| Dear Editor, The only thing that I found more interesting than G.H.K. Lall's letter on Wednesday November 1 about Barack Obama possibly being the candidate the Democrats need was the article in the New York Daily News the very next day by conservative columnist Stanley Crouch. Almost as if in direct response to Lall's letter, Crouch's article was entitled "What Obama isn't: black like me". Crouch's main point in the article was that Obama is not so much a black American as he is an African-American. As he put it, "Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan." He goes on to say, "Other than color, Obama did not - does not - share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves". While he acknowledges that "the idea that one would be a better or a worse representative of black Americans depending upon his or her culture or ethnic group is clearly absurd", he recognizes that Americans still have "a simple-minded conception of black and white" and he questions how it colors the way we see Obama. He points out that the "confusion" stems from "the naïve ideas coming out of Pan-Africanism" which he describes as the set of ideas that began to take shape in the 19th century when "all black people, regardless of where in the world they lived, suffered and shared a common body of injustice". This as a result of the widespread colonization Europe had imposed on "much of the black world" resulting in the 250 years of slavery in the U.S. Overall, Crouch questions black Americans referring to Obama as "one of us". When he hears this, "I do not know what they are talking about" he writes. He cites Obama himself in Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" where Obama makes clear that although he has experienced "some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own - nor has he lived the life of a black American". Noting that "Obama is being greeted with the same kind of affection that Colin Powell had when he seemed ready to knock Bill Clinton out of the Oval Office" but for many reasons (most of them personal) did not become the first serious black American presidential contender, he thinks that if Obama does run he will have to do so "as the son of a white woman and an African immigrant", and if he does become the first black American president he will have entered the White House "through a side door". Yours faithfully, Stafford Wills |
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