In October 1998 Toni Morrison famously said that Bill Clinton, a white man, was America’s first black president:
… white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.
What!? It sounded like something white liberals in New York would half-seriously say at a party. Not Toni Morrison. Not the author of “The Bluest Eye”. Not in the New Yorker magazine.
I was sure it was some kind of a mistake, but when I got the article and read the whole thing I found out she was serious, even if she did make the larger point that blacks, more so than whites, understood what Clinton was going through with the whole Monica Lewinsky thing: how he stood naked before the law, how his enemies were after him and there was little he could do.
Ten years later in a debate they asked Barack Obama, a man with black skin running for president, if Bill Clinton was the first black president. He said this:
I would have to investigate more of Bill’s dancing ability and some of this other stuff before I accurately judged whether he was, in fact, a brother.
He played it for laughs in what was otherwise a very serious debate.
What must Obama have thought of the question? Obama has spent years trying to come to terms with his blackness and here he is being asked about the blackness of a white man who never for one day or even one minute ever had to face these questions, much less their consequences.
Playing it off for laughs may have been the only graceful way Obama had of answering the question on sound-bite television. The question came out of left field and he had little time to frame an answer.
A few days later Dick Gregory brought some much needed common sense to the whole thing. He said, “Has Chelsea ever been pulled over by the white police because her dad was the black president?” He pointed out that Bill Clinton does not know what it is like to drive while black.
What makes you black is not poverty or a love of McDonald’s or growing up without a father. It is not even a certain nakedness before the law. It is not a way of talking, acting or dressing, like wiggers and assimilated Negroes think. It is having to live in a black skin in a white world.
So Clinton is not black in any important sense. Tiger Woods is black even if he lives in the Cablinasia of his mind, some perfect land where skin colour does not matter. And as for Obama, he is not mixed or biracial as some say, not in America, but just plain old black.
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You are so correct! Blackness is not a state of mind. Your mind and your way of thinking can change your skin color is unchangeable. Skin color is the first detail that people notice about you and Bill Clinton is a white man, there is no visible pigmentation present in his complexion. People wake up! Another great post Abagond
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We also need to be aware that B.C. has pulled the race card so much during the election year of 1992. He put both Jesse Jackson and Sister Souljah in their proverbial places as well as executing a Black man to prove to anxious Democratic whites that he’s for law-and-order unlike Michael Dukakis.
So I don’t buy into the idea that Clinton is the first Black president just because he can shake hands with us and play the sax.
S.
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Touche! Not to mention when he turned back the Haitian refugees and what he said in South Carolina about Obama…
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Bill Clinton the first Black president, N-Word Please! I’ve been checkin’ out your blog Abagond, and I’m likin’ what I read…
Bill and Hillary have lost their mythical “Ghetto Pass” w/ Hillary’s piss poor campaign management skills and kitchen sink style tactics. The idea that she cannot win is mathematically very real, but it is being paid no mind by the Clinton camp. It’s as if it (the democratic party) is theirs to do with what they want.
I think I’m digressing, so I will stop, but @ the end of the day Bill Clinton endorsed 3 Strikes Law & he either ignored or opposed the disparate sentencing for people convicted of crack and powder cocaine offenses… but hey, when you play a mean Saxophone people forget about all that…lol
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LOL!
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Toni Morrison is a big influence on me, and I even remember reading that back when it first came out in the New Yorker. Because I was already familiar with her take on the “tropes” of race, I thought, and still think, that she meant that he’s “black,” not that he is black.
She meant that he projected a lot of characteristics that have been coded in our society as black. Hey, it’s a reason that a lot of black people liked him, right? He could get away with it, though, because he’s white.
I think Morrison’s point was also that if a “real” black politician (one like Obama, that is) were to project the same “tropes,” he or she would never make it the appropriately named White House.
Obama is showing that to be the case. The rules of the game say that because he is black (nevermind that he’s actually biracial), he can’t project the kind of tropes associated in the American imagination with blackness that Clinton could. Then he’d be “too black.”
The Reverend Wright mess proves all of this to be true. If Wright and Obama were white, it wouldn’t be a mess.
I blogged a bit more about this racial difference in politics, in case you’re further interested:
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2008/05/hold-black-people-to-higher-standards.html
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I see what you mean: Clinton can act blacker than Obama because of his white skin. Interesting.
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“[What makes you black] is having to live in a black skin in a white world.”
What a perfect summary! I wish that more people would stop trying to “act” black; they need to just be themselves. It’s impossible to act black because there are various types of black people. So-called wiggers are foolish. (I hate that term, because it makes it seem like black people are niggers.) Also, black people need to stop trying to live up to this ridiculous stereotype that black people need to be a certain way. So many young black people lose out on so much because they believe that they are not correctly being black. It’s really sad. “This, above all, to thine own self be true.”
