The Liberal side of Colorblind: Obama’s Post-Affirmative Action Politics

It’s easy to dub Barack Obama’s speech as the 21^st Century’s Gettysburg Address on race in America. In recent memory, no one has had to speak so candidly, so eloquently, so publicly under such stress on the issue.

Indeed, no one really likes to talk about race anymore. Most people prefer to engage in “race avoidance,” where it’s easier to see race as a relic, an issue of the past long since dealt with and put away. Unresolved, but definitely put away. Under these conditions, civil rights era warriors soldier on. But it’s a changed environment with a new generation that can easily mistake the mention of a Dr.King as a reference to an ophthalmologist.

Maybe that doctor could help them see.

Such gaps in understanding and empathy are the current stumbling blocks on the way to the race conversation America deserves.

No wonder no one likes to talk about race. And before this week, that would include Barack Obama.

In his campaign, the mere mention of race seemed to make Obama bristle like some insecure affirmative action kid ashamed of being found out.

It was almost as if he tried to do the whole campaign without bringing it up intentionally. Race is an aside, a distraction to Obama, the post-affirmative action liberal candidate. He’s not the man who is there because of his race. He’s there because he’s the smartest guy in the room, without question. Let there be no doubt. No quota candidate he.

Not surprisingly, the idea of quotas was the central issue in that small window where Asian Americans showed up on the radar in this campaign. The perception of being in favor of quotas kept the Obama campaign from signing on at the very start a seemingly harmless pro-Asian American questionnaire from the grassroots group, 80-20. That’s how touchy the Obama campaign is.

Obama has tried so hard in every way to be “post-affirmative action,” where it’s not about race and all about merit. I bristle at that because it implies that the old affirmative action was all about being unqualified. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But I accepted Obama as the good side of colorblind, say compared to others like Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal, a political ideologue of South Asian descent who takes the Ward Connerly-view of colorblind. Here’s the difference: when Obama looks past the pigment he generally gets the substance part right.

So I was more than willing to accept Obama on his terms at the very start. (Please note, I did not say “get-go”). I even dubbed the Democratic primary the “race-neutral” race. Clinton and Obama basically agree on race issues anyway. It was OK to wage a campaign on priority issues. Besides, I saw nothing unnatural nor did I have any fears about a black man and a female running for history.

Enter Power, Ferraro, Wright

That’s no Washington law firm. They were the catalysts for all the sudden candor on race.

First Samantha Power, a smart, young Harvard professor who served as an Obama foreign advisor, was quoted in the media as calling Hillary Clinton a “monster.” That’s not really racist, but it set the stage for some tit-for-tat name calling. Sure enough, within days, Geraldine Ferraro was outed by the Obama camp for her public statements saying Obama’s success was all because he was black.

I personally found nothing patently offensive about Ferraro’s remarks and said so on my blog at www.amok.asianweek.com. Indeed, the strong negative reaction toward Ferraro indicates the Obama post-affirmative action mindset is taking hold. But to say Obama’s being black puts him in an advantaged situation doesn’t necessarily detract from his merit. What it did was give him a back-door way to create some high ground, a place where he can peer down and comment on race from some elevated fashion. And he did so in the way he’s always addressed race in the campaign, in a calm, measured way.

It’s the way Obama, the control freak, takes all the volatility out of race. In the old days, race was always a handy and reliable wedge to separate the candidates and help voters make decisions. It’s polarization at its best.

But if the Democrats were still being coy about its use with Ferraro, conservatives were much more brazen in flogging Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Wright is a man who has among other things publicly honored the known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and linked the U.S. government to the 9-11 tragedy. This is not a politician’s best friend. And the right-wing let him know it.

But it backfired. It created the backdrop for Obama to deliver one of the best de-polarizing speeches a candidate who doesn’t like to talk about race could deliver.

Great speech, but do you trust it?
I instantly related when I heard Obama talk about his bi-racial roots. Black man from Kenya, white woman from Kansas? That could only happen in America.

The Guillermo family too is a bi-racial one with blacks, Latinos, whites and Asians. We share a similar story to Obama’s. My post-affirmative action bi-racial family sat around the laptop and watched and read the Obama speech on You Tube.

The minute he talked about slavery, my wife from Missouri, began to cry. Overly emotional? Or the perfect manipulation of white guilt, what the author Shelby Steele says is what’s at play with Obama’s success.

That’s the question. But this is what mythic speeches do. Emotionally and factually, they put into context the past with the present. From “We the people…” to slavery, Obama was on the fast track to memorable.

Rev.Wright was merely used as a step to get to higher ground to show the Obama vision of “a more perfect union.” He may not have condemned Wright’s statements with the vigor his detractors demand. But they would never be satisfied anyway.

Obama couldn’t reject his friend in a callous, absolute way. Instead, he humanized Wright and showed a loyalty few politicians would have. But then he took the pettiness of race and raised it up. Suddenly he was invoking The Golden Rule. He mentioned angry white males. He didn’t mention love, but it was implied.

Unity, after all, is not about race. The promise land of E Pluribus Unum is really about another four letter word: love—for each other.

Win or lose, give him credit. Obama has officially defined the starting point for America’s new race conversation.