Obama speaks of how he will change American identity
Mark K. writes:
What a horrible characterization by a politician of American foreign policy. Rice is bad enough in her musings abroad. This statement by Obama is absolutely insane!
“I think,” he mused to New York Times reporter James Traub, “that if I am the face of American foreign policy and American power … if you can tell people ‘We have a president in the White House who still has a grandmother living in a hut on the shores of Lake Victoria and has a sister who’s half-Indonesian, married to a Chinese-Canadian,’ then they’re going to think that he may have a better sense of what’s going on in our lives and in our country. And they’d be right.”
According to Obama, the face of American foreign policy is predicated on racial multiplicity. In essence he says, the U.S. will present a face to the world based on his relatives living in other parts of the world in a mixed racial situation. That is extending his “face” beyond America and mirrors his church’s “commitment to Africa.” No wonder he said in an earlier interview that in “ethics and morality he is a universalist.”
Whereas Rice emphasizes her racial past as political impetus, Obama emphasizes his racial (non-American) present as justification to the world.
As you have written, liberalism is the destruction of the American identity!
Mark K. continues:
I am really getting the sense that Obama’s candidacy is about universalism in many guises. As he admitted to being a universalist, he reflects this in so many ways:
1. The messianic thrust of his rhetoric.
2. The political and personal embodiment of a multi-racial identity.
This candidacy is more than just about politics—it is about myth, legend, face, embodiment, universalism—and in that respect it is way more dangerous than anybody else’s candidacy. This is about reconstructing the face of American politics in a psychologically radical way. While it embodies elements of the black race, it has gone beyond that to reflect liberal multiculturalism and multiracialism. And that is why it may have a “transcendent” appeal to others. Michelle Obama may emphasize the black aspect of this candidacy, but it appears to me Obama has moved beyond that to incorporate the sense of blackness within a universal persona.
There is thus a two-fold thrust to Obama’s candidacy:
1. His being a black man, BUT
2. How he has folded his sense of blackness into a universal persona.
The way I see him as a political face and body (since he used the word “face” himself) is as a table at which all the races are seated together. This is a type of universalism. So his grandmother in Africa is there. His sister married to a Chinese-Canadian is sitting at this table. And we are all invited to sit down at this table. This defines his face and structures his body.
His wife is seated there and she emphasizes the black presence at this table. The white race in essence is ONE of MANY; it has a seat at the table BUT so does every other race. This is a sense of egalitarianism—everyone has a seat in equal proportion. This in fact is universalism. Each seat may emphasize its attributes and characteristics but none define the table wholly. Obama is the table we will all sit at.
The sense of blackness is incorporated into a higher unity. This is a most interesting candidacy in its rhetoric and implications! I wonder to what extent other Americans, mostly the young, will invest themselves in this vision. This is the modern myth of universalism—all the races and cultures seated at a common table. Which is why a New-Ager and Black such as Oprah Winfrey can be so enthusiastic about his candidacy. I think I may have previously been wrong to look at just the black aspect of it.
Mark K. continues:
And now I can juxtapose two men and two candidacies—Romney and Obama. In an earlier post, I mentioned how I would have no problem voting for Romney because I found Mormonism to be so American in its social and familial life.
Now I consider Obama’s “universalism”—the non-particular, worldly extension of his multi-racial identity and framework.
Romney in my mind is coming across as so very particularly American in time and space and Obama in contradistinction talking about his universality (making the American identity a worldly identity). Two men and two different “faces” of identity.
Obama I think will capture the youth vote not only because he is younger but also today’s youth will resonate with his “biodiversity.” Ironically his wife may give away the show if she harps too strongly on the black aspect of it.
JS writes:
Regarding your exchange with Mark K about Obama. I think it often useful to think on a visceral level about these matters. Just as racial profiling is an concept invented to demonize normal rational police work, racism is a concept invented to demonize man’s (usually well-founded) instinctive fear of the “Other.” Mankind instinctively fears and looks upon as potential enemies those who do not look, speak, behave as we do. On an instinctive level, we fear that these strangers might want to take our land, goods, women or even our lives. Today’s prevailing liberal insanity turns rational instinctive behavior upside down (but only for whites) and expects the West to embrace with open arms rapacious third world invaders.
Obama looks like one of those third world invaders; he is potentially an enemy. It would take endless hours of high-minded philosophical debate for conservatives rationally to reach the same conclusion that our gut tells us instantly.
Mark K. writes:
JS write, “It often useful to think on a visceral level” about this matter. I thought so as well in the past until I started encountering Obama’s “universalism”—that it transcended race by attempting to incorporate all races into one “body.” So Obama strikes me as more subtle in his message and role—his wife is the one who attempts to encapsulate it strictly in racial terms. I’m not denying that race does not play a part in his candidacy but that it is couched in more subtle terms by him and some of his supporters. What will attract people to him is the concept that he can embody both personally and politically a specific race and all races at the same time. It’s a subtle form of universalism that sucks in the past (racial history) and projects a universal multiracial politics.
To engage Obama on a visceral level is to make this into a purely racial fight and that could be a losing proposition. Obama will rise above the fray by claiming the argument is not about race from his standpoint so why is the conservative making it into a racial issue? Of course it is about race on one level but he encapsulates race into a more sweeping movement—that of universalism.
Lawrence has indicated that it is to our benefit to understand what drives the other person. Universalism as the impetus behind Obama’s rhetoric is a powerful political stimulant that will engross, enchant and draw in others. They will become like Ulysses’ sailors who have to sail past the singing of the Sirens. Universalism always seems innocuous (based on drawing people together in hope), but is quite a powerful muscle behind any ideology.
LA replies:
Mark K., you have an interesting mind!
Mark K. replies:
What I’m thinking may happen, Lawrence, is that the liberal media is anticipating a groundswell of support for Obama. After Iowa, this was supposed to happen in New Hampshire but was derailed by Hillary Clinton. Once Obama starts winning a few primaries, this universalistic aspect of his rhetoric and campaign may be elevated by the media into a racially-transcending phenomenon such that the question will be posed to the rest of America, “Why not join in—is there any reason not to?” Think of the benefits of a politically universal movement that encompasses everyone and overcomes the divisions, the fragmentation, the alienation, our history and past, etc.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 11, 2008 10:45 AM | Send