A Peculiar Objection
Barack Obama’s candidacy disappoints me because he’s not what I would have wanted in a possible black President.
He doesn’t hail from the historical tradition of Black America (I think even Jesse Jackson raised this point), so it is much more difficult for me to think of him as a transcendent figure when there is no narrative of his family’s triumph over slavery and Jim Crow to appreciate. His choice of church in his mid 20s was, it appears to me, a purely political thing made by a newcomer —nothing he inherited, say, through a pious black grandmother or the larger Black Christian community. He is literally an African-American, not the Black American that I know —as a lover of American History and a son of the South— I will some day rightly embrace as my choice for President.
I can’t really justify this view as a matter of fairness or logic, but it is something I have considered. Mostly, I think Obama disturbs that romantic ideal I have of the first descendant of men and women enslaved here becoming the President of the United States. And, so, in a corner of my mind that has nothing to do with assessing the policies, preparedness, or strategic judgement of the next President, I will continue to harbor a certain resentment towards Barack Obama for the presumption in this accident they call his candidacy.