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I agree. When you try to “act black” you do two wrong things: First, you miss out on who you truly are, who God meant you to be. Second, you strengthen the stereotypes people have, which makes things harder for all blacks.
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I agree with Macon. If Clinton had said that the Boston police “acted stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates, I doubt you’d have seen 1/10th the uproar. White America can elect a black president, but that black president must be stripped of his blackness and seem raceless. Obama had to walk a tightrope of presenting himself as raceless(or post-racial) to whites, yet still not forget that he is a black man in a white society(full of whites that think race is no longer an issue) he must navigate. His difficulty in navigating this became clear with the Rev. Wright fallout as well as the professor Gates incident. He now tries to avoid racially polarizing issues at all costs. Clinton never had to deal with such things. Jimmy Carter had the freedom to say that he felt race played a role in the election, Obama himself is not free to say the same thing. Telling the truth would have cost him the election.
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i really like your blog. It answers a lot of questions i would love to answer when i am out and getting dragged in to a racial debate with clarity. A lot of times when dealing with ignorant people emotions can get in the way of a clear,cogent well thought out answer to some race questions.
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How do we play the ‘game’ without losing blackness and im not talking about being a ball player or entertainer?
Why do white people always want ‘us’ to smile when were just chillin or in thought or walking down the street…does it make them feel more comfortable.Is a straight black face threatening?
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From what I understand, many Brazilians would probably agree to some extent with Tony Morrison’s assessment because in that country “race” is in part a function of lifestyle, culture, and socioeconomic status. I think you even see some of that attitude here in the States as well. As Mel pointed out on another thread, the term “black” in the US is associated with growing up in the “Hood”, being poor (at least as a kid), using slang, and eating “soul food.” Some of this applies to Bill Clinton, but not to Obama and Tiger Woods. The fact that both of them are of mixed background and don’t really possess these cultural traits affects the public’s perception of them. That’s why Obama could get elected President and Jesse Jackson couldn’t.
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” Mel pointed out on another thread, the term “black” in the US is associated with growing up in the “Hood”, being poor (at least as a kid), using slang, and eating “soul food.” Some of this applies to Bill Clinton, but not to Obama and Tiger Woods. The fact that both of them are of mixed background and don’t really possess these cultural traits affects the public’s perception of them. That’s why Obama could get elected President and Jesse Jackson couldn’t. ”
I always thought of him as more country than black. I think people tend to confuse being ghetto/country with black. Whites tacked this on bp to make themselves feel better about themselves. I think it’s pointless to try to act “black” because at the end of the day you what you are. I look at it as I’m black and people have eyes to see that for themselves. I can tell you that I can’t stand ebonics, soul food is meh (chinese food is alot better),dislike R&B and hip-hop(more meh) and think the dashiki are some of the ugliest peices of clothes I’ve seen. I mean, really, out of types of clothes in Africa, they pick the one that looks like a pokemon seizure. Guntiinos anyone. But at the end of the day, I’m still blacker than Bill Clinton because I’m actually black.
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I’m not sure that the term “white world” is valid. Um. Africa is black; the Caribbean is black. Asian countries are Asian-centric, and arab counties…well, you get the picture. There is plenty of discrimination to go around, whenever you are in the minority; not just to blacks in white societies, but to whites in black, asian, and arab societies. Feels bad and it becomes easy to develop equivalent stereotypes of the majority. “Stuff White People Say” might be a might stereotypical. Not saying it is wrong in many cases, and certainly is worth pointing out those bothersome tendencies.
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Anna,
a lot of Africa is Arab, you know?
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I have heard people mention Clinton being the first black president and always thought it was ridiculous. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why, besides the obvious physical reasons he wants. To an extent I “got” where the people who believe this were getting it from but I didn’t (and don’t) buy it.
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Abagond, how come my posts dont show up anymore…I dont even get a message saying they are in moderation,they just disappear…
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Clinton’s got more Black swag, or soul, than the current ‘Black’ president lol
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Usagi writes:
“I always thought of him [i.e., Bill Clinton] as more country than black. I think people tend to confuse being ghetto/country with black.”
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As a Black person who was born in the South but reared by southerners in the Northeast, I totally agree.
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i ❤ ur blog, gracias
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You are mistaken. Genetically you are what your mother is. Therefore Obama is white not black. He could be considered mixed but predominantly white because that’s what his mother was.
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Cetj
That is actually incorrect and likely varies by country. When I go to the doctor, I have been told that you are whatever your father is.
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