If you’re a brown, black, diasporic, immigrant, mixed-race, or otherwise socially and culturally hybrid, globalization-era American, it looks like someone is seriously getting into the 2008 presidential race who has more in common with you, identity-wise, than any previous presidential candidate. This is going to be interesting!
Yeah, that’s the standard refrain I keep hearing from my well-intentioned Dem friends. But, it’s undeniable that Obama has that special charismatic, inspirational “it” factor that the other major candidates lack. I think those magnetic qualities are perhaps the most important thing to voters, especially at a time when we feel so betrayed by our leaders.
As for ability to handle foreign policy and national security, all presidents are briefed on a daily basis by people much more knowledgeable than them about these issues. I want the decision-maker to be smart at analyzing the facts presented and understanding the world. Obama has exhibited those qualities. I’m no foreign policy expert, but just as a child of immigrants who traveled to India frequently as a child on trips to visit family, I often feel that I (like most of the people on this board) probably have a better understanding of other cultures and the world than the people involved in making the decision to invade Iraq, and then attempting to impose American-style democracy in the Middle East. Granted, that’s not saying much, but still, a great President doesn’t have to have been chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in Congress for decades.
On Gore, to his credit, he did win the election in 2000 (even without the charisma). But Gore had his shot. He needs to keep doing what he’s good at — championing environmental education and reforms.
I think you meant ‘decider’.
Dude, if “hottie-factor” is an issue then why is everyone ignoring Edwards?
You’ll be made fun of for saying you communicate to Jimmy Hoffa through a rotten pinneapple as well. whats your point?
Based on what? Affluence? I CANNOT think of any other reason.
barack hussein obama is technically an apostate 🙂 (i.e., his father was a muslim, ergo, he is a muslim)
whats your point? – HMF
I can’t preach to the hidebound. My point’s clear to those who have their minds open and who are not beholden to ” we the people of color ” mentality.
Many of us here tried to answer the question in all honesty, you seem to be ignoring that!
Terrible, you’re against the “we the people of color” mentality, but you’re hanging out on a site called Sepia Mutiny, one on which the password is brown.
Now, I know the internet is tiny, and there are hardly any other pages for you to while away your time on.
But, really, what are you doing here? What are you looking for among a self-selected society of the “hidebound”? It’s a bit like proclaiming abstinence on the set of a porno-film (which I’ve done and which, I’ll tell you, is unbelievably frustrating: they just wouldn’t listen).
Wow, Terrible, can you please talk about what “White” culture means?
Sure it wasn’t your abstinence that was causing your frustration ?
Actually, if your preaching abstinence, the folks on the porno set would make appropriate targets…albeit a hard ones.
Socialisation. Acculturation. Environment one grew up in. Friends circle. Tastes. There could be MANY reasons.
Hard to preach to the “porn again” crowd…they’ve already experienced the “rapture”
do you think the fact that he is mixed-race will detract votes from a substansial portion of the minority community?
With a name like Barack Hussein Obama he seems to be destined to solve the intractable arab-israeli problem:
Barack as in Ehud Barak the recent Israeli Prime Minister (wonder why no one mentions this)
Hussein as in the recently hanged Saddam Hussein, secular nationalistic arab hero and enemy of Israel
Obama as (almost) in Osama bin Laden, iconic leader of the fundamentalist muslim jihad against the West (aka crusaders and jews)
Seriously, this is not the time in history to shoot for the first black or the first woman president just to begin evening the score against white males. I recommend Rudy Guiliani for Republican candidate in 2008, to run for the Presidency against Al Gore. Could happen. If Rudy wins (which would be my bet) he would become the first italian-american president, and the second nominally catholic one. That would be a score against anglo domination too.
