Obama and Identity
Photo from his Flickr photostream, which is cool
Barack Obama is a bit of a strange candidate for America, but very natural in a way. Half-Kenyan, born in Hawaii, living in Indonesia, and representing Illinois, he is not your prototypical American leader. American leaders often either are or purport to be ‘sons of the soil’. There is also a strange dynastic streak running today. If Hillary Clinton was elected that would mean at least 24 years of consecutive rule by either a Clinton or Bush. Presumably in 2020 Laura Bush will find an aged Bin Laden, just as W found Saddam for his dad. Obama is entirely out of that metric, however, as a walking embodiment of globalization. His success is a testament to the true inclusiveness of America, and its status of a nation of change.
Obama is in many ways like myself, a product of the modern age of communications and international travel. By a different shuffle he could be Kenyan, Indonesian or any number of things, but he ended up in Illinois. His sister married a Chinese/Canadian, making his identity that much broader. In many ways this seems un-American, one thinks an American is white and landed in the MidWest, but that is just the temporary view from what is actually a moving entity. America is a nation of immigrants, and in the future it will be a minority white nation. It is also at the center of international commerce and travel, and it is in many ways the natural home for globalized citizens like Obama.
In many countries globalized is a bad word. In many parts of Sri Lanka foreigners cannot buy property, they cannot become citizens in much of the Arab World, and many are simply not allowed into countries like North Korea. It is, however, a natural fact of this world that people will move, intermarry, be born in odd places and move again. One place at the nexus of travel and work is America, and it’s sorta fitting that Obama has emerged. He is a representative of that settlement hope of America, and of the world.
In an age where national borders mean less and less, many culture react by drawing inwards. Trying to freeze one particular moment of their history and saying ‘this is us’. Like Sri Lankans saying ‘we are Sinhala Buddhists, we eat this, we wear this, and we are this’. This neglects one core fact of Buddhism itself, which is impermanence. Any picture of a culture is just that, a momentary photography. Sri Lanka’s people, religion, food and identity are imported, modified and are only distinctly ‘ours’ in the snapshot view. All nations are, in fact, temporary islands in the stream. There is far more that binds us than tears us apart, but the illusory permanence of the nation state causes much suffering in the world.
America is the de facto leader of the free world, by virtue of economy, history and chance. Not elected in any sense, unless you could the dollars flowing that way. As such it is chance that you get a bunch of Germanic/Christian derived white guys messing with the Middle East, but that’s the way things turned out. America is active globally, but its leaders have not been in any way representative. Few have lived abroad, spoken foreign languages or have had to deal with ‘foreigners’ in the very real sense of family. This is not to say that scholarship and the work of statesmanship don’t go along way, but America is still identified as an other. This trend was deeply exacerbated by the aggressive and incompetent foreign policy of Bush, and now America’s image has dropped tremendously across the globe. To quote the Pew Global Attitudes Survey,
Favorable opinions of the United States have fallen in most of the 15 countries surveyed. Only about a quarter of the Spanish public (23%) expresses positive views of the U.S., down from 41% last year; America’s image also has declined significantly in India (from 71% to 56%) and Indonesia (from 38% to 30%).
However, America is still far preferable to that other coming pole of power, China. China represses religions and AIDS activists, harvest organs from prisoners, and backs the worst regimes in Sudan and North Korea. They are a bankrupt shell of ideology, driven more by money and growth than any underlying strength of Constitution. America still has work to do as a global leader, and Obama could do a lot for that with just himself. His father was raised Muslim, his middle name is Hussein (the honored grandson of the Muhammed) and his face could be a great many races. And yet, through all that, American white bread voters seem to like him. I don’t think he’ll hold up in the conservative Democratic primaries, but he is a hope for the future.
Also, as these passages indicate, Obama is something of a blank slate that people project upon. In terms of policy and ideology he’s precious thin, but he does seem to listen, and he does seem like a nice guy. I dunno if that is enough to carry an election, but I certainly think that he would be good for an America struggling to understand itself and its place in the world. America is called the leader of the free world, and Obama certainly has the biography to lead it. Whether he can win an election in America, however, is the question.
[...] Indi.ca has a post on identity in politics, now at centre-stage because of Obama in the US. “Obama is in many ways like myself, a product of the modern age of communications and international travel. By a different shuffle he could be Kenyan, Indonesian or any number of things, but he ended up in Illinois. His sister married a Chinese/Canadian, making his identity that much broader. In many ways this seems un-American, one thinks an American is white and landed in the MidWest, but that is just the temporary view from what is actually a moving entity.” Neha Viswanathan [...]
Ironically, the cleverness of the Obama campaign lies not just in the celebration of his ethnic hybrid but also his commonness- the fact that he suffers from the same human flaws that every other American can identify with. From quitting smoking, to struggling through high school, his focus lies in the imperfections of day to day living and lots of people can identify with this.
We as Sri Lankans can learn much from this. I agree that identity in the global age is amorphous and should be celebrated to break down the existing artificial boundaries of race, religion and ethnicity that attempt to define us. I also think that we should look for the common threads, those human flaws and emotions that allow us to identify with those around us.
dude, excellent! at rnb checkin kottu. I don’t fucking believe myself! anyway, thnk ths is ur best post yet!
