Obama, Wright, and How the Post-Civil Rights Generation
Will Rise to Power
by Nikki Ayanna Stewart
"If he will break with Wright in order to win the
presidency, I wonder where he'll land on policy issues that affect black
people."
During this U.S. presidential election season I have often
joked that I have taken a vow of silence. As a black woman with both feminist
and black liberation politics, I got tired of having my brain picked on how to
think about the race versus gender spectacle of this election. But
watching and listening to recent events in Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has
propelled me to speak up now.
I am a "professional" black feminist. I
am part of that strange generation, the post-Civil Rights access babies, who
have lived the contradiction of being able to be professional activists with
hardly any experience in mass social change movements. Don't get me
wrong, my fellow access babies and I would have experience in those movements
if those movements existed within the U.S. But, for the most part, they
haven't during our time, and I and others in my group have been both
beneficiary and repository for the movements of our real and
politically-adopted parents. We're beneficiaries of the gains achieved by those
movements, and repositories for the Civil Rights generation's left-over hopes
and dreams.
"We wanted to be activists, but there were no radical
movements to plug into."
It's kind of confusing to be able to be a professional
so-called "activist." When I was in my 20s I used to joke that
if I was going to write a book about my generation I would title it, Sincerely
Confused. I find our generational confusions about society, change,
organizing, and activism to be earnest, even endearing. Throughout my 20s
- during the 1990s - my friends and I struggled earnestly to find radical
movement. So we kept getting jobs in "social change"
non-profits and were heartbroken to learn that we had to tap-dance for rich
white funders only to do reformist work that barely felt like it was changing
anything. But what choice did we have - almost all of us were black and
had gone to college. And even though some of our parents may have even
gone to college too (thanks to the Civil Rights Act), we were saddled with
student loans as a result of the leftovers of President Reagan's rising cost of
education. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that we were the ones who appeared to
survive the 1980s and even make it to college while our cousins and friends
went down in crack, violence, and life-altering young pregnancies. So we wanted
to be activists, but there were no radical movements to plug into, and we HAD
TO GET A JOB to pay our loans, or make our mommas proud (or at least not worry
them half to death), or even just keep an apartment.
I came out of college with a soul passion to end sexism -
particularly sexism in my community, the black community. It was easy to
be a black feminist in college - I had a lot of time on my hands, you put up a
flyer and people would actually come to an event. I had a lot of friends
who had the same soul passion too. Now most of them are corporate
lawyers, management consultants and other odd jobs (they're trying to pay back
their student loans). But I was the trooper. While my comrades were
falling to the left, to the right, I stayed the course and they were so proud
and envious of me for having the integrity to be a professional feminist.
They were too scared to even try and I was showing that you could do it.
I had my feminist odd jobs until I realized in the late 1990s that I was
on a dangerous economic course to go under, like so many black women activists
have, and that I needed to do something fast quick in a hurry.
So, of course, I went back to my college advisors, those
black feminists who had fired me up and set me on this course. And you
know what they all said? Get a Ph.D. like us. One of them even
wrote in her book on the history of black feminism that the only place that
black feminism has survived is "in the halls of the academy."
"Academia was just like the non-profit world in its
attempt to kill all radicalism."
So off I went, to a place where I knew I would finally be
free to do uncompromised black feminist work! Yes! The academy.
No? Oh. Oh well...another rude awakening, I guess. It
was just like the non-profit world in its attempt to kill all radicalism in you
as part of its initiation rituals, just with more confusing rituals and the
need for nicer clothes (and, who knew, not even much more money - you spend the
difference on the fancy clothes!). And here was the kicker. The one
thing I knew was that I was the first generation who had the luxury of not
having to split myself off and have either "racial" politics OR
"gender" politics. I got to have it all. I got to live
between worlds and historical constructs as a black feminist. I was not
bound by the U.S. constitution that constructs race and gender as separate
systems, or the fact, as feminist and critical race legal theorists have shown,
that it is legally impossible in the United States to ever make a claim based
on simultaneous or intersected race-and-gender oppression. No, I was
going to live at that intersection and change the world!
