I was motivated to post this commentary after PGA Golfer Tiger Woods' recent controversy. While surfing around online for titillating & tantalizing details about Wood's many mistresses, I stumbled across this article from the New York Daily News.
“The color of one's companion has long been a major measure of "blackness" — which is a big reason why the biracial Barack Obama was able to fend off early questions about his black authenticity.
"Had Barack had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him," Johnson Cooper said.
So do Woods' women say something about the intensely private golfer's views on race?
"I would like to say no, but I think it garners a bit of a yes," Johnson Cooper said”
This portion about the Obama's marriage supports a long held belief I have about Barack Obama's black supporters. On many levels Obama is foreign to the average African American. He was raised in the exotic locations of Hawaii and Indonesia. His mother is white, his father is Kenyan and his step-father Indonesian. Throw in an elite Ivy League education and he's certainly not your average African American male. Distance between him and the black community is understandable. One way to bridge that distance is through marriage. A marriage to an Asian woman or God forbid a white woman doesn't connect him to his constituents in the black community.
Enter Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, the perfect partner for Barack Obama. Born in Chicago, raised on the predominately black South Side, high school classmate of Jesse Jackson's daughter even her great-great grandfather was a slave in South Carolina, her black credentials are impeccable. She is Obama's ambassador to the mainstream black community. Conservatives have missed this point for the last several years, Michelle is Barack's direct link to the portion of the black community dominated by figures like Jeremiah Wright. If Barack Obama had married a blond Swedish white woman like Tiger Woods' wife Elin Nordegren, those connections would not exist and he would most likely not be our president.
During Obama's political career, he has heavily relied on African American support to win elections. He needed it to win a contentious Illinois U.S. Senate primary in 2004 and he needed it to beat the formidable presidential campaign of New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008. Without Michelle, these things aren't possible. The quote from the New York Daily News article is 100% honest, many African Americans would have viewed Obama much differently if the woman on his arm was white. Sure political views are part of the reason blacks don't support Clarence Thomas, but another factor is his marriage to Virginia Lamp Thomas, who is white. In this Washington Post article an African American is quoted saying about Thomas, “Here's a man who's going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can't paint himself white he'll think white and marry a white woman”.
That kind of backwards thinking is alive and well in the black community. Barack Obama has been completely embraced by African Americans and Michelle Obama's appeal to blacks especially black women is crucial. Michelle Obama has become a regular cover girl on black lifestyle magazines Ebony and Essence. This is a direct result of her popularity among black women. The very passionate critiques of America that make Michelle Obama controversial outside of the black community make her a rock star among socially isolated black women. Black women are extremely resistant to the idea of marring outside of their race. So when black women see Tiger Woods with multiple white female lovers, there's an immediate alienation to the golf superstar. Woods isn't a politician, he doesn't need millions of black female votes to win an election. Barack Obama political career couldn't survive that kind of alienation. Was Barack Obama's decision to marry Michelle Robinson, political? No, nobody could have foreseen Barack Obama's unlikely rise to the presidency. His marriage was a pure good fortune for him and a misfortune for the nation.
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