Part of Obama’s attraction is his christian beliefs. Here’s someone whose father and stepfather were both muslims and who is now a christian. That must warm the heart of many an evangelical. Hillary too is playing up her protestant christian faith. Guiliani as a liberal/freethinking catholic would be a breath of fresh air.
cc said, “He has just as much experience as RFK did when he was considering a run. JFK, a bit more.” What are they teaching in PoliSci these days? In 1960, the country didn’t think it was a great idea that JFK’s barely 35 year old brother should be AG, but the new elected President quipped, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Bobby getting a little experience before he goes out to practice law.” When JFK was asked by a famous reporter what he had done (in a governmental sense) for the women of American, he replied, “Well Mrs. Gray, I’m sure I haven’t done enough.” Until you make friends and enemies for what you do, not for what you are, you haven’t done enough in politics. There’s a great book, Being There, by Jerzy Kozinski. The 1980 movie starred Peter Sellers in his last role. It was as prescient of the current situation as that other Peter Sellers’ film, Dr. Strangelove. My take on Obama: while he’s obviously of particular interest, most of the candidates for president haven’t made much sense. Certainly he’s better than the current inhabitant of the White House. In order to get to that level in politics requires extreme compromise of any ethics and honesty. I know whereof I speak. But that could be true in many professions–it is just that politics affects so many more people potentially. Only the most sociopathic make it that high. speaking of which… Back to RFK. Aside from growing up in a family that was determined to put at least one member in the White House by 1960, RFK, by the time he ran for president, had served as counsel during the 1950s in a senate sub-committee on organized crime. He did it aggressively enough to make permanent and mortal enemies of J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, and much of the criminal underworld, not to mention ostensibly “legitimate” upper-world pols. Once JFK won the presidency, RFK promptly and tactlessly dropped all Mafia connections. Giancana, Roselli and et. al: They no happy. Three years as Attorney General, which included the turbulence of the Civil Rights movement, and forestalling nuclear war. Whatever one may have thought of RFK, experience he did have by the time he ran.
All in all, I think Obama, even with scarcely any credentials, is still a better choice that W. After all, the nation is sick and needs a doctor. And the Hippocratic oath states, first, do no harm.
Hmmm, Krishna and Rama were black-skinned as in shyama sundara (black and beautiful). As was Veda Vyasa the architect of hinduism as we know it, who arranged the Vedas and wrote the 18 Puranas including the Mahabharata (of which the ‘hindu bible’ the Bhagavad Gita is a part).
Yes in America blacks are those who look like they have some african in them, even someone as light as Colin Powell. But, objectively speaking, black skin color isnt only limited to Africans. It is also common in South Asia, some Pacific Islands, Australia etc. So the american use of the word black as a racial classification is nonsensical. Ditto for white, since many if not most east asians are “white” skinned.
WhiteGuy,
On one hand you claim americans are color & gender blind and vote based on qualification. You also claim “common values of citizenship” are not good enough to hold a country. In the same breath you accuse people here of voting based purely on race/color. Explain the double(triple ?) standards.
P.S: I read yesterdays thread after it was closed. It was funny to see a Gandhian influenced White supremacist telling brown folks on MLKs birthday “Be the man”
ooookay. And what about Lincoln? Seems to me, the two are comparable as far as “prior experience” is concerned.
By ‘the two’, I meant Lincoln and Obama.
– this comment is somewhat similar to
though it comes from two different ends of the spectrum. However, I notice only the second person gets picked.
Also, the comment
isn’t speaking for me or all desis.
Bye.
Just read Obama’s autobiography. He is the son of an educated immigrant who attended university in the US. He is us.
Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from my Father, written shortly after he served as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review.
His Kenyan father abandoned him and his white american mother when he was still a baby, and went off to Harvard leaving them in Hawaii. He was not an immigrant since he went back to Kenya for good.
That reminds me of another very prominent and very adored american who was also abandoned by his foreign student father: Steve Jobs of Apple, the Leonardo Da Vinci of american technology, who was hogging the limelight just last week. His biological father was arab.
Interestingly, Leonardo Da Vinci, the genius par excellence of the Renaissance, was also part-arab.
122,
i fail to see any correlation.
so you are?
