Chris Hitch on Barama

Chris Hitch and I agree on one thing and that is: Hoes is trippin'. Here is his chock full of reality checks column in full. [Moxie comments in bold.]

Identity Crisis
There's something pathetic and embarrassing about our obsession with Barack Obama's race.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, at 12:04 PM ET


To put it squarely and bluntly, is it because he is or is it because he isn't? To phrase it another way, is it because of what he says or what he doesn't say? Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool. [Brillantly put.] He sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters—most especially the white ones [ESPECIALLY the white ones]—sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive. [I'd say he's a flip flopper like the rest of 'em.] Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, [that is I] who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been "our first black president."[Now that is just plain wrong. And funny. Getting blowjobs in office should not make you one with the Black peoples.]

Or perhaps not. Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be "black," anyway? Is it for this that we fought so hard to get over Plessy v. Ferguson? Would we accept, if Obama's mother had also been Jewish, that he would therefore be the first Jewish president? [HELLO. Race is a social construct that I can't live without.]The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a "breakthrough," the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought. [Second that.]

One can't exactly say that Sen. Obama himself panders to questions of skin color. One of the best chapters of his charming autobiography describes the moment when his black Republican opponent in the Illinois Senate race—Alan Keyes—accused him of possessing insufficient negritude because he wasn't the descendant of slaves! [Alan Keyes? Nigga, please.]Obama's decision to be light-hearted—and perhaps light-skinned[He sorta is. He would have been a house negro]—about this was a milestone in itself. But are we not in danger of emulating Keyes' insane mistake every time we bang on about the senator's pigmentation? If you wanted a "black" president or vice president so much, you could long ago have turned out en masse for Angela Davis—also the first woman to be on a national ticket—or for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. So, why didn't you? Could it have been the politics?[HELLO. HELLO. Like Shelby Steele said: the amount of progressive/liberal white guilt that is perpetuating Barama's success is overwhelming. And what about when Collin Powell was rumored to be running???? Isn't Barama simply the Democratic version of Powell?]

Last week happened to be the week that the nation of Kenya—birthplace of Obama's father—was convulsed by a political war that contained ghastly overtones of violent and sadistic tribalism. It would sound as absurd to a Kenyan to hear praise for a black candidate as it would sound to most of my European readers to hear a recommendation of a "great white hope." A white visitor to Kenya might not be able to tell a Kikuyu from a Luo at a glance, but a Kenyan would have no such difficulty. The time is pretty much past, in our country, when a Polish-American would not vote for a candidate with a German name or when Sharks and Jets were at daggers drawn, but this is all because (to borrow from Ernest Renan's definition of a nation) people agreed to forget a lot of things as well as to remember a number of things. So, which are we doing presently? [THE CALLING OUT OF HOES THAT ARE TRIPPIN' HAS OCCURED. RIGHT HERE.]

Sen. Obama is a congregant of a church in Chicago called Trinity United Church of Christ. I recommend that you take a brisk tour of its Web site. Run by the sort of character that the press often guardedly describes as "flamboyant"—a man calling himself the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.—this bizarre outfit describes itself as "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian" and speaks of "a chosen people" whose nature we are allowed to assume is "Afrocentric." Trinity United sells creationist books and its home page includes a graphic link to a thing called Goodsearch—the name is surmounted with a halo in its logo—which announces cheerily that "Every time you search or shop online! Our Church earns money." Much or most of what Trinity United says is harmless and boring, rather like Gov. Mike Huckabee's idiotic belief that his own success in Iowa is comparable to the "miracle" of the loaves and fishes, and the site offers a volume called Bad Girls of the Bible: Exploring Women of Questionable Virtue, which I have added to my cart, but nobody who wants to be taken seriously can possibly be associated with such a substandard and shade-oriented place. [nothing wrong with being "shade-oriented", but this church is a sham. Barama lost 50 cool points just for being a member.]

