Obama and the Possibility for White Male Transformation
Matthew Birkhold

I’ve now been a white man for almost thirty years.  Looking back over those years, I remember several moments where I’ve been forced to reflect on the role of race in America and how that’s made white people who we are.  Up until very recently I’ve felt like I pretty much had my people figured out.  However, the response of White people to Barack Obama however has forced me to rethink what I was sure I already knew.

Because my father has been a “Jesse Jackson is a pain in the ass” Republican since at least Carter, I was shocked to hear that he planned on voting for Obama.  Throughout my college and graduate school years, my father and I would argue endlessly about his support for civil rights measures based on whether they effected him personally.  My father is not unique.  His racial awkwardness is a national phenomenon deeply rooted in a common belief amongst white men that they have been victimized by black gains over the last fifty years.

This national phenomenon of racial awkwardness, which often shows up as racism, is rooted in many white people’s unwillingness to see black people as human beings.  Instead, many of us see black folks as mere things that take jobs from us and pose a threat to our chances of getting into the best schools.  This backwards of thinking is hundreds of years old.

Writing about the overthrow of Reconstruction, W.E.B. Du Bois argued that after slavery, because white people were scared to death of black political power and the threat that newly emancipated Africans posed to their jobs, poor and wealthy whites got together and formed the Ku Klux Klan in the interest of ending black political power and black access to jobs.  What scholars mistakenly call white privilege, Du Bois called “a psychological wage,” and argued that it stemmed from this coalition between poor and wealthy whites in the interests of maintaining white supremacy.  White people’s psychological wage has become as American as apple pie.

The Civil Rights movement, while not overtly aiming to eradicate the psychological wage of whites, inevitably would have to do so if blacks and whites were to become equal.  While I can only imagine how the first whites in Montgomery, Alabama felt on that first integrated bus ride, I can be pretty sure that they felt like their whole lives had changed.  The sense of importance that resulted from possessing white skin must have meant far less to them after experiencing black resistance to racism first hand.  After busing and the passage of several civil rights acts in the 1960s, white folks all over America began to share the sentiments of Montgomery whites.

Because many white people have only looked at black gains through the lens of what they were losing, huge resentments towards Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and any other groups of blacks resisting racism have developed in white communities.  For this reason, among others, I believed that white people would never vote for Barack Obama.  My father changed that.

About six weeks ago, my father told me that he liked Obama.  When I asked, “Why?” he replied, “I don’t know much about his politics, and I don’t give a damn.  All I know is that he is different from these damn zealots that have been in office for the last sixteen years who won’t support you, if on a checklist of forty-seven items, you disagree on two.”  At this point I realized that even comfortable Americans are tired of the direction the country is headed in.  My first thought was, “Wow, white people want change so bad that they willing to support a black man.  How the hell did that happen”?  Then I realized I was making it too simple.

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia was significant because he opened the door to the possibility of transformation for white people.  Obama clearly and couragesly confronted white racism when he said that the real culprits in white job losses were US corporate culture and Washington lobbyists, not black people.

Then, when he said, “to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding,” he showed white people he understands us, and more importantly, that he cares.  In a world where white people commonly think that any mention of race will get them called racist, a black man who empathizes with whites, yet calls us on our racism, provides white people with the opportunity to change.

Because many white people see the Civil Rights movement as only a loss for them, not a gain for the country, we resent Jesse and Al because, to us, they represent what we feel we’ve lost.  While we’re wrong for looking at civil rights leaders this way, its reality.  On the other hand, because Obama has completely detached himself from the civil rights establishment, he represents possibility.  We feel like civil rights leaders attack us while Obama empathizes with us.

Obama did the most important thing an educator can do to change minds, he met people where they are, offered a critique of that place, and then gave them a way to move forward.  He brilliantly played to white people’s beloved notion of racial progress when he said that Rev Wright’s mistake was not that he talked about race, but that he talked about race and the nation as if they were unchanging and static.  Then he brought us together when he said that both white resentment towards nonwhites for job competition and growing black resentment toward immigrants for the same reason were backwards.  He moved us forward when he said, that “the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.”

While offering a vastly different solution, Obama’s analysis of the problem is virtually the same as that of the Communist Party USA’s in the 1920s.  In some ways Du Bois agreed with that analysis but added that whites were so afraid of being declassed by African Americans we were willing to lynch them.  If the millions of whites who share my father’s position on civil rights also share how tired he is of the direction the country is heading, Obama’s understanding of race may be what gets him elected.  This is not because white people want to talk about race but because Obama’s speech has shown us that he is a black men who understands us and provides a new way to talk about our problems.