Bye
brimful —
I don’t think the road to the WH for Democrats goes through the South anymore — it’s by thinking that it does that Democrats have fallen short, because they simply can’t win in the deep South no matter who they nominate. Rather, the key for Democrats is, um, well, the Midwest. 😉
Doordarshan —
He also would be the first one in awhile who is truly, certifiably insane.
I’ll vote or not vote for Obama based on what his views are in a number of different areas. It has nothing to do with his skin color, or his ethnicity. If somehow these things play a part and make him a more “appealing” candidate to me, then fine, but it makes sense for me to vote based on the merits of his qualifications.
Sad the amount of beating up that non-desis get on this site. Even a little is unacceptable. We sepias shouldn’t get a free pass.
i am joining obama’s campaign. this man has my heart AND time. obama obama obama 2008!
There were multiple attempts to get him to explain/expand on the statement, but he declined. Again: what exactly does “white” culture mean? What specific experiences unite the great mass of “white” people?
Without explaining that, the second statement comes down to: “just don’t associate me with ‘the blacks'”. Which, yes, is going to be a problem when the subject of the post is “DUDE OBAMA ROCKS, YEAH!”
We of the TV generation have made the inevitable error of choosing our leaders based on sound bites and their TVgenic personalities rather than their actions and performance. But that’s the nature of television. It compresses and oversimplifies.
The bright minds that populate this site are not of the TV generation but the Internet generation, and the internet is such a handy tool for researching and digging the facts on a candidate, by which I mean his voting record in the senate and his actual stance, not purported beliefs, in issues. So why is this Internet generation so hung up on this guy’s “it” factor. I haven’t read anything factual yet about Obama in this thread.
Ultimately the election will still be decided in TV land, because people would rather watch than read, but in this day and age of instant research, it will be very sad if Obama wins only because his “common man story” succeeds in catching a hundred million voters on the rebound from the present administration and there is no informational counterbalance provided by the Internet generation.
I am sorry that it appeared this way. In no way am I endorsing or cheering for a damn thing. I am a working journalist and for the purposes of a public site I have no political affiliation. My point is that the presence in the presidential campaign of a person who is at once mixed race, second gen immigrant, person of color, only half American origin, and middle class/highly educated, with a very strong chance of going far in the campaign, should make for some interesting new developments that will be relevant to the South Asian community. What developments, and how, and with what consequences, is something that the coming months will show. Feel free to agree or disagree, and if you disagree, I don’t respect you any less for it.
“ooookay. And what about Lincoln? Seems to me, the two are comparable as far as “prior experience” is concerned.”
After the Civil War it was “the Untied States IS…” A fundamental change had occurred in the sense of American identity during those years. In 1866, many concurred, it was as if they were living in a different country than it was six years earlier. I do think something like that is happening now, though without war on this turf. Obama is what he is, an original, and that fires many peoples’ imagination. He doesn’t need comparison with any other candidates of any other time or place.
But should I be pressed to compare: more appropo might be a young and brighter, Ronald Reagan, before he’d been governor of California for a full 10 years. People saw him as charming, attractive, conciliatory and a good communicator. Lincoln was born in a cabin and spent his early years sawing wood and teaching himself to read by firelight. He was rustic and awkward throughout his life though he did like a good suit. He was not popular and was relentlessly caricatured as a “baboon” in the press. Obama had a reasonably privileged and cosmopolitan upbringing and went to accredited schools. Just him being him seems to bring him accolades in the right setting. He is popular. He is a celebrity. Most people taken seriously as a candidate for the presidency have had experience in world class politics, world class being defined by the times. In 1860, the U.S. was not involved much in the international arena, but there had been bloody conflicts between abolitionist and non-abolitionists in Kansas and other states over slavery during the 1850s. Not to mention the economic interests, in which England played a meddling part, as always, and which probably ended up deciding in favor of war. America was already a shattered and divided country. This is the sort of thing Lincoln was confronting in a personal and visceral way during the years leading up to his election. There was also enormous hand wringing among Americans over immigration, as it was believed the superstitious Catholic Irish could not possibly assimilate into a free thinking, Protestant dominated democracy. There are some interesting analogies between our times and Lincoln’s, but you have to ratchet up the stakes about 1000 times. back to Obama, Well-educated desis, especially native born citizens, identify with him. Of course they do, just as a lot Irish Catholics identified with Kennedy even if they didn’t care for him much once he got in. Human nature. This sort of sectional interest is inevitable in a “democracy.”
