{"id":425,"date":"2012-04-18T18:39:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T22:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=425"},"modified":"2012-04-18T18:39:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T22:39:12","slug":"obama-and-the-ideology-of-blackism-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/04\/obama-and-the-ideology-of-blackism-part-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama and the Ideology of Blackism Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I wrote an article in which I contended that Barack Obama is a \u201cBlackist,<\/em>\u201d an adherent of \u201cBlackism<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 The latter, I explained, is an ideology.\u00a0 <\/em>As such, it differs in kind <\/em>from both biology and what has been called \u201cblack culture<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skin pigmentation is an accident of birth.\u00a0 Culture, consisting as it does of a complex of traditions that are years and years in the making, is an acquisition.\u00a0 Ideology, though, is the product of choice. <\/em>\u00a0What this in turn means is that the Blackist is a fundamentally different sort of being than the person who happens to be black.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It would be a mistake, though, to think that there is no <\/em>relationship between the ideology of Blackism, on the one hand, and black culture and biology, on the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Blackist must <\/em>be biologically black.\u00a0 This is far from a sufficient condition for subscription to Blackism, but it is necessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is how the ideology in question is related to biology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is related to black culture, however, in the way in which a grammar is related to the language to which it belongs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A language\u2019s grammar consists of propositions embodying rules and\/or principles.\u00a0 The grammar is a truncated version\u2014an extremely<\/em> truncated version\u2014of the language from which it is an abstraction.\u00a0 <\/em>What this in turn means is that the intricacies and nuances that distinguish the language as the language that it is, those of its particularities that have been shaped by all manner of contingencies, are inescapably lost in its grammar.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Blackism is an abstraction\u2014and a distortion\u2014of black culture.<\/p>\n

Now, that a grammar or an ideology distorts the language or culture from which it is derived is not itself a terrible thing\u2014as long as this is recognized.\u00a0 As long as we refuse to conflate the caricature with the person of whom it is the caricature, no harm is done.\u00a0 In fact, the caricature may even draw our attention to features to which we may have otherwise remained oblivious.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the ideologue is not likely to grasp that it is a caricature with which he is dealing.\u00a0 He is much more disposed to think that between one end of the ideology and the other, all that is worth knowing can be found.\u00a0 Moreover, the ideologue is wont to put the cart before the horse: the ideology he will treat as a timeless Truth by which the temporary and topical are to be judged.<\/p>\n

Yet it is<\/em> the tradition, (the language, the culture, etc.) that comes first; the abridgement (the grammar, the ideology) follows.<\/p>\n

Just as the rules of a grammar can be sandwiched between the covers of a textbook, accessible to anyone and everyone, a moral ideology too is designed to accommodate those who have not <\/em>embarked upon the far more time consuming and formidable task of acquiring a genuine education in a moral tradition.\u00a0 For example, the ideology of \u201cnatural rights\u201d or \u201chuman rights\u201d or whatever we are calling it these days is a small set of propositions that anyone <\/em>can easily confine to memory.\u00a0 Yet it is the distillation of a rich, centuries-old English political-moral tradition into which only a relatively small handful of the Earth\u2019s inhabitants have been educated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ideology of Blackism is a drastically oversimplified distillation of black culture.\u00a0 The latter is a way of life.\u00a0 The former consists of a few basic propositions.\u00a0 Any black person is eligible to endorse Blackism.\u00a0 Not every black person, though, has immersed him or herself in black culture.\u00a0 Thus, Blackism provides a fast track for any black person in search of racial validation: all he or she has to do is affirm the tenets of the ideology and, presto, <\/em>he or she is declared \u201cauthentically\u201d Black!<\/p>\n

There is no one for whom the ideology of Blackism is better suited than our President.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t be a stretch to say that it is a contrivance for people just like him.\u00a0 Black culture is as alien to Obama as it is to any white person.\u00a0 In fact, Obama was further removed from black culture than many whites (like me) who were raised in predominantly black cities.\u00a0 Obama, let us not forget, was reared by whites.\u00a0 The vast majority of his friends growing up were white. Not only did he never attend a public school, he attended nothing but the most prestigious of private educational institutions\u2014all of the way through law school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A correspondent leveled two criticisms against my analysis of Blackism and Obama\u2019s allegiance to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, he thought it curious that I would feel the need to devise a new word\u2014\u201cBlackism\u201d\u2014to reference an old concept\u2014\u201cracial consciousness.\u201d\u00a0 After all, it is to black racial consciousness that I refer, correct? So why not just say so?<\/p>\n

