{"id":548,"date":"2012-08-29T21:09:55","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T01:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=548"},"modified":"2012-08-29T21:09:55","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T01:09:55","slug":"blackism-not-anti-colonialism-motivates-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/08\/blackism-not-anti-colonialism-motivates-obama.html","title":{"rendered":"Blackism, not Anti-Colonialism, Motivates Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D\u2019Souza\u2019s political documentary\u20142016: Obama\u2019s America<\/em>\u2014is beginning to soar at the box office.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Souza\u2019s film is based upon his book, The Roots of Obama\u2019s Rage.\u00a0 <\/em>Now, while I haven\u2019t seen the former, I have read\u2014and reviewed\u2014the latter.\u00a0 In his monograph, D\u2019Souza contends that it isn\u2019t Marxism, racialism, leftism, socialism, or liberalism that primarily informs Barack Obama\u2019s vision of the world. No, it is another sort of \u201cism\u201d that animates the President, an \u201cism\u201d that only a Third World immigrant like D\u2019Souza can really understand and appreciate.<\/p>\n

Obama, D\u2019Souza argues, subscribes to what the author calls \u201canti-colonialism.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

By virtue of having had their perceptions shaped in large measure by the Western colonial rule under which they had long lived, non-Westerners like the residents of D\u2019Souza\u2019s native India view the world very differently from the manner in which Westerners regard it.\u00a0 To put it more succinctly, from distrust to contempt, varying degrees of animus toward the West characterize Third World peoples.<\/p>\n

Obama, D\u2019Souza tries to persuade us, is like an inhabitant from the Third World in this respect.\u00a0 But now that he has amassed all of the power that comes with the United States presidency, Obama is on a quest to rectify what he perceives to be the litany of injustices to which America and the West have historically subjected the rest of the planet.<\/p>\n

It is this obsession with redeeming America and delivering justice to the Third World that accounts for the vast plethora of redistributive schemes that Obama has been busy at work implementing since the day he took office.\u00a0 It is this anti-colonial vision of his that informs Obama\u2019s innumerable circumventions of Congress via \u201cexecutive orders\u201d and \u201cczar\u201d appointments, to say nothing of his utter neglect of the opposition party.<\/p>\n

There is much to commend in D\u2019Souza\u2019s portrait of Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, however, his thesis fails.<\/p>\n

Obama is <\/em>primarily motivated, not<\/em> by an aversion to colonialism, but by devotion to Blackism. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBlackism\u201d is an ideology<\/em>.\u00a0 It is distinct from both biology and culture.\u00a0 Biological blackness is an accident of birth.\u00a0 Yet neither is there a choice on the part of most blacks to be reared in the traditions that constitute what we may call black culture.\u00a0 But Blackism consists of a few basic tenets that any biologically black person can will <\/em>to accept.<\/p>\n

Blackism is a unique and simple device of which any black person in search of racial \u201cauthenticity\u201d can effortlessly avail himself.\u00a0 Like all ideologies, it is a cliff note, so to speak, the Reader\u2019s Digest <\/em>version of the complex of black cultural traditions from which it has been abstracted.\u00a0 And, like all ideologies, it serves the function\u2014the illusion, really\u2014of making immediately accessible to all something that would otherwise require many years of (informal) education.<\/p>\n

Blackism endows its adherents with racial authenticity, even if they are light-complexioned with as much Caucasoid as Negroid ancestry, like President Obama, and even if, like President Obama, they had no more exposure to black culture than has an Eskimo who has spent his life in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

Blackism promises its adherents authentic blackness.\u00a0 Yet belief <\/em>in authentic blackness is also one of its tenets.\u00a0 There are still others, namely, belief in a Manichean-like universe comprised of \u201cracist\u201d whites, on the one hand, and, on the other, non-white victims of white racial oppression.\u00a0 The third and, for the most part, final tenet of Blackism demands commitment by its adherents to combating the legacy of white oppression \u201cby whichever means necessary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malcolm X made famous this last line.\u00a0 Indeed, it is to Malcolm X that any discussion of Blackism must refer, for Malcolm was the Blackist par excellence.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Malcolm Little was born and raised in the rural Midwest.\u00a0 While coming of age, the very light complexioned Malcolm\u2014George Schuyler had said that Malcolm wasn\u2019t black, he was yellow!\u2014associated mostly\u2014almost exclusively\u2014with whites.\u00a0 As Malcolm biographer Bruce Perry has shown, Malcolm\u2019s fair skin gave rise to insecurities regarding his racial authenticity.\u00a0 He felt that he had to prove that he was black enough, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Thus, there is a sense in which it can perhaps be said that not only did Malcolm subscribe to Blackism, he did as much as anyone to shaping it as a doctrine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malcolm X exerted considerable influence over Obama. Among the books to which Obama acknowledges his debt in his first memoir, The Autobiography of Malcolm X <\/em>is mentioned exponentially more times than any other.\u00a0 This is particularly telling when it is considered that, say, Martin Luther King, Jr. is mentioned sparingly.<\/p>\n

