The Roots of Obama's Rage (13 page)
Read The Roots of Obama's Rage Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
In the mid-1960s, Malcolm X traveled to Africa where he visited more than a dozen countries, including Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, and Algeria. He had meetings with several of the new rulers of Africa, including Kenyatta in Kenya, Nkrumah in Ghana, Milton Obote in Uganda, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. “You can’t separate the African revolution from the mood of the black man in America,” Malcolm X said in a subsequent interview with two leaders of America’s Young Socialist Alliance. “You can’t separate the militancy that’s displayed on the African continent from the militancy that’s displayed right here among American blacks. Since Africa has gotten its independence through revolution, you’ll notice the stepped-up cry against discrimination in the black community.” And in 1971 Jesse Jackson drew the same connection in a typically Jesse Jackson way. Upon hearing that the United Nations was providing funds for poor, developing countries, Jackson submitted a request that the United Nations fund black America through his own group, Operation PUSH. Jackson’s appeal was based on the idea that blacks in America constituted a kind of poor, developing nation within the United States, and since he was the spokesman for black America, he was a deserving recipient of UN money. The UN declined to provide any funds, but hey, you can’t blame Jackson for trying.
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While these civil rights leaders all drew the parallel between anti-colonialism and the American black struggle, they were basically trying to fit the anti-colonial model into the civil rights model. In effect, they were saying: what matters most to us is our struggle in America, and now let’s show how our struggle over here is really part of this bigger struggle that’s going on around the world. Obama makes the same transition, but in the opposite direction. He figures out how to fit the civil rights model into the anti-colonial model. In effect, Obama is saying: what matters most to me is this big struggle between the rulers and the subject peoples across the globe, but I can understand and identify with the black struggle in America as a local skirmish within that larger conflict.
Even before he went to the Punahou school in Hawaii, Obama was introduced to the black American experience by his mother. She brought home audio recordings of Martin Luther King speeches and the music of Mahalia Jackson. At school Obama remembers reading James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and W. E. B. DuBois. He was especially impressed with Malcolm X, and probably got from him what he calls his “bad-assed nigger pose.” And it was a pose. With fine self-perception Obama writes of putting on a racial “costume” and “living out a caricature of black male adolescence.” He even tries to attribute his drug use to this rebel stance, although drugs were easily available in Hawaii and socially cool to try at Punahou, and perhaps no further explanation is needed than that.
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Obama’s racial posturing reached its zenith the day his grandmother Madelyn Dunham came home and asked that her husband drive her to work the following week. She complained that an aggressive bum had hassled her at the bus stop. “I gave him a dollar and he kept asking.” Weirdly, Obama’s grandfather accused his wife of only wanting him to drive her because the bum was black. “And I just don’t think that’s right!” he declared pompously. Now one might expect the grandson to at least attempt to defend his grandmother, who was working in large part to pay for his schooling. His grandfather was barely working at the time, so it was hardly an imposition for him to make the drive.
Instead, Obama responded thus to his grandfather’s accusation: “The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. . . . I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears.”
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But of course Obama’s reaction depends entirely on the pretense that aggressive bums are no cause for female alarm. Most likely Madelyn’s fears would not have been provoked had she been joined at the bus stop by a black man in a suit. Her anxiety, in other words, was not the product of baseless prejudice but rather a reasonable conclusion based on the facts of the situation. Even so, her grandson treats her like a kind of closet bigot. This shameful episode is partly excused by Obama’s youth, although, as we will see, Obama brought it up again in his mature years. On that occasion he much more inexcusably exploited it to obtain political cover for himself.
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But of course Obama’s reaction depends entirely on the pretense that aggressive bums are no cause for female alarm. Most likely Madelyn’s fears would not have been provoked had she been joined at the bus stop by a black man in a suit. Her anxiety, in other words, was not the product of baseless prejudice but rather a reasonable conclusion based on the facts of the situation. Even so, her grandson treats her like a kind of closet bigot. This shameful episode is partly excused by Obama’s youth, although, as we will see, Obama brought it up again in his mature years. On that occasion he much more inexcusably exploited it to obtain political cover for himself.
