blog - gObama 2008
A fair usage of media talk
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
(Hudson, NH - 6 p.m. local time)
I am laying low here and just following the media hype on the political clinch that is still played up by PBS and the other TV networks.
Even a liberal PBS debate on the Charlie Rose show is light years behind the realities of our globalized inter-connectedness as minorities stream from margins to centre. Where do black men and white/black women increasingly calling the shots? On executive boards of companies or in the political field of media. Maybe a paradigm that is wishful thinking...?
Only problem for folks in the South (I know this sucks) might be that Obama’s (olive brown skin) and European-American/African ancestry represents an educated elite. That racial term of mixed race doesn’t really let him belong and makes him into an unknown entity, as this part of white ancestry is often denied among the so called black community.
The authentic Afro-American experience draws it authenticity from the grand slave narrative and its transcendence during the 60’s up-rise in civil rights movement. In their eyes Obama might be totally acceptable to a liberal white middle class establishment, but not necessarily to a working class Afro-American family who is struggling to pay their mortgage.
The old song of the struggle between the “house nigger and the field nigger” together with a sampled Motown loop comes to beat up space in my mind. I remember I shuddered upon hearing the term “bi-racial or mixed race” from my Afro-American friends. It shatters my hope for their understanding of me. It ends the subtlety of my “otherness” and individuality like a cold shower the next morning after a party night. Being put into place, I thought was what only white folks do. I was left in a space where I did not belong. Without becoming a referred tragic mulatto, what transcends my African-European-Arab connection is my claim of being Afro-German. Welcome to the club! Show us your VIP membership but do better not mention Arabic and Eastern European connections...because the Russians working on that already.... Do I loose my audience here?
Damn, this Obama stuff gets complicated... Guess it all comes down to some divine intervention at the primary polls. I gotta make sure that I get an extra portion of chicken wings with fries and some brown sugar for my desert.