Barack Obama’s impressive speech did something, today. It took the Obama Movement’s ideals about challenging the political status quo way beyond rhetoric and deep into the risky and dangerous realm of racial guilt, anger and resentment. In confronting the issue Obama gets to the deepest wound in our shared American experience and lances the infection with frank and honest public discussion about attitudes and experiences that until now were reserved for private conversations.
Obama took real risk with his speech, and while the "reviews" from the MSM aren’t quite in yet, the buzz in the blogosphere seems to indicate that he hit it out of the park. Hillary could have done much the same thing with the issue of sexism in America – had she had the political courage to do so. As it is, little she could say at this point could adequately match his moral position without sounding trite – what’s a rich white lady going to say about race and class in America that will add to the discussion? Obama had her rhetorically outclassed, using every persuasive tool in his oratorical toolbox, from the moment he first opened his mouth.
And as a result, Hillary got served.
Say what you will about African-American culture – and you will – but there is no denying the fact that it has been the vital engine in the cultural dynamo of American popular culture. From the Blues to Jazz to Rock to Hip-Hop and beyond, the musical traditions and derivative lifestyle elements of wave after wave of American culture has had its cradle in African American culture. White people in America have known it was chic to borrow such elements as music, dress, and slang from the oppressed racial underclass since the time of the minstrel shows of antiquity.
The culture of black people in America excels at artistic cultural expressions, and the culture of white people in America excels at stealing those expressions, re-packaging them for mass-market consumption, and eventually diluting them of essentially all reference to their African American origins – or at least popularizing them until black folks get sick of hearing it, and end up creating new ones. This is the Great Circle of American Cultural Life. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we have – and with it, we’ve been able to enforce our cultural hegemony on the rest of the world to the extent that the French are in open rebellion against Americanism. Silly Frenchies.
One of these elements arises out of the competitive dancing competitions that go in and out of vogue in black America. And one of the quaint expressions that has entered the mainstream, thanks in no small part to South Park and other agents of cultural dissemination, is getting served. When one group of dancers performs demonstrably and obviously superior to another, the lesser group is considered getting served. It’s a way of slightly humiliating the loser by pointing up their lack of skills and coolness in the face of adversity. And it’s an open initiation for the loser to double-down, come up with a credible response, and risk even greater humiliation for a second failure – or quietly withdraw from the competition.
(Ironic side note: Since I am a white man, I have no problem lifting this excellent metaphor from African American culture and exploiting it, secure in the knowledge that – by now – "getting served" is so hopelessly white that the African American cultural community will find another, better way of saying the same thing, so as to not sound trite. It’s not that white people cannot innovate – we simply think that black people are, on the whole, much cooler than we are. Note that this is true only when viewing the culture as a whole – there are broad cases of individual exceptions that would indicate that there are, indeed, plenty of black nerds and there are even cool white people – but I think we can all acknowledge where things tend to trend. I hereby dub the necessity for black America to continuously come up with cooler and cooler expressions in an effort to culturally inoculate themselves against the horrible theft and exploitation of their culture by misguided and majorly uncool white people as The Black Man’s Burden. I feel your pain. I even apologize. But I’m still stealing from y’all because, in general, I conform to the stereotype of the uncool nerdy white guy, and decades-old black slang is still better than fresh-out-of-the-box homegrown white slang at least 98% of the time. Dig?)
Instead of ducking the Wright controversy, as Hillary has tried to do with Ferraro, he has deftly stood on that third rail of American politics and staked out a bold position: that race matters, and probably always will, but that it should matter to us all and not just to our pre-determined ethnic groups. Obama hit the race issue head-on, months before the general election, and elegantly removed it from active play with this speech. Without pointing out blame he pointed out how this issue has been used to divide, not unite, and he casts light on using this darkest of magics in the future. Anyone attempting to play the race card on either side is going to have to contend with this speech, now. From now on, anyone who tries to contend that Obama is the "black candidate" is going to have to address this speech and what he says about America, and they are going to have to shut up about race or reveal their own prejudices publicly.
But for Hillary the price is even higher. Compared to that daring stance, Hillary’s less-than-dramatic stand on the role of mandates in universal healthcare seem . . . pedestrian and uber-wonkish, at best. She not only cannot even whisper about race any more in her run against Obama, her campaign has got to match his idealistic level of hope and promise or come out sounding like the nerdy kid in the back of the classroom. Anything she says at this point had better be brilliant, or she faces a double humiliation.
Barack stepped up, slapped his hope on the table and dared anyone to assail his well-reasoned, insightful, and well-thought-out position – and he did it in such elegant and patriotic terms that any lesser response will come off as jaded, cynical, mean-spirited and divisive. He staked out the high ground on race and elevated the conversation.
And Hillary got served.
Snap!