Obama and Race in America

This examination of Obama and race in America has three themes. The first is his African-American identity, and concludes that it has marked and useful resemblances to John F. Kennedy's Irish Catholicism. It then examines Obama's record affecting race relations in America: what he has done and, as revealing, what he has not done. Finally, it seeks to set Obama's approach to race relations in the context of its rich and diverse history in this nation. Novelist Toni Morrison thought that Bill Clinton was the first Black president, and former White House Counsel Abner Mikva called Barack Obama the first Jewish president. Those more solidly situated on planet Earth may prefer to proceed on the assumption that Obama is in fact America's first Black (or as actor Morgan Freeman observed, our "first mixed-race") chief executive. In the face of this momentous swerve in the history of the American presidency, what can be said of Obama's record on race, the most fraught of American social issues? The first thing to take note of is how untypical of the common African-American experience was Obama's racial identity. The analog that most readily comes to mind is John F. Kennedy, our first Catholic president. This essay then examines the character and impact of Obama's participation in America's racial politics. Finally it seeks to set that record in the larger context of the history of the civil rights movement and the politics of race. BHO and JFK Obama's racial identity is far from simple. Rather than being a representative African-American, he spectacularly diverges from the type. He had an elite Kenyan father and a White Kansan mother; he spent his childhood with his mother and an Indonesian stepfather in Jakarta and with his White grandparents in Hawaii; he got a Columbia BA and a Harvard Law LLD; he had stints as a social worker *Corresponding author: Morton Keller, Brandeis University, e-mail: keller@brandeis.edu...