The First Black President

The commentary on the Obama inauguration has been focusing and repeating the fact that he is the first black president. It is amazing of course, when you consider that only 55 years ago, it took an division of paratroopers to allow a small number of black teenagers to attend a white high school in Little Rock.

I really have not been making a big deal about it. Partly I think it is because I always thought the first black president would be a Republican, named Powell or Watts or Steele. So there is a little jealously there.

But mostly I hope because I do believe in colorblindness. I hope that the next time a black man is elected president, no one will think much about it.

My hope is that skin color be reduced to a mere accident of birth. That it is a part of someone (the way my ethnicity is part of what makes me up). Yes, I fall short of that ideal all to often, but I can still try.

Headline of the Day

Obama Inaugurated, Ex-Klansman Collapses (HT: Instapundit).

I imagine Byrd, back in his KKK days 65 years or so ago, telling a friend "If a black man ever gets elected president it would kill me." As President Obama is only half black, Byrd collapsed but recovered.

This is only funny of course because Senator Byrd is OK.

Obama sort of loses a supporter

One of Ann Althouse's sons, an Obama supporter, has written a blog post about "how Obama lost me." This has lead to an argument among Professor Althouse's commenters as to WHY Jac Althouse Cohen has decided he "lost Obama" (though if you actually read his post, it is not really that Obama lost a supporter, but that the supporter lost the landslide he was expecting). And of course, some pro-Obama commenters are playing the race card.

My theory with Obama from the beginning is that he was the "liberal yuppie candidate", not the black candidate, not the left wing candidate. He was originally the candidate primarily of the white, liberal, urban well educated upper middle class. Until recently I lived in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago, on a block where there were $5M homes owned by hedge fund guys (mine was worth a lot less than $5M). I knew two other people who for certain were voting for McCain.

Obama was "one of us" in that he was well educated, wealthy enough, but not super wealthy, with the two nice kids and the appropriate disdain for the distant suburbs. Obama was the logical result of the changes in America's demography and economy, and especially the Bush years. The urban, liberal upper middle class thinks it is now their time. The spiritual forefathers of today's Obama supporters were the "best and the brightest" who backed JFK.

After JFK's assassination, those folks found themselves out of government. LBJ was from more of a traditional hardscrabble Democratic Party background as was Jimmy Carter. Clinton promised these folks an in, but in the end, Clinton was a moderate Republican. Nixon was from small town Republicanism, Ford deeply rural America and Reagan (despite his Hollywood background) was small town America. Bush 41 was in many ways the last gasp of the old GOP WASP establishment and his son is more in sympathy with the new evangelicals. No one has come from that urban liberal background.

So that is why I think Obama has become the new champion. He represents for the first time in almost 50 years that the urban, liberal, yuppie demographic has a chance at power.

Post Racialism

While I was never an Obama supporter, my hope for his campaign was that it would further along the cause of "post racialism." Face it -- race has been an albatross around America's neck since before the founding. Far too much is seen in the prism of race. And race has left America with a legacy of bitterness and anger with respect to 11 percent of our population.

Most major black politicians come to prominence through the traditional civil rights leadership. As such, for good or ill, they are too connected to the racial divide to really fight it, even when they run for office under the banner of black empowerment.

I hoped that Obama would transcend race (I have always seen him as the liberal yuppie candidate, not the black candidate) mostly because he did not have the usual path that most black leaders had. His father was not the descendant of southern slaves, but rather was born a subject of the British crown. His mother was white, and from a comfortable middle class background.

Obama lived for a while outside the US. When here, he lived in the least "white" state in the US and went to a somewhat exclusive school. So for good or ill, all the baggage, cultural and historical, positive and negative, that gets attached to the previous generations of black leaders did not get attached to him.

In some ways it was the same with Collin Powell. Powell's parents were Jamaican immigrants, not native US blacks. He went to West Point and was immersed in the military culture. Hence he was able to be himself, without reference to almost 400 years of the black experience in America.

That is what I really hope for Obama -- that he loses the presidency, not because he is half black, but because people decide he is not the one for the job (in the same way HRC lost the Democratic nomination, not because she is a woman but because people thought Obama was better). Yes there are lots of people who will not vote for him because he is black. But many others (white and black) will vote for him because he is.

Will Obama be that post racial transformational character? That is a lot to ask someone and probably very unfair, as he is trying to run for President and be himself. In light of the Wright fiasco, I am not sure we are there yet. But I think we are getting closer.

Some proof?

The daughter of the President of the United States gets married, the minister is black, and no one really notices! (Well, the Anchoress did and her reaction was the same as mine)

Oprah and Obama

I have been thinking some more about the duel between Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand. It seems somewhat comical in a way -- Winfrey is, after all, one of the top entertainment celebrities right now while Streisand hit her peak maybe 30 years ago. So in a way, it fits in with the themes of the Clinton and Obama campaigns. Clinton's campaign looks back to her husband's time in the White House while Obama looks forward. And to be truthful, do celebrity endorsements really mean all that much?

But there is something else here which is interesting, namely how race is not playing a part in this. Winfrey is black, yet she is enormously popular (she owns Chicago). Obama is black, yet he is really running as the liberal yuppie candidate.

While race is never too far removed in the US, maybe we are finally overcoming our obscene obsession with it.