america adrift

This morning I read a fantastic article, Update: Michelle Obama as Racial Rorschach Test over at Open Left. About a month or so ago Open Left, a fairly influential progressive community blog, began a “guest blogger” program. Stemming from the overt sexist and misogynistic portrayals of Hillary Clinton during the primary, the mostly White, male, writers at Open Left made a decision to reach out to the broader progressive blogosphere, initially feminist bloggers. You can find the terrific guest blog series here.

Today’s post is by rikyrah, who writes for Jack and Jill Politics, “a black bourgeois perspective on U.S. politics.

I found rikyrah’s article particularly interesting in lieu of Rune’s post, “The Heathen Obama”? The limits to satire in American politics. Bent has some great comments bellow and I link to a few pieces also in the comments which I think provide additional context to both Rune and rikyrah’s articles. In particular, see Michael Shaw’s deconstruction of the New Yorker cover which rikyrah asserts communicates more about racial stereotypes of Michelle than Barack.

But what stood out the most in rikyrah’s argument was how Michelle is perceived as a greater threat to “Whiteness” than Barack. The main point is that Michelle doesn’t fit into an appropriate “black category” as defined by Whites. One of the examples is the mini-brouhaha over Michelle’s “lying” about her modest working class upbringing in Chicago’s South Side.

They’re mad that Michelle’s not from ‘ Da Projects’, which is all they would qualify as ‘ typical Black housing’. If you had running water, then suddenly you were rich.

Michelle Obama has become the face of the Black America whose very existence has been denied by this country.

Whats more, as many of you are aware, David Roediger will be giving this year’s Honora Rankine Galloway Address, “Will Race Survive in the US? The Possibilities and Impossibilities of the Obama Phenomena.”

This lecture, based on David Roediger’s shortly forthcoming How Race Survived United States History (Verso), sets the historic presidential candidacy of Barack Obama within longer patterns of white supremacy in the U. S. past. It argues that the successes of Obama’s candidacy register important, though contradictory, changes in racial attitudes in the post-1965 U.S. At the same time, the “Obama Phenomenon” also obscures the extent to which the structural factors leading to race-thinking persist and raises critical questions regarding the political challenges of moving past a view of race predicated on the simple dualism of black and white.

Give the article a read. Rikyrah’s provides an interesting insight into the terribly complex dynamics of race and power which are increasingly manifested through Michelle Obama’s persona. Also, I’m very much looking forward to Roediger’s timely lecture and am anxious to hear his views on Michelle’s position within the larger context of the “Obama Phenomenon.”