First, I'd like to highlight one of the insights of physicist David Bohm (wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm) who, in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order offers a nuanced explanation of the difference between good theories and bad.
Good theories, Bohm said, unlike bad theories, are true...
But only up to a certain point.
Einstein's description of space time did not invalidate Newton's work; it revealed its limit. Or, following Bohm, we can say that Einstein showed the point at which Newton's ideas are no longer 'true'.
Why do I mention this?
Because I think the BHO saga is byzantine and many-faceted - a sort of political dodecahedron - a truly 21st century situation which calls for multi-dimensional thinking. Each of us can productively focus on one facet of the overall scheme and each of us can create good theories that are true.
But only up to a certain point.
For example, Charles B sees BHO's gathering of enthusiastic support from an unprecedented number of White voters as an inherently anti-racist, progressive event.
I agree.
But this progressive development, which sails atop the post Civil Rights era re-conceptualization of Blacks (by many Whites and poor bashing Blacks such as Cosby) as belonging to two opposed camps - call it the supposed "ghetto" vs. "bougie" divide - is created by appealing to a seductive mythology: racism is nearly dead, Blacks enjoy 90 percent parity with Whites, America is an exceptionally marvelous nation with a special mission, and so on. This makes him the quintessential 'safe Black guy'. We're so accustomed to using the word "racism" as a catchall explanation we may forget its manifestation is not all of a kind. There are varying levels of ferocity.
Marvin Gandall wrote:
If anything, his racial background seems to be more an advantage than a liability. His mixed parentage is exotic for whites, and gives him special entree into the black community, which has claimed him as one of its own. If he were or presented himself as an "authentic" ghetto black, or a politician from that milieu like Al Sharpton or Rev. Jackson, that would be a wholly different matter. But for for most Americans, Obama is Denzel Washington goes to Washington, an accepted part of the majority culture.
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<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080211/002861.html>
Which makes perfect sense to me, in large part because it agrees with my own experience. Yesterday, I briefly mentioned my time at Wharton's Aresty institute working as a marketing rep and face to face liaison to Euro corp CEOs. For a time, I wondered why my boss, who I knew to be a scowling, Dick Cheney-esque racist, eagerly pushed me forward as one of the org's youthful faces. I also wondered why one of his chief lieutenants was a Wharton trained African American.
It took awhile but eventually I figured it out: he was indeed a racist, but of a post Civil Rights kind. He managed his racist perceptions by compartmentalizing according to class. To him, his number one and I belonged to the acceptable portion of the Black population. He didn't think twice about promoting and celebrating us. Indeed, it was a pleasure and proof of his open mindedness. This wasn't simple tokenism or the 'house n-word' phenom, though there are undeniable resonances - we had real jobs and real responsibilities and would have been booted out for incompetence like anyone else.
Even so, we were assigned a special role within a living tableau depicting how much 'progress' America had made from the bad old days when bad people did nasty things. Now, nasty things were only said about the "lazy", "uncivilized" Blacks of the ghetto. Through a sleight of hand, the racist signifiers were transferred from the whole group to the "underclass".
In this way, it is possible to simultaneously believe racist ideas while plausibly denying any such belief. After all, when you talk about laziness, promiscuity and a tendency towards crime (perhaps genetically determined), you weren't referring to Dwayne, you were talking about the rough looking guy you saw on Broad St.
Welcome to the new millennium.
...
What does this have to do with BHO?
Let's try to complete the circle.
BHO's popularity with White voters (particularly people under, say, 50 - though that's admittedly a guess) doesn't surprise me in the least; it fits a pattern which took shape in my lifetime and which I've witnessed again and again. The same principle of compartmentalization which enabled my boss to, on the one hand, express an unreasoning fear of predominantly Black West Philly ("isn't that the wild west?") while turning, on the other hand, to a Black guy for highly technical financial advice re: hundreds of millions of dollars makes it possible for millions of Americans to look forward to the presidency of a Black man, even as racism continues to flourish.
But even this is only one aspect of the story.
More tomorrow.
.d.