If race were not a highly significant matter in the U.S. today, it would not be so important to settle on Obama's racial identity. His skin colour defines him. If this were not the case, he could be running as a white man, given that his mother was white. Race is determinative. What it MEANS is as complex as Muwakkil's article indicates, whether the author has it exactly "right" or not. The fact that Obama does not have slavery in his past also has some significance. This is a powerful ghost from history that plays itself out in so many complicated …
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hesperia
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"We inherit not 'what really happened' to the dead but what lives on from that happening, what is conjured from it, how past generations and events occupy the force fields of the present, how they claim us, and how they haunt, plague, and inspirit our imaginations and visions for the future." -Wendy Brown, Politics Out of History
Posted to How Black is Obama?
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I am so frustrated that it isn't possible to talk about the impact of race (or gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity or past sexual history etc etc etc) without being told that it ought not to be used as an excuse. I certainly never said anything about excuses or playing the race card or anything like that. I will be happy when none of these identifiers is an issue. That's not the case now and it would certainly be nice, especially in a forum like this, if we could have an intelligent and engaging conversation without being reduced to infantile …
Posted to How Black is Obama?
- Joined February 14, 2008
- Last Visit February 15, 2008
- Location Canada
- Occupation law, poetry
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