Obama discussed his grandmother’s alleged fear of blacks with one of his grandfather’s buddies, a black radical and secret member of the Communist Party named Frank Marshall Davis. During the presidential campaign some conservatives highlighted Davis’s Communist ties. This provoked John Edgar Tidwell, who has edited a volume of Davis’s writings, to protest what he termed the “McCarthy-era smear tactics” against Davis. Tidwell’s protests are in vain; in the book’s introduction, he himself admits that Davis was in fact a Communist for at least part of his career.
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Still, we will discover that this was not the most important thing about Davis as far as Obama was concerned.
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Still, we will discover that this was not the most important thing about Davis as far as Obama was concerned.
Davis, like Stanley Dunham, was from Kansas, and since Davis had a white wife, Stanley evidently thought he qualified as an excellent multiracial role model for his grandson. Grandfather would take Obama to Davis’s cottage where Obama would sit on the ground and watch the two men smoke, drink, play Scrabble, and talk. While discussing grandma’s racism, however, Davis spoke to Obama only in Stanley’s absence. Davis told Obama that no white person could understand blacks. “Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They’ve seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like.” Therefore, Davis concluded, “Your grandma’s right to be scared. She understands that black people have a reason to hate.” Once again Obama responds in dramatic fashion: “The earth shook under my feet, ready to crack open at any moment. I stopped, trying to steady myself, and knew for the first time that I was utterly alone.”
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Davis is important because he ameliorated that loneliness and became a kind of surrogate father for Obama, at least while he stayed in Hawaii. (Recall that Obama did not at this time live with either of his natural parents.) Even later Obama remembered Davis fondly, and when he quit his job as a financial researcher to become a community organizer, Obama wrote, “It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self.” Hawaiians who remember Davis say the man was just as likely to sport cut-offs and Aloha shirts. More important, Davis’s biographer points out that “his editorial philosophy connected . . . white supremacy and imperialism.”
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A recent book,
Writings of Frank Marshall Davis
, clearly demonstrates the centrality of anti-colonialism to the man’s writings.
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A recent book,
Writings of Frank Marshall Davis
, clearly demonstrates the centrality of anti-colonialism to the man’s writings.
Davis’s early work is focused on Black Power. He grew so frustrated with what he perceived to be the inherent bigotry of American life that when he saw the black actor and activist Paul Robeson praising Hawaii as a multiracial paradise, he packed up and moved there. In Hawaii, Davis was impressed by the absence of anti-black sentiment. In his column “Land of Ethnic Hash,” Davis writes, “You soon learn that in Hawaii you can’t tell an individual’s ethnic origin by looking.” There were prejudices, but “these are much more complex than those on the mainland. . . . Out here many dark Puerto Ricans are insulted if they are mistaken for Japanese; the Portuguese bitterly resent being called
haole
or mainland white; many Koreans will let you know right away that they are not Chinese.” So Davis’s philosophy became less black-centered, in fact less racial, and began to incorporate what he saw as wider currents of oppression and subjugation.
haole
or mainland white; many Koreans will let you know right away that they are not Chinese.” So Davis’s philosophy became less black-centered, in fact less racial, and began to incorporate what he saw as wider currents of oppression and subjugation.
I was particularly struck by Davis’s three-part series examining the fate of the world in the aftermath of World War II. Davis asked: would an international institution like the United Nations insist that all the major countries—including Russia and China—have an equal say, or would Britain and America dominate the postwar economic and political order? Davis focused his critical lens on a single man, Winston Churchill, whom Davis accused of seeking Anglo-American supremacy. Davis argued that since Britain was no longer powerful enough to hold its empire on its own, Churchill was pushing for America to join Britain in sustaining and indeed extending the old British empire. In Davis’s view, Churchill had a plan to use “strong arm tactics to bludgeon all other countries into submission,” and thus Britain and America could establish their joint sway over the whole world. Davis termed this prospect “super-imperialism.”
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Obama makes no reference to any of Davis’s writings and merely calls him “a poet named Frank.” But given Davis’s worldview, it is easy to see his appeal to young Obama. And given Davis’s antipathy for Churchill, a man whose colonial history Davis knew well, we can see where Obama learned this other side of the scourge of the Nazis. Perhaps we have a source here for why Obama removed that Churchill bust from the White House. But Davis wasn’t finished with Obama in Hawaii. Before Obama left home in 1979 to enroll at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Davis warned him about “leaving your race at the door, leaving your people behind.” Obama should beware of the establishment, Davis said, because “they’ll train you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit.” Davis counseled Obama to be on his guard and “stay awake.”
