"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas," Barack Obama declared last week in a speech that seemed to awe just about everyone (wow, he talked about RACE!!!). "I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents; and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."
Excuse me? Has Barack never heard of Trinidad and Tobago, to take just one example?
It's great that Obama is not another middle-aged or elderly white man, the category which so far has had a permanent hold on the White House. Great that he is of mixed race himself, and actually has some experience of the outside world. But this sort of bragging does him no good.
For one thing, it exposes ignorance of the fact that there are other multi-ethnic countries in the world where racial mixing is taken for granted—in Trinidad and Tobago, over 20 per cent of the population is mixed—and most families have relatives scattered across other continents. He hasn't done his homework.
But worse than that, it exposes a shallow chauvinism which I at least had hoped Obama would eschew. It's a disease (only here! only us! nowhere else! we are unique! we are something else!). We have quite a bit of it in T&T (where carnival is "the greatest show on earth"). And we've all had more than a bellyful of it from GW Bush for the last eight years.
No doubt Obama feels he has to put his hand on his heart and sing this insidious tune in order to prove his loyalty and reliability. But he has to do more than that to deliver on his own promises. He has to teach America that he's not just a white man in disguise, mouthing the right, comforting things. That dealing with race is a whole lot harder than talking about it. That hollow bragging is not patriotism. And that grown-ups can love their country without having to tell fibs about it to placate the rednecks and the fundamentalists.
I don't expect Hillary Clinon or John McCain to tell the truth. They are politicians through and through. But Obama has set the bar higher, and has to show he can jump over it himself.
Excuse me? Has Barack never heard of Trinidad and Tobago, to take just one example?
It's great that Obama is not another middle-aged or elderly white man, the category which so far has had a permanent hold on the White House. Great that he is of mixed race himself, and actually has some experience of the outside world. But this sort of bragging does him no good.
For one thing, it exposes ignorance of the fact that there are other multi-ethnic countries in the world where racial mixing is taken for granted—in Trinidad and Tobago, over 20 per cent of the population is mixed—and most families have relatives scattered across other continents. He hasn't done his homework.
But worse than that, it exposes a shallow chauvinism which I at least had hoped Obama would eschew. It's a disease (only here! only us! nowhere else! we are unique! we are something else!). We have quite a bit of it in T&T (where carnival is "the greatest show on earth"). And we've all had more than a bellyful of it from GW Bush for the last eight years.
No doubt Obama feels he has to put his hand on his heart and sing this insidious tune in order to prove his loyalty and reliability. But he has to do more than that to deliver on his own promises. He has to teach America that he's not just a white man in disguise, mouthing the right, comforting things. That dealing with race is a whole lot harder than talking about it. That hollow bragging is not patriotism. And that grown-ups can love their country without having to tell fibs about it to placate the rednecks and the fundamentalists.
I don't expect Hillary Clinon or John McCain to tell the truth. They are politicians through and through. But Obama has set the bar higher, and has to show he can jump over it himself.