That’s classic man Indi:
Like Sri Lankan’s saying ‘we are Sinhala Buddhists,…”
Good post though.
“in the conservative Democratic primaries”?
i thought the party primaries were more ‘liberal’ than the country at large. but then if they dump him some ppl will need an excuse and ‘conservative’ will fit right in.
btw restrictions on buying property and citizenship are not exclusive to certain not western countries. various types of restrictions are there in usa, eu, australia, japan etc.as well. ( difference is they do not call them that.) recent blocking of a port deal in us bc company was from dubai ( a country in some respects more liberal than many other places, though not so in others) is a good example. now where did obama stand on that ?
or in any issue remotely controversial and not popular with the democratic party base ? he does know how to sit on a fence and look good while doing so, but how long can he do that in a campaign?
then there is that latent racist guilt complex of certain type of ‘caucasians’. “we are definitely not racist bc we watch oprah , think michael jordan cool, complain when shilpa shetty gets insulted in big brother , and consider voting for obama”. which btw though rather comical is ‘good’, and as joe klein said in time magazine last year ‘give people a shortcut to express their better instincts’. whether the shortcut will go so far as to actually vote is another thing .
just to clear up, i don’t think there is any serious racist feeling in vast majority of americans or other ‘whites’, any more than there is any racism here in vast majority of sri lankans. hype, propaganda, political correct statements, fudge, and speculations based on hype, do not matter. what does in the end are the facts. actual votes, actual discriminations, actual pogroms and riots if any, actual stereotyping statements like ‘all whites/blacks/arabs/sinhalese/tamils are stupid/violent/terrorist supporters/racists ready for a pogrom”, etc.
on that basis all we can say at the moment about obama and his significance is that he appears to be a good smart politician who knows the tricks of the trade. he won the senate seat partly bc original republican candidate (who actually withdrew very late in the race) and democratic primary opponent were both hit by scandals ( deservedly ). whether he is a symbol of anything, is better be judged after the event if there is one. now it’s just hype and fandom.
correction to my comment
“as joe klein said in time magazine …” should be read “as obama said in response to joe klein article in time mag….”
sniggums , you mention that the … cleverness of the Obama campaign [is] also his commonness – the fact that he suffers from the same human flaws that every other American can identify with. … We as Sri Lankans can learn much from this.
Have you read any about “power distance” as a cultural descriptor? Check out Geert Hofstede. I know hardly nothing about politics in SL besides the multiplicities of ministries; what would Sri Lankan voters think of a leader who eschews splendor and doesn’t pander to jewels and educations?
This, I think, is a separate point from leadership styles:
I agree that identity in the global age is amorphous and should be celebrated to break down the existing artificial boundaries of race, religion and ethnicity that attempt to define us. I also think that we should look for the common threads, those human flaws and emotions that allow us to identify with those around us.
though they do have the “I am like you” focus in common. I think this erosion of identity borders and celebration of what’s good in the universals is happening, sometimes consciously, right now — can’t WAIT to see what happens with the expansion of communication the One Laptop per Child project will spark off.
Liz, thanks for the link. I understand that the notions of self and identity and their boundaries are constructed at the various strata of power and it would fallacious to say that one leader can come in and change the way we perceive ourselves. It could however be, that we elect a leader because he identifies himself the same way we identify ourselves. It is a bit of both really, and it is symbiotic. The fact that Obama has proceeded thus far, indicates some kind of change/evolution in the way some Americans perceive themselves,just because he is so atypical a candidate. How great that change remains to be seen in the outcome of the polls to come (this is based on the assumption that the US elections are representative of the populist vote).
Yeah there is and has been a conscious effort to highlight ‘universals’, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem enough- our present govt with its cabinet is an attestation to this. The politics of ethnic coalition only demarcate the identity borders further. Proportional representation has ensured that along with incompetence the only thing our politicians have in common is the lack of respect outside their ethnic group. So maybe we need people like Obama in power. Question is, what more can we do?
I think Liz’s point was that Sri Lanka has larger Power Distance between authority figures and their subordinates than the West does. This can be seen in organisations. We expect our boss to have all the answers. In the UK and the USA this is not the case. Maintaining power distance is necessary sometimes because cultural values and beliefs are nearly impossible to break.
Like any other politician Obama has found a way to fool voters and become president. He’s selling his black heritage to all the African American population in the US. African Americans make up a good percentage of the US population, so if he manages to woo many of them he will have a good chance of becoming president. I have no problems of having an African Americans president and I am not a racist but Obama is not a clean character either. He smoked pot, booze and did many bad things in his youth. To get a clean image he wrote a book some time back telling what he did when he was young and how wrong it was. In other words he immunized his past. (CNN)
Anyway I don’t think he’ll get the top job, because there are more experienced contenders such as Hillary and ex NY mayor Gugilaini. Remember the 2004 elections, Kerry was a sure winner but at the last moment Bush won again. If is a better guy than Bush, Hillary he’d be wortha shot at the job, but I don’t know for sure. Lets keep blogging untill 2008 and see hat happens.