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At Occidental, Obama hung out, as he put it, with “the more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Frantz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.” In one of his classes Obama read Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
. He commented to a friend, “See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world. So I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.”
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Heart of Darkness
. He commented to a friend, “See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world. So I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.”
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As an analysis of Conrad’s novella, this is rather jejune—young Obama doing his best impression of Chinua Achebe. Achebe is the Nobel Prize in Literature nominee from Nigeria who wrote a famous critique of
Heart of Darkness
. Achebe’s analysis was much more subtle. He recognized that Conrad was a Polish expatriate who viewed colonialism from an angle much more distant and skeptical than that of British writers like Rudyard Kipling. Yet while Achebe found Conrad innocent of the charge of condoning imperialism, he found him guilty of the charge of condoning racism: “Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth.”
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Heart of Darkness
. Achebe’s analysis was much more subtle. He recognized that Conrad was a Polish expatriate who viewed colonialism from an angle much more distant and skeptical than that of British writers like Rudyard Kipling. Yet while Achebe found Conrad innocent of the charge of condoning imperialism, he found him guilty of the charge of condoning racism: “Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth.”
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The case against Conrad, however, is far from settled, even when it is advanced by a figure of Achebe’s stature. One of Conrad’s leading characters, Marlow, observes that “the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”
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Marlow is European, and obviously he’s speaking from the European point of view. Even so, he makes very clear his distaste for the whole enterprise of declaring other people inferior so that their land can be plundered. Racism in this framework is not about “what makes white people afraid” or about “learning to hate,” as Obama would have it. Rather, when you overpower other people and take their possessions, racism enables you to justify the appropriation by declaring those others to be inferior. Conrad recognizes the role that racism plays: it justifies Kurtz’s ivory-trading post. We shouldn’t be too hard on Obama for his C-plus analysis of Conrad; in later years he would receive much better and more personal lessons in the reality of colonial conflict and oppression.
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Marlow is European, and obviously he’s speaking from the European point of view. Even so, he makes very clear his distaste for the whole enterprise of declaring other people inferior so that their land can be plundered. Racism in this framework is not about “what makes white people afraid” or about “learning to hate,” as Obama would have it. Rather, when you overpower other people and take their possessions, racism enables you to justify the appropriation by declaring those others to be inferior. Conrad recognizes the role that racism plays: it justifies Kurtz’s ivory-trading post. We shouldn’t be too hard on Obama for his C-plus analysis of Conrad; in later years he would receive much better and more personal lessons in the reality of colonial conflict and oppression.
At Occidental, Obama became active in the student campaign to divest university funds from South Africa. This was Obama’s first involvement in student politics, and he spoke at a divestment rally on February 18, 1981. “There’s a struggle going on. It’s happening an ocean away. But it’s a struggle that touches each and every one of us. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. It’s a choice between dignity and servitude. Between commitment and indifference.”
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Those who listened carefully to Obama’s words that evening would have realized he was speaking a different political language than the other speakers.
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Those who listened carefully to Obama’s words that evening would have realized he was speaking a different political language than the other speakers.
They viewed South Africa through the prism of American racial conflict. Presuming a close analogy between Southern segregation and South African apartheid, they interpreted the South African struggle in civil rights terms. And this is how several scholarly studies such as George Fredrickson’s
White Supremacy
have typically treated the subject. But Obama’s perspective was wider: he recognized that the South African struggle was only incidentally an issue of black and white. Primarily it was a struggle between the colonizers and the colonized.
White Supremacy
have typically treated the subject. But Obama’s perspective was wider: he recognized that the South African struggle was only incidentally an issue of black and white. Primarily it was a struggle between the colonizers and the colonized.
South Africa had been settled by white Europeans, the Dutch in the seventeenth century and the English in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the Afrikaners (the descendants of the Dutch and French Huguenot settlers) herded much of the majority black population into separate homelands called Bantustans. Apartheid was established not merely for social and political separation, but also to enable the Afrikaners to exploit cheap black labor. This was how Obama viewed the issue, as the anti-colonial resistance struggle of his own day. For Obama the racism issue could be understood from inside the larger issue of colonial subjugation. Given the anti-colonial significance of the South Africa debate, it’s easy to see why Obama seized upon this issue, ignoring other hot-button issues of the time such as campus bigotry and affirmative action.
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