Obama's Promise -- And Its Limits

In many ways, Obama's appeal flips the politics of race on its head. Without using the phrase, he promises something akin to "white liberation," a term I first heard growing up in the dying days of the Jim Crow South and then again in reporting from apartheid-era South Africa as white rule there began to crumble. Only by thoroughly understanding and rejecting the politics of race can whites liberate themselves from their own chains of exploitation, hatred and, yes, guilt, at least for older Americans.

That paragraph is from a column in today's Washington Post entitled, as this diary, Obama's Promise -- And Its Limits.  The author, Jim Hoagland, won Pulitzers for International Reporting in 1971 and for Commentary in 1991.  And as can be seen in the paragraph quoted above, he offers an interesting perspective on Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech which this diary will explore.
Hoagland is an associate editor, senior foreign correspondent, and columnist for The Post, who was born and educated through college in South Carolina.  He describes Obama as an optimist who believes people AND NATIONS can change themselves for the better, with a belief this will be driven "more by their differences than by their similarities."  

Reading that, which Hoagland offers in his opening paragraph, immediately got my attention.  Often in our attempt to find common ground and avoid disagreement we ignore what separates us, makes us different.  I had not thought about the possibility of using our differences to bring us together for necessary change.  Hoagland describes what Obama is offering as he idea of "creative diversity," a notion he says is not only the core of the campaign but also the very core of the candidate's being.  And applying this within a campaign means one believs human behavior and psychology is malleable.  As Hoagland write:

If the Obama crowds were to accept the ultimate logic of the words they chant, they would be shouting, "Yes, we can . . . change ourselves and others." This vast and uncertain endeavor is one, I suspect, to which they are unevenly committed.

Hoagland says the subtext to Obama's approach is the belief that race can unite instead of divide us, reminding us that Carter and Clinton, the only Democrats elected in the last 40 years,

were white Southerners who had helped turn their states and region away from the cruelest excesses of segregation.

The column offers praise for the speech as well as cautions for those followers of Obama who were inspired by it.  After reminding us that Clinton had promised a dialog on race that seemed to be forgetten after he was inaugurated, he tells us

By strongly rejecting Wright's view "that sees white racism as endemic" in the United States, Obama invites a lively colloquy far beyond this campaign.

ar better who Obama is than do all of the carefully scripted, opportunistic position papers on Iraq and NAFTA.

At the same time, it is naive, or extremely self-serving, of Obama followers to suggest that the election of a black president will cause other nations to reconsider their most deeply held attitudes or policies toward the United States or open doors for him abroad that are closed to others. They -- and he -- will be surprised at how short the "Obama effect" will be in international politics if he is elected.

The back story of his multiracial, multinational ancestry and his rise from humble origins to success and idolatry would carry little weight at the conference table.

Here I have to offer some observations of my own.   Hoagland is an internationalist by orientation.  I have been reading him in the Post since moving to the DC area more than a quarter century ago.  He is somewhat influenced by the idea of Realpolitik, of what is actually possible in the relations among nations.  But he also has, I believe, shown an inclination towards the use of diplomacy, even if forceful and backed implicitly by the possible application of force, over the quick movement towards military intervention.  In that sense how one functions at the conference table is critically important to him.  I suspect, although I cannot prove, that he is drawn towards the idea that Obama offers of willingness to talk even with our nominal enemies and possibly without strict preconditions, but he also worries about the language one uses, and how it might define the parameters of what would happen at such discussion.  Earlier in the column he commented upon Obama's use of the phrase"so-called allies" to refer to Egypt and Saudi Arabia in his 2002 speech and noted that these countries

would judge him on such remarks and on what he says and does about Israel, Iran and Iraq.

Hoagland recognizes that Obama still has some way to go before he would be in a position as president to be interacting with foreign nations.  He writes that Clinton and McCain still have the opportunity to make their cases that their vesions of "historical optimism" are better suited to the place in which we find ourselves, more realistic in todat's world.  Here I might quibble - I would argue that McCain's view of the world is far from optimistic, and put his expressions about perhaps staying in Iraq for a century and the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism as an existential threat to the US as an example of mind operating more from fear than from optimism.  

What really catches my attention is how Hoagland closes this piece.  I am going to pick up in midsentence in the penultimate paragraph, giving you his final 2.5 sentences.  After describing the possible chances for Clinton and McCain already described, he begins by putting a caveat on their visions, and then concluding.   We read

even if they spring less directly from the long American struggle to overcome the corrosive consequences of this nation's racial divides. Fair enough.

But Obama has defined his campaign with a remarkable piece of political rhetoric that appeals to the entire nation's better instincts. For that, he deserves the attention and appreciation of his fellow citizens.

a remarkable piece of political rhetoric that appeals to the entire nation's better instincts

and he deserves the attention and appreciation of his fellow citizens.

I have repeated those two phrases because I believe they are key to understanding this column.  As noted, Hoagland is a southerner, raised in South Carolina in a period of segregation and the turmoil of the Civil Rights movement.  He was born in 1940,and after graduation from the University of South Carolina studied in France before attending graduate school at Columbia.  It is worth noting that his first Pulitzer was  for his coverage of the struggle against apartheid in the Republic of South Africa."  Issues of race clearly have concerned him.  

I am six year younger than Hoagland, and was raised in the North. But perhaps my age is close enough to his to be able to offer an explanation.  During the 1950's and 1960's our problems domestically with race were also an issue internationally.  As former colonies became independent and people like Nehru and Sukarno developed the non-aligned movement in the midst of the Cold War, our persistent problems with racial issues often served to weaken our position among the newly independent nations:  many of their leaders had experienced the European sense of superiority, they had experienced a form of racism themselves.  And the USSR did not hesitate to use issues related to American segregation to attempt to gain influence, even if within their own "empire" they had used a form of racial superiority (of Russians over any other nationality, especially those who were Asian) in their own nation - absent the opportunity to protest and given the restriction on foreign press to cover any unrest there was an uneven picture:  in fact our very openness made the troubles and conflicts of the day that much more visible internationally.  One can argue that absent that American openness Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have won his Nobel Prize).

Hoagland is an internationalist, very concerned with international relations. He is also a product of the segregated American South who was able to see, perhaps through the lens of his experiences observing South Africa, of the damage that racism can do.  And while he is in this column making no endorsement of Obama, I think it clear the possibilities he sees in this candidacy, in the potentiality of an Obama presidency not only to heal this nation but also in its ability to bring some additional level of understanding, dialog, and possibly even healing in the larger world.

Read the entire column. It will be worth the brief amount of your time. And I would be honored if you would then choose to share your reactions, even if you interpret it far differently than I do. For it is in open and honest dialog that we both grow.  Is not that a key part of the Obama campaign message?

Peace.

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