December 17, 2007 09:55 PM UTC

Barack Obama, Andrew Young, and The Election Woozies

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• by: Reed This

Both/And:  The Election Woozies

Something about this election season is making us woozy. The places where we used to be comfortable are shifting as candidates cross familiar lines, and our old ways of sizing them up just don’t seem to apply.  We have one female running, the candidate with whom we are most familiar–primarily because of her husband.  We have a bi-racial candidate who defines himself as black.  We have a white candidate with a Southern drawl, who talks about poverty more than the others. We have Christian candidates who support abortion rights, a Mormon trying to act like a Kennedy while looking like a Ken doll, and an anti-immigration candidate who embarrasses everybody, but has touched a nerve. It’s not just the candidates who are different-we are changing, too. The presidential election is America’s pulse point.

In an interview that buzzed through the internet last week, Andrew Young, civil rights icon and Friend of Bill (remember FOB?) slipped and fell backward into the past, smack into the world when race categories ruled and men were men.  Here is part of what Young said, explaining why Barack Obama should wait his turn to be President:

It’s not a matter of his inexperience but of being young.

(Let’s get this straight:  Obama is a year older than Bill Clinton was when he ran for president and four years older than John Kennedy.) Andrew Young wants Barack Obama to wait.  In thinking it is Hillary’s turn, Young exposes one of the rules of the old style of leadership that needs changing. And  when someone goes “out of turn,” it subverts the old style leadership system as well. Whose turn is it?  In fact, it’s nobody’s turn.  There is no natural order, or earned right to rule.  The people vote to tell us whose turn it is.

At a time when the country desperately needed their insights, old guard civil rights leaders honed a lens that asserted and depended on race. They helped all of us to see the world more clearly. In their youth and beyond, they were anything but “old guard.”   Then, in the process of political advancement and courting by various administrations– including Clinton’s-a corps of black leaders became the “go to” people for political commentary related to race, and their livelihoods have depended on that. But now we’re in the midst of a sea change in consciousness about race in this country, where other voices-mostly younger voices, and many of them multi-racial–are going to be increasingly important.  Obama’s message appeals directly to the idealism of youth, who are responding in force because they feel the urgency of a turning world and a need to get ready–before a fateful future arrives, one that may soon shake their windows and rattle their walls.

Andrew Young’s comments on why he supports Hillary Clinton?  

First, Hillary has Bill behind her and Bill is every bit as black as Barack. . .  Probably gone with more black women than Barack. .

Puleeze! Clinton is not black, never had to face the world as a black person, and has never known black experience from the inside.  When author Toni Morrison introduced Bill Clinton as “the first black president of the United States,” she was creating an interesting metaphor, one intended to entertain her audience and to compliment the then-president. Morrison was talking about symbols–a single-parent household, born poor, working-class, playing the saxophone and loving junk food. Symbols signal something else; they are not themselves the real thing. Barack Obama is nobody’s symbol.  He is the real thing He was born both/and.  He was raised both/and.  He spent his youth exploring his identity and wrote eloquently and honestly about all that.  Now he knows who he is-a unique, self-defined black man: black and white; with native and immigrant parents; from the mid-West, Hawaii, and Asia, with an African grandmother who lives in a village without running water.  A man as tough as, well, Hillary.

Barack Obama doesn’t simply cross the race and gender lines, he subverts them. Author Alice Walker describes him in words such as: “open, curious about people, caring and real, more like the rest of us.” Obama defines strength not as sabre-rattling and chest beating, but as conciliation, wisdom, and restraint–qualities stereotypically associated with women. He upsets the weary old assumptions that so far are not holding true in this presidential election.  Instead, the polls are revealing what happens when a candidate is both/and. In a Des Moines Register poll, published in December, Obama leads with support from 31 percent of women likely to attend the caucuses, compared to 26 percent for Clinton. A survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that black voters view Clinton more favorably.  Yet, for both candidates the point spread in their appeals across gender and race lines is fairly marginal.  And shifting.

We are at the beginning of the end of an old style of political being that, if we are careful to support progressive leadership, could end racial polarization, at least in parts of this country.  In 2004 Barack Obama spoke of the sea change that young people, especially,  feel, movement toward a society beyond either/or categories of:  liberal/conservative, black, latino, asian/white, red/blue. That would be an America where the question does not even arise of who is black enough or who is white enough, where we let go of the restraints of the past and don’t let ourselves be pulled into thinking it’s a black or white thing. It’s both/and, not either/or.

Barack Obama’s ability to bridge race and cultures, his open mindedness, yes, his incompleteness–those groundless qualities he embodies may make us uncomfortable for a while.  And if they do, that’s a good thing.  So if you’re feeling a little woozy these days, don’t worry.  Just open your window and breathe in some of that fresh air.