For Barack Obama, or anyone else, to be asked to explain black American culture is not unlike being asked that old empiricist question, “What is the meaning of life?”
The answer requires another question: How much time do you have?
In at least two instances, Obama has been faced with this dilemma -- first, three months ago, after his wife, Michelle, told a Milwaukee audience that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country;” and now, in the relentless hoopla over his former pastor’s sermonic thunderclaps.
His attempts to elaborate about the how’s and why’s have only been frustrated by the media and public’s infamously short attention span and a craving for the short, sweet kernel that’s wrapped in a 10- to 20-second sound bite.
Obama went far in Philadelphia in March, trying to compress a nuanced, complicated and deeply historical matter into a chewable nugget. Even non-supporters gave him kudos for venturing onto terrain that had no modern politician had touched before.
A lot of people were listening when he delivered that treatise, but you have to wonder now how many people heard him -- which is to say, got him? Based on the incessant harping about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that threatens to dog the candidate till the end, you’d have to say not enough were able to handle such a big meal.
This was bound to happen to the first black person with a serious shot at the U.S. presidency. Whoever that pioneer had been (and whenever), he or she was going to be asked to explain, rationalize, unwrap and dissect elements of the black American culture -- not because they were new, but because they were particularized, if not unique. And because, until that point, non-black America refused to pay attention.
What the rest of the country understands about us, on the whole, comes from the point where black culture spills out of its neighborhoods and into the mainstream. And, in the absence of an understanding about what went on before that cresting, superficial impressions -- ergo, stereotypes -- thrive.
They have seen the markers of hip hop -- the music, the clothing, the lingo -- and they think they know our kids. They have been exposed to gospel music, and they think they know our churches. They know that we are disproportionately poor, have higher unemployment rates, suffer higher incarceration rates and shorter life expectancies, and they think they know our values.
The Quick Fixers don’t want to be bothered with cause and effect; they don’t want to dig at the root of a situation, preferring the flowering weed. To borrow from Rev. Wright’s theme, the differences are mistaken as deficiencies.
Try, if you will, to unravel that in a single conversation or even a hundred. Try to explain that we are masters at compartmentalization, refusing to be taken in or taken down by every injustice, lest we turn into full-time fighters. Just as we can take a slight in the workplace or at the bank or in the cab line and move on, we can hear a preacher say things that offend us and hold our seats. We are discerning creatures, not lemmings, after all.
Now, go tell that.
The fact is, you can read black history in a book, but you can’t live it there. You can’t impart it in a sermon nor even in a long and thoughtful speech in Philadelphia. You can’t pick it up by dropping your pants below your rump or by corn-rowing your hair.
Whether it registers is still another matter. Unfortunately, the public clamors for a simplicity that belies the black experience. And not even the erudite, enchanting Barack Obama can fix that.
