I’m still washing in the waves of Obama’s great speech last Thursday night. The most fascinating thing to me is that he did not speak of his blackness, at least as I recall the speech. He began by saying, "They said this day would never happen–" But it wasn’t just about a black guy winning Iowa. He wasn’t offering himself as a racial hero. He meant the insiders, the Hillaryites, the old school, the experienced. He did talk about his own background, but again as I recall, it was in strictly personal, highly-individuated terms: he was the product of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas.
Obama is the melting pot. Gone are the days of identity politics. Have you noticed that the young people who are supporting him don’t speak of him as black. We want a black man in the White House. Of course everyone knows this, but I believe his supporters actually are being color-blind, and Obama’s mixed-raceness makes this sort of new American faith possible.
The melting pot was out of favor in American life for the last generation. Nathan Glazer and D.P. Moynihan got rid of it in their book, and my people and the blacks helped to push it out too, by asserting our right to feel proud of who we are. I’m black and I’m proud. Or, I’m not going to hide my Jewishness.
We are all sick of identity politics. Identity politics is Sunnis v Shi’ites and Muslims v Christians. It is hatefulness. Have you noticed the American Express ad where the father and son go back to the old country, Norway, to rediscover their roots, and have all these Norwegian adventures, on their Amex card? It is a sweet ad. Then at the end of the ad they discover that they are actually Swedish, and so they must fly to Stockholm. Ha ha. The ad is based on an absurd premise, that people with Swedish roots think that their grandfather was from Norway. I’ve lived in Minnesota; people out there don’t make that mistake. What the ad is about is what Obama is about: This roots talk is in the end trivial, it’s time to get past it. Boy is America exciting right now!