Rude awakening #3. In order to get my Ph.D., I had to
decide whether I was a women's studies black feminist or a black studies black
feminist, oops, I mean womanist. I thought being a second
generation black feminist, I could circumvent the question as to whether I was
in bed with black men or white women. I was in bed with black feminists -
there were enough of them in power that they were my bosses and advisors.
But now what they want to know is am I in bed with the black women who
are in bed with white women or am I in bed with the black women who are in bed
with black men. Boy, it just gets more and more confusing, doesn't it?
I jest, but the fact that I had to make that choice was one
of the most painful moments of my life. And I share this long personal story
because I think it is relevant to what we are seeing unfold in the current U.S.
presidential election and in the recent Sen. Barack Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright
controversy. I believe that what we are seeing unfold will define the
next generation of black power.
Obama reminds me of so many of my friends, a lawyer,
"community organizer," with all the internalized rhetoric of social
change movements and no real experience in them. Someone whose reality
was shaped by the media culture of 1960s and 1970s and the repetition of sound
and image filtered bits of that era through to the present. Someone who
can't tell the difference between ideals, images, words, and reality.
Someone who the Civil Rights generation desperately hoped would exist,
and now fetishizes, even manipulates. The one who will realize
"our" (i.e., their) dreams. Oh, he is so familiar to me - as
beneficiary and repository. He is so familiar to me as sincerely
confused.
"I believe that what we are seeing unfold will define the
next generation of black power."
But wait. There is a glitch. He's not a
post-Civil Rights access baby. He is a bi-racial child of what education
theorist John Ogbu calls a "voluntary minority" - as opposed to us
"involuntary minorities" like African American descendants of slavery
who just can't seem to get that chip off our shoulder and accept the benefits
of being American.
In the last few days I have been trying to figure out why so
many black people feel betrayed by Obama's disavowal of Rev. Wright. At
that moment, it seemed to me that he was the same person with the same politics
he's had from the beginning of his candidacy. Obama said this in his
response to Wright's National Press Club speech, that he has been the same
person throughout this campaign, and that is an honest, accurate statement.
But then I realized what had changed, why black people suddenly felt
betrayed. He was forced to firmly reveal his choice, just like me.
When pressed, I had to reveal that I was more of a feminist than a black
nationalist in my heart - I literally could not get a degree, a piece of
societal "power" without landing in society's existing structures.
And when reality hit Obama - the reality of how you rise to power in the
United States - he couldn't continue to live between the lines. He had to
land and show that political office is more important to him than alliance with
African American community and, dare I say, black identity.
As an African American, I have personally been offended
by Obama's strategic deployment of black identity throughout his campaign.
And I couldn't figure out why more black people were not offended as
well. But now I realize - oh, they never saw him, and they weren't
listening to what he was saying. He has been symbolic beneficiary and
repository. We hoped that the mainstream white liberal rhetoric that
"we have overcome race" could be merged with "I'm black and I
know what time it is." He appeared to live both - or did he - or did
we just think his brown skin, strategic alliances with African American
leaders, and an intermittent black-ish accent meant we knew his politics?
"We hoped that the mainstream white liberal rhetoric that
‘we have overcome race' could be merged with ‘I'm black and I know what time it
is.'"
Maybe he manipulated, but I know we did. We
manipulated the sounds and images of Barack Obama into a dream for which some
of us had hoped.
I do believe that Obama is heartbroken that he had to choose
the presidency over Wright, white liberalism over black identity. I can
only imagine that this has been the struggle of his whole life, a black child
raised by white people. But now that we know where he lands when pressed,
what do we need to be doing black people? And if he will break with
Wright in order to win the presidency then, if and when he becomes president, I
wonder where he'll land on policy issues that affect black people.
Because the structures of law and policy will make him have to pick a
position on issue after issue, over, and over, and over again.
I guess one benefit of being a "professional"
black feminist is that I can see all of this unfolding. Maybe it's good I went
to graduate school after all.
Nikki Ayanna Stewart is a Ph.D. candidate in
Women's Studies at the University of Maryland and an educator of girls in
Washington, DC. She is completing a dissertation titled "Visual
Resistance: African American Girls, Visual Media, and Black Feminist
Education." She can be reached at [email protected].