I wasn’t thinking of your story, only the 131 posts following it. I concur that the mere fact he is on the presidental election radar is a small advancement for people of color or saddled with any other trait that makes them a minority. Jesse Jackson accomplished the same thing when he came within striking distance. Oprah is doing it everyday, and yes, all the desis accomplishing little things in their chosen professions are adding to the growing pool.
Terrible:
Mr. K:
I’m with Mr. K on this, and in addition, why assume that those of us who’s minds aren’t “open” reach that way out of some kind of deep ignorance. (Ohh, if only we gave the poor whitefolk a chance!) This is America, you couldn’t get away from mainstream/white culture if you tried. That’s why it’s called mainstream. And myself, I’ve lived in US cities where people of color were just rumors.
I agree with you, Neal, on this:
In my estimation, Johnson displayed a manner of foolishness over the escalation in Vietnam that no leader of a superpower (Johnson, Brezhnev, Dubya – take your pick) has yet been able to steer clear of. Given what we know about the Gulf of Tongking incident, blame for Vietnam should really be laid at the doorstep of that Democratic clothes-horse, pretty-boy and sex-machine (nothing wrong with sex though) named JFK! It is valid to wonder how many of the great JFK-era ideas were really RFK’s initiatives…
it’s no secret that any group or list, SM included, would be clique-ish in order to survive and be cohesive but it was really interesting (and damned annoying, to put it mildly) to me how WhiteGuy was marked as a troll (by the original poster, no less) and then banned while Brown Folk on this very list have asked no less legit questions, at least over the past month or two that I’ve been reading this blog. I wonder if it had anything to do with WG’s initial faux pas (arguably unforgivable) at calling the OP “Sid”. NOT a Good Move on SM. 😉
as for Obama — whether or not his name could lend itself to spurious misinterpretation, I smell a Perot (only, with oodles more charisma and an actual, possible, future in US politics; just not in ’08).
siddhartha-
I understand and respect that. However, you are at least expressing that Obama is a valid candidate, and one who deserves to be taken with respect. The racial attitude I detailed above would obviously not be welcomed in any forum which took that premise.
Although I dunno. SM did not have similar posts for any of the other Democratic or Republican candidates. Nor has it really explored any of the candidates’ past positions relevant to South Asians. That’s fine with me, but perhaps it makes this post seem more “yay Obama” than you might have intended?
Neal,
Siddhartha’s post could have been clearer, perhaps, but don’t you think that the rise of Obama — as a “brown” (someone with a third world background, and a status ‘in between’ white and black in American life) has a certain resonance for desis?
It doesn’t mean we have to vote for him — not at all (hell, I might still vote for Hilary!). But it is worth discussing whether or not we might be able to IDENTIFY with him, though he doesn’t actually have a desi background.
I actually had a dream about Obama last night, where he was giving a public speech that (in the dream) I had written for him. He was even speaking in my voice! So I guess I identify with him at least.
“Again: what exactly does “white” culture mean? What specific experiences unite the great mass of “white” people?” Oh dear. And you wonder why people get their knickers in a twist and go “trolling” as you call it. What is “white” culture, indeed? or “black” culture? Asian culture? “yellow” race culture. “red” race culture? “brown” race culture? Be careful when denying any people have a “culture” (as eminently a silly statement referring to people of European “white” background as it would be if referring to those of Indian “brown” background) because they will then embrace it with a vengence and that makes for more division. That’s what all this multi-culture stuff is about. Working in a government agency and straddling several ethnic worlds myself, including Cape Verdean, Celtic, and American Indian, I wouldn’t count on anybody not having “solidarity.” It depends on the situation, the economics and how secure people feel. “Whites” have at least as much as, say, Moslems in India. After all, they invented trade unions and nation states. Organizing is a part of their “culture” I would think, if you’d like one prominent trait, although the Japanese are supreme at that. This country is changing fast, so nothing, absolutely nothing, is a given. When people remember their own history, they concentrate on the positive. When they remember “others”, they concentrate on the negative.