Matt Birkhold is a Brooklyn based independent scholar, educator, and writer.  His work appears weekly at NewsOne.com. He is founder of Political Education Outreach Collective and can be reached at birkhold (at) gmail (dot) com. 

Meat Factory Explodes

An Arkansas meatpacking plant exploded on Sunday, destroying the factory and forcing nearly 200 people living nearby to evacuate their homes. What do you think?

Louis Dahlkemper,
Airline Pilot
“It’s nice to hear about a backwoods explosion that doesn’t have anything to do with meth.”

Meridith Hume,
Sociology Professor
“This is really frightening, but mostly because it means I might be able to project my thoughts into reality.”

Timothy Rudgers,
Receptionist
“If Upton Sinclair were alive today, he’d be running into the street for free meat just like the rest of us.”

Today’s photo of the day shows Kim Kardashian at the grocery store. Is it me or has the paparazzi gone too far?

Today’s video of the day shows Hillary Clinton, as she gets caught in a lie about her trip to Bosnia. Contrary to her version, which is filled with stories of ducking sniper fire, this video shows a very ordinary public relations tour. Is this the foreign policy experience about which Hillary keeps bragging?

Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Marc,

It was a pleasure hanging out on television with you yesterday. Although you were in Philly and I was here in New Orleans, I can’t think of anyone I would have rather discussed Barack’s speech with than you.

My favorite part was the dramatic change in your attitude between our morning and afternoon appearances. In the morning you were your normal Obama-bashing, but brilliant self. You had nothing but criticism and doubt about his willingness and ability to speak about race.  By the afternoon you were giving the brother a standing ovation for his far-reaching address.  Just like the month of March, you came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.

Obama’s speech was so complex that I have had a hard time processing it all in the past 24 hours.  I think what mattered most to me is that Barack made the implicit and radical argument that black people are human. Of course, we already know that we are fully human: good, bad, hopeful, angry, brilliant, stupid, capable, pitiful, loving, hateful, all of it. But we rarely see a member of our government so beautifully articulate our humanity. It moved me.

I don’t know if the speech will help Barack regain his momentum. Watching the news and reading the web still have not given me a clear sense of how white America received his words. No matter what happens in the election, Obama’s speech was a great act of patriotism.

So, Marc, I must ask: having now sipped a little of the Barack O-Kool-Aid and tasting how sweet it is, can Obama count on your support in the PA primaries next month?

Melissa

Marc Lamont Hill

Melissa,

As much as I hate to admit it, you are right. At least partially.

I openly confess that, after Tuesday’s speech, I was momentarily swept up in Obama-rama. As I said to you publicly, I assumed that Obama would follow traditional political crisis-relief strategy by repudiating Jeremiah Wright, accepting no direct responsibility (but expressing regret that others were offended), and insisting that we move on to more important matters.

At the start of the speech, Obama seemed to be following that script by making unsettling remarks about “stalwart allies like Israel,” “the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam,” and the need for patriarchal family structures. But once he got his perfunctory centrist kowtowing out of the way, Obama delivered one of the most complex, sophisticated, and powerful speeches in recent political history.

Instead of merely assuaging white racial anxieties, Obama’s words forced the entire nation to come to terms with its demons. Although he unequivocally denounced Jeremiah Wright’s remarks, Obama refused to reduce him (or his own white grandmother) to a racist caricature. Also, through his evenhanded analysis of both structural inequality and individual responsibility, Obama raised the stakes for racial discourse in American politics.

So yes, I was definitely cheering for Obama on Tuesday. To be honest, I secretly root for him every time he wins a state or scores a political victory over Clinton or McCain. Still, despite my sentimental attachment to the brother, I have not drunk the Kool-Aid.

To drink the Kool-Aid is to believe that Obama gave that speech out of moral exigency rather than political desperation. After all, Obama had painted himself into a corner by running a “race neutral” campaign that implicitly promised not to make whites uncomfortable about things like white skin privilege or systemic racism. Once Wright’s comments became public, Obama was forced to defend his own position. Although his response was far more principled and sincere than I could have imagined, I doubt that he would have made it if it weren’t his best political option. More significantly, I do not believe that he would compromise his own personal ambition in order to realize the grand racial vision that he articulated on Tuesday. So, while I give him mad props for his courageous address, I’m still not a supporter.

That said, I still haven’t decided how I’m going to vote in next month’s Pennsylvania primary. My gut tells me to sit the election out and vote for Nader in November. But as we’ve learned from this controversy, anything can happen in a month.

Marc