school and work hard at an honest job making money, more of it, and much sooner. And in a culture of want, money is the ultimate prize,  the ultimate measure of self worth. Why toil through school when there is no apparent guarantee that it will give you any greater advantage, and while the local drug dealers and big name rappers are getting what they want right now? Ideals such as self-actualization are not only obscured, but inconceivable.

Due to the quality of education in poor areas, students are not even given an idea of the possibilities outside the culture of want. They are given the standard subjects of reading, math, and science, but there are slim pickings when it comes to art, technology, and higher liberal arts. By contrast, public schools in high-income areas feature state of the art technology, up-to-date educational materials, and a greater spectrum of classes.

The result is always another generation of kids who are not only under-educated and unmotivated, but also disinterested in the school’s meager offerings. They see no way to connect the dots between an inadequate school and a successful life.

The fairytale lifestyles seen on the television and internet, especially when compared to the reality in their own neighborhoods, are simply more appealing than what school has to offer. Compound upon all of that a lack of mentorship, such as teachers working for a paycheck without any mental or emotional investment in the success of the children. At best they’ll fail to motivate and inspire, and at worse, they’ll add to the problem. They may even be the most recent products of the same system.

In poor communities, you often have a bunch of under-educated people with the wrong values and bad priorities, disillusioned with life, hopeless, and perhaps even angry. Material comforts – from clothing to technology to drugs – and status comfort appears to be a solution to one’s grievances.

The result is a culture where people spend beyond their means to compensate for feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness, and because they were never shown a viable alternative. But these same people, in spite of their financial, educational, and even spiritual poverty, still manage to contribute to the economy in a big way. Therefore it is not in the interests of those at the head of government or industry to promote the personal growth of those at the bottom of the stratum. Worse yet, they see it as being in their best interests to keep the poor spending beyond their means, as we witnessed during the subprime mortgage crisis. Poor and uneducated people continue to stimulate the economy without ever elevating their station. They remain trapped within the culture of want, at the expense of making any progress in climbing the hierarchy of needs.

Today I tentatively recant on my declaration. While I still have fears for Mr. Obama, he is actually the candidate that I support, for reasons not the least of which are endorsement by Dennis Kucinich, who had been my favorite previously but has since dropped out of the race. As he says in all of his rhetoric and lofty speeches (which in spite of my distaste for them I realize are somehow necessary in American politics), Obama really is the candidate who represents “change” and “new direction”.

That the primaries have been so close, and with Obama’s stunning Saturday sweep of Washington, Louisiana, and Nebraska, it got me thinking about whether an African-American president is more conceivable than I previously thought. Maybe what I said about this country “not being ready” back in May is more a reflection of my own isolated cynicism rather than the actual sentiments of people nationwide. Much to his credit, Obama has attempted to steer the public discourse away from his ethnicity, getting people to focus more on his merits as a candidate as they should.

Ironically, his overwhelming support from African-Americans, in how dramatically the vote breakdown differs from the overall national numbers, suggests that his ethnicity was at the heart of their decision. Of course I could be wrong, African-American voters by and large could have done extensive research into both candidates, and it could be just coincidence. Alas, forgive my cynicism for kicking in again here, as I don’t have that much faith in Americans in general to do that kind of research, regardless of ethnicity. The support for Clinton amongst women to me suggests the same kind of thing, except on the basis of gender instead of ethnicity. And that disappoints me.

Hypothetically speaking, if Obama were to win the nomination, and better still to win the election in November, I would be forced to re-evaluate my presumed understanding of race in America. Would his presidency suggest a progressive shift in the way Americans regard each other across ethnic lines? It seems to me that upon his election as president, we would be standing at the cusp of a dramatic change in race relations, and that the pendulum could swing in either direction. Specifically, if he were to win and execute his presidency with the same idealism and conviction that has marked his candidacy, he would stand to create a new African-American icon, one that would compete with the ignorant, violent, and/or lazy stereotype. But were he to be elected, and then the unthinkable were to happen – you know, I really don’t even want to say the word twice – then it could cause one of the greatest breeches in race relations this country has ever seen.

With cautious optimism and more than a little anxiety, I eagerly look forward to how this election will play out…

Or is it the inverse? That because you are paranoid, insecure, or at least just cautious about the actions or intentions of others, that you assume that feel the same way about you? I am – quite obviously – a cynic, and so perhaps because I don’t trust or anticipate people to have unsavory qualities, I feel like those sentiments are reflected right back at me. Whichever way it goes, I think this kind of thing is at the heart of the barriers to communication and interaction that are so powerful in this city. Certainly there are plenty of people that are genuinely untrustworthy, genuinely immoral, genuinely fucked up – but one would hope that it’s not the majority, or even a large number. Yet it seems as though most people in this city are fearful of mostly everyone else, any macho posturing notwithstanding. What’s strange is that while this area suffers under a lot of crime, it is not unique in that respect, and yet this paranoia-cynicism-insecurity complex is very much a regional (even local) phenomenon. Such bad energy in this place.