This objection misses the mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cRacial consciousness\u201d is a term that means very little because it can mean so much.\u00a0 In a multiracial world, it is impossible for anyone to literally be devoid of all racial awareness.\u00a0 We learn about ourselves as much from who we are<\/em> not <\/em>as from who we are. <\/em>\u00a0Thus, any black person, like every other person, has some \u201cconsciousness\u201d of the race to which he or she belongs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moreover, racial consciousness<\/em> is one thing; racial absolutism <\/em>is something else entirely.\u00a0 The Blackist differs from the black person not in having a greater degree <\/em>of race consciousness.\u00a0 The difference between the Blackist and the black person is a difference in kind.\u00a0 <\/em>The Blackist is one for whom racial consciousness consumes every other conceivable sort of consciousness, if you will. More clearly, for the Blackist, the creed of Blackism trumps all <\/em>other considerations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The term \u201cracial consciousness\u201d simply fails, and fails quite abysmally, to do justice to a reality that is significantly more complex that it would suggest. \u201cBlackism,\u201d in contrast, accommodates crucial metaphysical and moral distinctions that the vague \u201cracial consciousness\u201d never acknowledges.<\/p>\n

My critic also objected to my description of Obama as a man who differs from Jesse Jackson, Louis Farakkhan, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright only stylistically\u2014not substantively.\u00a0 While Obama does indeed possess \u201cracial consciousness,\u201d he claimed, it is unfair to lump him into the same class with these other \u201crace men.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I admit to being more than a bit stunned by this last.\u00a0 Let\u2019s think about this.<\/p>\n

Like the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson, Obama too worked as a \u201ccommunity organizer\u201d while living inChicago.\u00a0 And like Sharpton\u2019s and Jackson\u2019s enterprises, Obama\u2019s community organizing consisted of \u201corganizing\u201d blacks.\u00a0 And like their enterprises, Obama\u2019s required for its execution the routine employment of intimidation tactics that he brought to bear against banks and other businesses.<\/p>\n

Obama, like the foregoing Blackists, never fails to affirm the cardinal tenet of Blackism: Every act and every utterance, whether overtly or covertly, must <\/em>preserve and strengthen the narrative of perpetual White Oppression and Black Suffering.\u00a0 Subscription to this tenet explains virtually everything that Obama has done since he has been President (to say nothing of what he has done prior to this juncture).\u00a0 From Obamacare, his treatment of business, and his handling of the economy, to expressing solidarity with blacks regarding those racially-oriented incidences that never should have been national news to begin with, Obama has proven that he is bewitched by an ideology that insists upon rectifying, \u201cby whichever means necessary,\u201d the historic injustices that Whites have been forever inflicting upon Blacks.<\/p>\n

But there is much more proof in the pudding for my contention that Obama is a Blackist, substantively indistinguishable from other nationally known Blackists.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2014once more, a man with no roots in black culture\u2014entitled his first memoir: Dreams from My Father: A Story of <\/em>RACE and Inheritance.\u00a0 <\/em>Obama\u2019s is a story of a man on a quest for racial authenticity, i.e. Blackness.\u00a0 From beginning to end, Dreams <\/em>is chockfull of anecdotes of indignities and injustices that blacks\u2014mostly in the person of Obama\u2014have to live with on a daily basis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This in and of itself, I would think, would be sufficient to make my case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet there is one final consideration not to be overlooked.\u00a0 Let us never forget that for over two decades, Obama belonged to Jeremiah Wright\u2019s church, a church seeped in Black Liberation Theology.\u00a0 He donated large sums of money to this church, and he had Wright baptize his children.\u00a0 Obama referred to Wright as his \u201cspiritual mentor.\u201d\u00a0 Wright is a man who is good friends with Louis Farakkhan.\u00a0 He once endowed the latter with his \u201cLifetime Achievement Award.\u201d\u00a0 Though Wright considers himself Christian while Farakkhan regards himself as a Muslim, as far as their views on white\/black relations are concerned, there are scarcely any differences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now that Obama was as close to Wright\u2014his pastor <\/em>and \u201cspiritual mentor,<\/em>\u201d mine you\u2014as he was for all of that time renders inescapable the conclusion that he thinks along the same lines as the latter.\u00a0 And, for that matter, he thinks not all that differently from Farakkhan when it comes to racially-centered topics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The charge that I am guilty of employing a disreputable \u201cguilt-by-association\u201d tactic against our President is easily met.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wright is a Blackist extraordinaire.\u00a0 Obama sought him out and remained under his \u201cspiritual\u201d tutelage until it became politically inexpedient to any longer do so. Still, twenty years is a long time, and there can be no question that Wright\u2014with his Black Liberation Theology\u2014exerted a tremendous influence over Obama\u2019s intellectual development.<\/p>\n

Blackism is <\/em>an ideology distinct from \u201cblack biology\u201d and black culture.\u00a0 And Obama is a Blackist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I wrote an article in which I contended that Barack Obama is a \u201cBlackist,\u201d an adherent of \u201cBlackism.\u201d\u00a0 The latter, I explained, is an ideology.\u00a0 As such, it differs in kind from both biology and what has been called \u201cblack culture.\u201d\u00a0 Skin pigmentation is an accident of birth.\u00a0 Culture, consisting as it does of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nObama and the Ideology of Blackism Part II<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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