All this easy talk about being a "uniter" and not a "divider" is piffle if people are talking out of both sides of their mouths. [Which Barama is so doing.]I have been droning on for months about how Mitt Romney needs to answer questions about the flat-out racist background of his own church, and about how Huckabee has shown in public that he does not even understand the first thing about a theory—the crucial theory of evolution by natural selection—in which he claims not to believe. Many Democrats are with me on this, but they go completely quiet when Sen. Obama chooses to give his allegiance to a crackpot church with a decidedly ethnic character. [nothing wrong with that, again. And in the end, he can belong to any church he wants to, but he still loses cool points. Plus: is this church pro-gay, pro-choice, pro-woman?]

The unspoken agreement to concede the black community to the sway of the pulpit is itself a form of racist condescension. [I can't wait for all the church visits by politicans. It's like being at the fucking Improv.]The sickly canonization [<--- now that is some wordsmithing right there] of Martin Luther King Jr. has led to a crude rewriting of history that obliterates the great black and white secularists—Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther—who actually organized the March on Washington.[King is awesome, but indeed overrated.]It has also allowed a free pass to any demagogue who can manage to get the word reverend in front of his name. The white voters who subconsciously make the allowance that black folks sure love to hear their preachers are not only patronizing their black brothers and sisters but also helping to empower white ministers or deacons who make the same pitch, from Jimmy Carter to Mike Huckabee. The Iowa caucuses of 2008 were not the end of our long national nightmare about race, but another stage in our protracted national nightmare of piety, "uplift," and deceptive optimistic windbaggery. [and isn't all optimism windbaggery? and what the fuck is "uplift" and "change" anyway? shit ain't changed and shit won't change. it's called game-cutting. the word every candidate should be looking for is game-cutting.]

Hitchens does a great job of beginning to articulate (so eloquently) my frustration with Barama. Obviously, his race is a big deal and anyone who says it isn't is full of shit. In a country where race matters A WHOLE LOT, the regressive color-blind view that whites take on certain things is laughable. People keep saying Barama can make history. So can Hillary, so let's all simmer on that point. Barama at times downplays his racial identity, then after Iowa, the song was "Barama proved that white people will vote for a BLACK candidate". Really? Well, if we are so color-blind, why wouldn't they?

Barama is playing the race card when he knows it will win the game. White people wouldn't vote for a candidate that was "in yo face sucka" about his/her race. Men (including Barama - he pees standing up doesn't he? Being a racial/ethnic minority doesn't exclude you from being a sexist bastard) call Hillary out anytime the concept of her having a vagina comes up, so obviously she can't get away with playing the gender card like he can get away with playing the race card. Maybe people just don't like Hillary (she did vote for the war). Fine. But the hatred and dislike that people have for her is rooted - subconsciously even - in misogynistic, patriarchal mindsets. Just ask the "Iron My Shirt" guys. Really. When was the last time someone hung a noose outside a Barama event?

When it comes down to it, the white support of Barama is almost condescending. Remember, just a few months ago, Black people were all for Hillary. Who the fuck is this new guy with the funny name? And Barama knew he would have to sell up his Blackness, just like Hillary thought it was a good idea to sell herself to the American vajority. The reality is we have gotten better at HIDING our racism more than we have on hiding our hatred of women in this country. Just look at how there has been a shitload coverage about a "low-cut" shirt Hillary wore one day and most recently how her tearing up at a fucking event makes her look more human, or is it more weak? WHAT THE FUCK DO WE WANT FROM HER? TELL ME, PLEASE. If any male candidate had did that, it wouldn't even register on the fucking news map! C'MON PEOPLE.

Don't get me started on how an attractive male candidate can rely on his looks (ask JFK and his brother), yet women couldn't do the same thing.

And as a woman of color (women of color, by the way, got the right to vote AFTER Black men), the question I have to ask over and over and over again is which is worse to the white majority: an uppity nigger or an uppity bitch living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?