Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses Michelle Obama with an outspoken publisher and former Black Panther—his father…
From the piece:
There has been much chatter about Barack Obama as the answer to America’s racial gap, as a biracial black man whose roots stretch from Hawaii to Kenya, with an Ivy League pedigree and the seal of the South Side. But he is not the only one entering the White House who has seen both sides, who intuitively grasps the heroic American narrative of work ethic and family, and how that narrative historically failed black people. He is not the only one who walks in both worlds. Indeed, if you’re looking for a bridge, if you’re looking for someone to connect the heart of black America with the heart of all of America, to allow us all to look at the American dream in the same way, if you’re looking for common ground, then it’s true, we should be talking about Obama. But we should make sure we’re talking about the right one.
I think his opening line is terrific but Coates has had some second thoughts:
I probably would have dropped that whole device for a couple reasons. 1.) Given what just happened in this campaign and all the stupid, ugly “black enough” debate we’ve had going, I hate being tied into that. 2.) I don’t want readers tied up on that particular question, and thus not getting into the rest of the article.
It would be really convenient if I could blame my editors here and tell you that the White Satan Known As The Atlantic, twisted a brother’s words. Meh, the truth it was my idea. Moreover, I haven’t worked for a publication, in a long time, that’s been so singularly obsessed with letting the writer speak for himself. So on that point, I take the fall. But I also take the lesson.
For me his piece (and the podcast with his father [above]) resonate because I am interested in exploring the similarities and differences between the black experience in America and the lesbian/gay experience in America. Blacks and Gays, for example, are not just stereotyped, they are subject to separate and distinct stereotypes for each gender.
And while Blacks are too often born into the ghetto; Lesbian and gay people are almost always born into families and communities with few if any others who share or can relate to their proclivity. Instead they are randomly distributed throughout the population and socialized through adolescence and into adulthood as if they were heterosexual members of mainstream society.
Lesbian and gay people have had to build their own “gay ghettos” to find community, freedom and acceptance. With the decline of those gay neighborhoods, Andrew Sullivan argues, will come the end of gay culture. I’ve argued back that there is something more that lesbian and gay people share than just same-gender relations.
Then there is “passing” and “coming out.” Blacks can’t stay in the closet. Their race is evident. But passing and skin tone have been (and arguably still are) a big issue. Same gender attraction, in contrast, is not evident or overt. Lesbian and gay people pass easily for straight. Outing is the issue.
I haven’t worked this all through, but I suspect that understanding it has the potential to tell us something important about the nature of prejudice in our world. And how we can free ourselves of it.