Discriminations

David Broder writes:

>>>"Steele likens Obama's success to the fame and fortune won by Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. But the earliest of the crossover heroes he calls "iconic Negroes" was Sidney Poitier."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/23/AR2007112301250.html

To give some historical context for this statement, excerpts from "Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon:

>>>"American. In an era when blacks demonstrated for rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, Poitier was popular culture's foremost symbol of racial democracy.

Before his 1950 film debut, images of blacks in film consisted of the stereotypes that justified racial segregation: oversexed bucks, absurd pickaninnies, beefy mammies, grinning song-and-dance men, and slothful comic servants. Poitier's image contradicted this burden.

By the late 1950s, he was the Martin Luther King of the movies, an emblem of middle-class values, Christian sacrifice, and racial integration. Like college students staging sit-ins at lunch counters, like marchers weathering blasts from fire hoses, like civil rights leaders employing patriotic rhetoric, Poitier generated sympathy for black equality.

In 1964, the year that King won the Nobel Prize and Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, Poitier won an Academy Award for Lilies of the Field, cementing his position as the film industry's token response to the civil rights movement.[6]"

http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/goudsouzian_sidney.html

But despite this, it was painfully obvious that this "crossover appeal" was LIMITED:

>>>"Contemporary. This final self-characterization might have drawn objections, because by 1967 many radicals, college students, and film critics were condemning Poitier's recurring role as a noble hero in a white world.

Like other Hollywood stars, Poitier established an enduring image. Unlike other stars, his image changed meaning with the shifts in racial politics.

He had always faced unique obstacles. Racial taboos precluded him from romantic roles. His pattern of sacrifice for his white co-star rankled many blacks. And his characters often seemed stripped of any black identity, instead promoting an exaggerated colorblindness.

Yet his roles challenged convention enough that until the mid-1960s, few Poitier films played in the Deep South. So Poitier confronted difficult choices. As the single black film star, he had to balance mass appeal and political viability, an equilibrium difficult to maintain by the time of his anguished press conference.[7]"

http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/goudsouzian_sidney.html

This was, inspite of the fact that many of Poitier's biggest hits had racially controversial topics: "In The Heat of the Night" (1967) he plays a black police detective who slaps a prominent Southern white man square in the mouth.

In "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner",(1967) his character is ENGAGED to Spencer Tracy and Audrey Hepburn's liberal, yet still unquestionably WHITE daughter. (I'm not overlooking the irony that Poitier's character is not just "any black guy", but a "world famous brain surgeon", which was intended to make his "elligibility" seem beyond non-racial reproach. That ol' black tx again)

Despite all of this tightrope walking and racial crossovers, what did the writers of his time say about Poitier?

>>>"In the same month that Variety dubbed him "The Useful Negro," a New York Times column called him a "showcase n-----." Poitier could not escape the paradox of his "Negroness."[9]

http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/goudsouzian_sidney.html

Shelby Steele writes:

>>>"“The question that hovers over Obama to this day: Is he really black enough? If white people like you, it’s very likely you’re not black enough. Black people are very suspicious of that. To prove himself to black people, he has to be a challenger,” Mr. Steele says."

http://www.discriminations.us/2007/10/shelby_steele_on_obama_and_oth.html

This from a man who's made a LIVING off of white conservatives "liking him."

Ironic.

In review, you see a dynamic taking place, and I had this discussion with my cousin in Richmond, VA this past week. We agreed that there are many African-Americans who aren't warming up to Obama, because he doesn't come from the traditional seats of black power, ie. the church (think King, X, Jackson, Sharpton). He has no "official" civil rights pedigree, as he isn't a baby-boomer. The bottom line, however, is that agreed that African-Americans WOULD vote for Obama en-masse if the only alternative was a Republican.

Condoleeza Rice is profoundly accomplished academically in her right, and me and my cousin BOTH agreed that she would fare WORSE as a candidate for office due to her party affiliation, and the platforms of that said party.

The question isn't whether Obama is "black enough", IMHO. Black voters supported Al Gore in 2000 92-8. Al Gore will NEVER be mistaken for an African-American.

The American Presidency is like a four year marriage, and the question REALLY is whether enough WHITE Americans can see Barack Obama, as Spencer Tracy's character finally comes to see Poitier in "GWCTD":

>>>"But you do know, I'm sure you know, what you're up against. There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say "screw all those people"!

Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a pigmentation problem, and

I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if - knowing what you two are and knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel- you didn't get married. Well, Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/quotes

--Cobra