Obama and the Biracial Factor by Jolivette Andrew J

Author:Jolivette, Andrew J [Jolivette, Andrew J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447301004
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Published: 2012-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

Obama can be black and Irish to Irish people and Irish Americans precisely because he means different things to different people in racial terms. He embodies the racial expectations and understandings of heretofore different and separate racial groups. He can change his emphasis from black President to local Irish guy sipping a pint as it suits him and as the situation will allow. Some people would say that this is inauthentic or that Obama is using his situational ethnicity (Okamura, 1981) in order to gain strategic ethnic advantage. The argument that he is accurately black and is passing as white or that he isn’t black enough (Dickerson, 2007) or that he is accurately mixed race (DaCosta, 2008) or even that there is “no one as Irish as Barack Obama” belie this understanding. He is accurately and real-ly all of these things at once. He is also culturally Hawai’ian and ultimately cosmopolitan (as a Harvard educated elite) (Sugrue, 2010). He is all of these and yet this does not make him dishonest in his representation of his racial self. He is like millions of other mixed race or multiracial people. He can have multiple identities and he can be strategically ethnic to further his political goals (as he joked that he could have done, in being Irish as a senator from Chicago).

Obama has “cognitive flexibility” which is, “the ability to tolerate and to manage increased levels of complexity and differentiation …the flexibility of constructs, relational competence and adaptability are potentially the skills of living with difference and in the margins” (Kich, 1996, p. 275). This doesn’t make Barack Obama a racial imposter, devious or inauthentic, but comfortable in multiple settings, with ambiguity and with people of all kinds, because he has fallen between social categories and developed the skill to dwell in hybrid spaces. In turn, he projects this onto others and they feel comfortable with him because he represents different things to them.

This is both Obama’s strength and perhaps a potential weakness as a harbinger of a change in the meaning of race in the U.S. When Obama became President, people thought that racial change was complete and that we had moved into a post-racial society. This has allowed people to turn away from the differential effects of the recession on racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. and hides much of the evidence to the contrary that race, and particularly class, still strongly divide the U.S. nation. Second, many thought that the symbolic election of Obama could bring hope and social change because he was a racial bridge (being both black and white) to heal racial tensions in the U.S., and yet, many also distrust him as not really black or white and feel that he has betrayed one or both of his backgrounds in his political achievement. It is precisely because people can’t pin down his true racial identity, that they feel he is not to be trusted. Finally, by arguing endlessly over whether Barack Obama is black, but acceptable

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.