Noli Irritare Leones

I’m just about the last person in the blogosphere to comment on Obama’s big speech, but I wanted to be sure I’d both read and listened to it all the way through first.

Much of the time I think, you know, after all, for all his good points, he is another pol – one I’ll gladly vote for in the fall over McCain, one I willingly, but by a smaller margin of preference, chose over Sen. Clinton – but still, another pol with his flaws like any other. But he does have these moments where he takes wing, and, for me, this speech was one of them. I can see why it leads someone like Henry to say

Before the speech, if you’d asked me which candidate I’d support if I could vote, I’d have said Obama. After the speech, it’s quite different.

I’ve lived in the US for the last four years as a permanent resident, and been quite happy here. Hearing Obama speak made me feel for the first time that I genuinely want to become a citizen of this country and a part of the larger project that he talked about, regardless of specific disagreements I might have….

It was, in fact, everything I could have wanted from Obama on a major speech on race – honest, nuanced, inspiring, challenging, not hesitating to criticize but at the same time offering hope for unity, calling on us to correct our countries calls but also to draw inspiration that we can from the history of that same country.

And I’m glad of that, because it also comes at a time when I’ve been getting frustrated with some of what’s coming from supporters (not so much the candidates) of both Obama and Clinton – being too quick to see race or sex baiting in the other campaign. No, I don’t think Clinton’s campaign deliberately made sure “NIG” was showing in the pajamas of the children in the 3AM commercial. No, I don’t think Obama was dissing Clinton with “you’re nice enough” – I think Obama and Clinton were both poking mild fun at a kind of silly question. No, I don’t think – pace Kos – that Clinton blackened Obama’s face. Yes, both candidates have faced real prejudice both overt and subtle, but there also have been some people quick on the trigger in their interpretations of the two campaigns.

But I wanted to talk about Obama’s grandmother. As it happens, the story of her fearing the black men in the street is one he’s already told, in his first autobiography, Dreams From My Father. People who haven’t read that book have been speculating in the blogosphere as to what she was afraid of. Isn’t it normal for a woman to be afraid of men in the street? And perhaps insensitive of Obama not to realize this? She wouldn’t be afraid of Sidney Poitier, right? And then, on the other side, no, he’s said she was afraid of black men.

In fact, as the story was told in the autobiography, she was afraid under circumstances in which many women fear strange men – while waiting alone at a bus stop. It came up because Obama heard her and his grandfather arguing; his grandfather was angry that she didn’t want to ride the bus. Obama saw no reason why; what was wrong with her being afraid? He would give her a ride. He later found out the cause of his grandfather’s anger; his grandmother had specifically admitted to fearing the black men that she encountered at the bus.

It isn’t, of course, the whole picture of Obama’s grandmother, as she appears in the autobiography, just as it isn’t all he says about her in his speech. She also, bottom line, accepted her daughter’s marriage to a black man at a time when such a marriage was still illegal in many states. She loved Obama and cared for him. But she had her complications and contradictions, like many of our grandparents, and, actually, like many of us.

The other thing that struck me, though, reading the autobiography – the one written when he was young and just out of Harvard Law School – was that the young Obama also turned the same critical eye on himself. Much has been written about his admission, in that autobiography, to using drugs as a teenager. But there was also self-criticism about his developing attitudes toward race. There’s a point when he’s in college when a black woman from his school takes him to task about his reaction to some of the other black students and he acknowledges that she’s right. And there’s another point where he talks about an ex, a white woman, and a conflict that came up between them, as he tried to share his anger about racial issues with her, and she lost patience. It’s a story that could easily have been told in a way that was critical of his ex – frankly, I’ve been in her position myself, reacted in some ways similarly to her, and feel I was at least partly at fault – but he’s generous to the ex and critical of himself. So, there was, throughout the autobiography (which was more race focused than most of his speeches because of how it came to be – he was approached to write it as the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review) a keen eye to everyone’s complexities and contradictions on race – white people, black people, Obama himself.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 8:22 am and is filed under Election 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.