The discussion of whether Barack Obama is “black enough” to be a black candidate, of whether he is in fact a black candidate, or whether the nature and degree of his blackness matters keeps bubbling along.
I think one of the most interesting aspects of this discussion is what it says, or doesn’t say, about our understanding of “diversity.” I’ve made many joking references to how “diverse” has come to be a synonym of “black” (“How many diverse students were admitted this year?” etc.), but Obama, like Tiger Woods, actually embodies a certain amount of “diversity” (limited, still, to its racial component) in his very being.
Some commentators say in effect, this is nothing new; blacks have always been diverse. A number of those comments are quoted in an article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, such as the following by Kamal Harris, district attorney of San Francisco:
Harris, who attended Howard University, said many Americans — of all social and racial backgrounds — have a limited perception of black people. In college, she saw African American men and women in leotards studying ballet in the arts department, young women with briefcases in business school, African Americans in lab coats studying medicine and in street clothes protesting actions on Capitol Hill.
“We are diverse and multifaceted,” Harris said. “People are bombarded with stereotypical images and so they are limited in their ability to imagine our capacity.”
That is of course true, but it raises the question: if color is not a valid or reliable proxy for any particular ideas, interests, talents, etc., why should it be the basis for preferential treatment justified by the “diversity” the preferred individual will provide?
The ubiquitous Prof. Cornel West, of the not black enough school, was put off by Obama’s declaring his candidacy in Springfield, Ill, with fulsome references to Lincoln.
Author and Princeton University Professor Cornel West said Obama’s decision to announce in Illinois instead shows he “speaks to white folks and holds us at arm’s length.”
Presumably Princeton (not Howard or Moorhouse or Spelman or Virginia State) Prof. West has not chosen to speak to “white folks.”
In a peculiar sort of way, the Rev. Al Sharpton seems to share the opinion that color alone is not a sufficient proxy for anything important (but then, much about the Rev. Al is peculiar). “Just because you are our color,” he intoned, “doesn’t make you our kind.”
Fine. But then shouldn’t the Rev. Al oppose preferences based on nothing more than color? If he has voiced any such opposition, I haven’t heard it.
The journalist Clarence Page has a column today with the terrific title, “Obama’s ‘Colorblind’ Double Bind.” Alas, the column itself doesn’t live up to the billing of its title. There’s no discussion at all of his double bind — “a situation in which a person is given conflicting cues, esp. by a parent, such that to obey one cue is to disobey the other.”
It will come when someone asks him whether he believes his daughters deserve preferential treatment because of the color of their (or his) skin.
