March 23, 2007 @ 5:33 pm

Is Barack Black Enough? That's Not The Point.

Allison Harvey

The 2008 presidential candidate's background has become a media-manufactured obstacle.

Over the past few months, one question has loomed over Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's head: "Is he black enough?" Any query attributing to Obama's blackness in many ways parallels to the proposition that Bill Clinton is America's closest thing to having a black president. Even if the public doesn't necessarily know what this question means, common sense still makes them aware of its implications. The persistence to which Obama's blackness has been questioned, so early in the 2008 presidential campaign, reflects the white media's relentless interest to define blackness, as much as it unveils an underlying political agenda. Those who consider themselves spokespeople for the black community have maintained a dignified front by neglecting to provide the media with any type of answer. However, as people of color see through this question's racially divisive nature, media correspondents continue to breathe air into the topic. Nobody is supposed to answer the question, "Is Barack black enough?" with any definitive answer. This question is not really a question at all, but an accusation to which the public is expected to provide a counter question; "Why wouldn't he be black enough?" The counter question contains the meat of the red herring, playing right into the media's hands, and allowing them to present the black community with an already compiled list of insulting, though unsurprising responses. Why isn't Barack Obama black enough? To the socially conscious, this sounds like an idiotic question because it is. In fact, the question is so absurd it's impossible to approach without considering who is asking it in the first place. As much as the press has feigned the topic's all-inclusive importance, it remains a discussion isolated to whites in the media. Most Caucasian news correspondents relate to Obama as a charismatic, charming and rousing speaker who pronounces his t's and d's with an effortless grace and panache they don't think they've witnessed since the heyday of Sidney Poitier. Anybody wondering why Obama isn't black enough to quench the media's desire to define his blackness doesn't need to dig too deep before finding the serious insinuations of, say, a Joe Biden, who described Obama as being the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Biden's comment actually helped put the political double speak into perspective, as it shed a light on the message political pundits like Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly, regardless of their personal perspectives, have long been hinting towards: The National Interpretation of Blackness. Statements such as these only justify racial stereotyping that keeps America's cultural tensions alive and well. While the topic of Obama's blackness is covered on every news channel from MSNBC to CNN, Americans still owe it to the assurance of their own integrity to ask what being black, or white, or any race for that matter, has to do with being the President of the United States? At some point, Americans are going to have to look beyond the myopia that allows racial generalizations to become fodder for political news stories. Is Barack black enough? Maybe? There's no right answer. When it comes to race, culture, and identity, everybody's got an opinion and we all think ours is more justified than the next. When posing the question of racial identity against a presidential candidacy, it reaches a point where distinguishing who is right from who is wrong is simply no longer relevant. Perhaps Obama isn't black enough for CNN, and maybe he's too black for CBS Evening News. This may appear to be an inadequate conclusion to the politically correct, but focusing on the mitigating factors around an individual's ethnic identification misses the point. The question America should he asking has nothing to do with who is a black enough candidate to be the first black president of the United States of America. The real question for 2008 is this: Does Barack Obama have the chops to stand up as a competent Commander-in-Chief? This will be the U.S.'s most important election in nearly two decades, and we American citizens owe it to ourselves to concentrate on finding an answer without any distractions.

Article tags: Barack, Black, Enough, That's, Not, Point 

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