Look around you. We are all here because of our “culture” and what our fellow ethnics, immediate and distant, did. Many former enemies now reside in the same electorate. Politics makes unlikely bed fellows so expect the unexpected, but also expect the expected. Americans tend to be very parochial no matter what color they are. We seem to live in a Truman Show bubble, trying to figure out what is real and what isn’t.
Amardeep-
Look, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this post. I approached it exactly the way you did, and I like it (and yeah, I’m not totally sold on voting for Obama either).
The problem for me was that people were making racial statements and then acting shocked that other people would be upset about it. My point was that if you are posting in a thread that is generally positive about Barack Obama, you should probably expect that people will not be receptive to arguments like “Desis should not identify with black people”.
I don’t think that anyone should feel uneasy in writing a positive post about Obama. This is a blog, not a mainstream media outlet, and it’s a blog coming at things in a very specific way.
Hey I never accused anyone of trolling either.
I’m not saying “white people have no culture”. I’m saying that there has been very little historical or political reason to unite all white people under a single definition of “culture” independent of a general, multiracial/multicultural “American” culture. Instead, white subgroups tend to be oriented around things like politics or class. Very few white people make “being white” a major part of their identity, and society tends to frown on the ones that do (for good historical reasons).
Those divisions occur in minority racial groups too, of course. But they are also all shaped by their relationship to a majority. There are many, many arguments about what “brown” culture means, and many argue (accurately, IMHO), that it doesn’t really exist in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc… It exists in the West because it’s formed in reaction to interactions with a separate majority.
Obama on the cover of Time with Joel Klein’s article inside:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546362,00.html
i agree with Sriram, no one knows anything substantive about Obama precisely because he has not really been saying much beyond the usual rhetoric of carefully-worded, wilfully delivered, politically-correct multicultural schmooze; the rest we colorfully fill in to appease our own agendas..
I’m scared, I’m really scared. I’m scared that he’s not ready. But you know, I’m oh-so-excited. This means a LOT for American politics. And the new blood and new perspective that he brings to it…oh, I can’t help but quiver a little! Have a go at this article, too, my friend.
In the end, it doesn’t matter to me so much that he is the next President or not. His presence in the pool is taking the discussion of race and power in America from theory to reality in a way that can’t be seen as on the margins.
I’m most interested in seeing how his opponents (from all over the political spectrum) handle the issues that are raised and hope that the person I eventually feel is the best candidate wins. And if not, I hope that that person at least gets a whole lotta votes. No matter what the next Presdent will be forced to consider the views of Americans who don’t feel race and gender are primary factors at the ballot box.
Obama is a little scary. His hyper public religiosity makes me nervous. Come to think of it, the only two post Watergate democrats to be elected President were pretty comfortable in religious speak too.
I long for a non-religious serious presidential contender.
Does this really scare you AMFD? What legislation is the religious left going to pass to impose their morality on others? Or are you just concerned about a gerneral culure of religiosity?
I don’t see much of a threat to secularism here in the US. The religious right, for their part, are more or less responding to secularists trying to impose their view via the courts…roe v wade in particular.
Hyper religiosity? Come ON, the brother makes one vaguely “religious” speech to a bunch of liberals in which he endorses standard Democratic ideas like a minimum wage, increased access to healthcare, and a social safety net, and suddenly he’s tagged as being a friggin preacher. Do you really think his religion will impact his style of governing in the way that, say, Bush’s does?
I dislike religion, too, but what good will it do us to have a non-religious president ruling a seriously religious (and religiose) country?
I’d settle for a handful of atheist senators, but even that doesn’t seem to be happening in a hurry.