Monday, April 02, 2007

By Nico Rahim

America has come a long way.  Two of the top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are a black man and a white woman, something that was unthinkable only a generation ago.  This brings to mind an idea I had a while back--a screenplay about a black man and a white woman running against each other in a Democratic presidential primary.  As it now stands, the idea has lost its timeliness.  Why go for a fictitious representation of a black man and a white woman sacrificing their gender and racial identities to appease the white patriarchal status quo when it is playing itself out right before our eyes.

Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are shaking up the presidential mold that, until recently, has been quite formulaic.  The chief executive has always fit the status quo in three categories: image, rhetoric, and economic, or, Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real to give a Lacanian spin.

In image, the president has always been a daddy, a white male patriarch, the ultimate father figure whose capacity for both wrath and beneficence keep subjects fearful, respectful, and in line with his demands.  In the US the collective power of the Daddy is absolute, but the power of the presidential daddy is not.  There is a long line of daddies behind the presidential daddy all fighting to usurp as much power as they can.

Rhetoric is the category in which the executive finds the most freedom.  Rhetoric compliments the image yet distorts the economic.  It is with rhetoric that a well coiffed man in a suit tries relate to the callused handed men and women of the United States’ industrial sector, it is through rhetorical means that he attempts to assure America’s--rich in credit while poor in capital assets--middle class that is working for their best interest.

In economic is the most concrete: state capitalism, just has totalitarian and absolute as Soviet Communism and various fascist regimes of the 20th century, but set within a pseudo-democratic political apparatus with a greater respect for civil liberties than those regimes of the past.  State capitalism is not the total free market capitalism that is too often considered the prevailing ideology of the day.  State capitalism is Big Oil, the military industrial complex, Big Agriculture, and HMOs; state protected industries that look not after the development of the people but of sustaining profitable returns.

Also falling within the economic is American imperialism.  There has never been an American president who has not looked kindly upon American imperialism.  From the early presidents’ westward march taking out indigenous and Spanish-Mexican barriers in pursuit of the Manifest Destiny, as well as the US’s long over looked attempted land grab of Britain’s Canadian territories that sparked War of 1812 to America’s current imperialist pursuits in the Middle East.

What originally sparked the idea of the screenplay was a chapter from bell hooks’ book Reel to Real (1996) entitled “Doing it for Daddy.” In the chapter hooks puts black men and white women on an equal playing field in their relation to the daddy—the white patriarch.  Because of this relationship they are forced to compete with one another for favors from daddy.

hooks says, “To become powerful, then, to occupy that omnipotent location, black males (and white women) must spend their lives striving to emulate white men.”

In image, Obama and Clinton are at a loss.  They are not daddies, they could never be a daddy no matter how much they try to position themselves as such.  To get to their current positions of power within the United States Senate Obama and Clinton have long known how to “do it for daddy,” but now with their presidential aspirations clear, daddy will be the only person they will do it for.

Because of their ever-present lack in image, Obama and Clinton must compensate within the rhetorical and economic.  That’s where they have adequate space to emulate the daddy, to distance themselves from the aspects of their racial and gender identities that don’t fit the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” as hooks refers to the status quo.

We see this both Clinton’s pro-war alignment to Obama’s indifference to the overt racism exposed when Katrina blew away the metaphorical carpet, both are trying to distance themselves from the political and social stances normally associated with their racial and gender identities.  Notice that I say distance--not renounce.  Their identities of being non-white men are a political asset—the patriarchal status quo is always looking for ways to palatably diversify without compromising the entrenched power structure--while being a white woman or a black man is not.

Much has been written about Obama’s blackness: he’s black, with direct roots in Africa, but is a black American?  Sure, Obama may not have roots to slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, and segregation, but he’s not white and lives in America, he has most definitely been subjected to the subtle racisms of the everyday that pervade American life.

Senator Joe Biden took much heat for his “gaffe” in describing Obama. “I mean, you got the first sort of mainstream African-American who’s articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” I wouldn’t call this a gaffe, it seems to be one of the first unfettered and uncensored remarks by a political Daddy on their true reaction and response to Obama’s run for president.

It reminds me of an episode of the Boondocks, where Huey Freeman and family find themselves at a white suburban lawn party.  Huey drops truth on everything from 9/11 to American racism, only to see his words are received with smiles, applauds, and comments like, “Wow, he speaks so well.” and “indeed, yes, yes…he speaks very well.”

This seems to be the Daddy’s first response to the idea of a black man taking the reins as chief executive of the world’s sole superpower, “Wow, he speaks so well.”

We see this where white (straight) men hardly ever compromise their own identities to achieve political success.  Remember John Kerry, in his finest Elmer Fudd swag, duck hunting a few weeks before the 2004 election.  Or George W. Bush off-roading in his Ford F-250 at his ranch in Crawford, Texas? 

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