There are a few considerations that militate against D\u2019Souza\u2019s thesis that it is primarily <\/em>an anti-colonial mindset that animates Obama. These same points favor my contention that it is a commitment to Blackism that drives the President.<\/p>\n

First, if you follow D\u2019Souza\u2019s logic to term, you are forced to conclude that Obama should be especially sympathetic<\/em> to America, for America was never a colonial power and was, in fact, an object of colonial rule. In other words, if it is just colonialism that\u2019s stuck in Obama\u2019s crawl, then he should be equally disposed to favor any and all colonial peoples and just as disposed to disfavor any and all one-time colonial powers.<\/p>\n

But as D\u2019Souza himself inadvertently, but repeatedly, shows, it isn\u2019t colonialism<\/em> that Obama despises, and it isn\u2019t the subjects <\/em>of colonial rule to whom his sympathies extend.\u00a0 It is white <\/em>colonialism that he disdains and the non-white <\/em>subjects of colonial rule with whom he sympathizes.<\/p>\n

Second, like Malcolm X before him, Obama may very well view black Americans and the non-white inhabitants of the Third World as sharing in a common struggle. But this no more justifies concluding that Obama is an anti-colonialist than it justifies describing Malcolm X first and foremost in these terms.\u00a0\u00a0 Just as Malcolm X saw himself as a voice for black Americans before all else\u2014just as he was concerned primarily with authentic blackness\u2014so too is Obama most concerned with achieving racial authenticity.<\/p>\n

Third, D\u2019Souza grounds his thesis in the title of Obama\u2019s memoir: Dreams From My Father.\u00a0 <\/em>D\u2019Souza accentuates that it is his father\u2019s dreams that Obama is intent on bringing to fruition.\u00a0 Yet he ignores the subtitle of this book. He ignores that it is intended to be \u201ca story of race <\/em>and inheritance.\u201d\u00a0 D\u2019Souza neglects the fact that Dreams <\/em>recapitulates Obama\u2019s quest for racial identity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fourth and finally, not only does Dreams <\/em>purport to reenact Obama\u2019s <\/em>odyssey from the wilderness of self-obliviousness to the promised land of racial identity and, thus, self-discovery.\u00a0 As many a commentator has observed, Dreams <\/em>is carefully crafted so as to fit the meta-narrative that has defined African American literature for at least the last half-a-century. Alex Haley\u2019s Roots: The Saga of an American Family <\/em>exemplified this template.\u00a0 The Autobiography of Malcolm X<\/em>\u2014not, incidentally, also written by Haley\u2014also typifies it.<\/p>\n

There are undoubtedly many invaluable insights to take away from D\u2019Souza\u2019s 2016. <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0That Obama is primarily an anti-colonialist, though, is not one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is to Blackism, not anti-colonialism, that Obama has pledged his allegiance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

originally published at The New American\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D\u2019Souza\u2019s political documentary\u20142016: Obama\u2019s America\u2014is beginning to soar at the box office. D\u2019Souza\u2019s film is based upon his book, The Roots of Obama\u2019s Rage.\u00a0 Now, while I haven\u2019t seen the former, I have read\u2014and reviewed\u2014the latter.\u00a0 In his monograph, D\u2019Souza contends that it isn\u2019t Marxism, racialism, leftism, socialism, or liberalism that primarily informs Barack…<\/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-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBlackism, not Anti-Colonialism, Motivates Obama<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/08\/blackism-not-anti-colonialism-motivates-obama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blackism, not Anti-Colonialism, Motivates Obama\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dinesh D\u2019Souza\u2019s political documentary\u20142016: Obama\u2019s America\u2014is beginning to soar at the box office. D\u2019Souza\u2019s film is based upon his book, The Roots of Obama\u2019s Rage.\u00a0 Now, while I haven\u2019t seen the former, I have read\u2014and reviewed\u2014the latter.\u00a0 In his monograph, D\u2019Souza contends that it isn\u2019t Marxism, racialism, leftism, socialism, or liberalism that primarily informs Barack…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/08\/blackism-not-anti-colonialism-motivates-obama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-08-30T01:09:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Blackism, not Anti-Colonialism, Motivates Obama","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/08\/blackism-not-anti-colonialism-motivates-obama.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Blackism, not Anti-Colonialism, Motivates Obama","og_description":"Dinesh D\u2019Souza\u2019s political documentary\u20142016: Obama\u2019s America\u2014is beginning to soar at the box office. 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