I have a couple of theories about this whole Obama revolution and why we’re all so obsessed. Much of the story is told by the controversial comments made by Joe Biden in describing his then opponent for the Democratic nomination: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
I don’t know what exactly Joe Biden intended to mean, but I certainly interpreted it as saying: here is a black man that white people don’t have to be afraid of; in fact, they can feel safe to support publicly. Obama represents in a way a renewed image of the sexualized black man; he has the likeability and contemporary flair of pop culture black icons (inherent in that is a sexual identity), and the authoritative stature of his historical counterparts, other black leaders that represented a unifying spirit.
In a sense, Obama reconstructed ‘blackness’ in the American public square by simultaneously exuding blackness and sameness; moving the black aesthetic a bit further into the mainstream of the American aesthetic. The boundaries of ‘black as other’ have been previously pushed in American pop culture by many black icons; but never so successfully in the post-Jim Crow political arena.
Black icons like Sammy Davis, Jr., Sydney Poitier, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson (pre-transition), Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Will Smith, and many more, have in a sense crossed over into the American mainstream, while at the same time representing a black aesthetic accepted by black people. I wouldn’t say any of these characters, including Barack Obama, transcended their racial identities, but they in a way reconstructed their racial identities in such as way that has enabled them to achieve mainstream success.
Reasons number two and three to come in my next post: Stay tuned.