The Crossed Pond

So, Ralph Nader in discussing Obama’s race, has said:

“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader told the paper in comments published Tuesday. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”

So, there is certainly an implication that a black politician ought to be focusing on black issues, which he puts in the context of Obama (Nader’s main opponent in the General Election, at least in Nader’s mind; one might suggest that obscurity is Nader’s biggest problem) not being different apart from his race. Now, if Nader weren’t running, that’d be one thing, but Nader is running so, from his point of view, he obviously needs to paint Obama as just another standard politician. It seems pretty clear that the racial comments are then supposed to divide Obama from his black support; the idea that black politicians should pay extra special attention to black issues is a contestable one, but there’s certainly no doubt that the black demographic is the most dependable component of Obama’s support so, in his case, there is certainly a “what are you going to do for us?” question even aside from the shared racial heritage.

Obama did have to respond, I think, and the reason he has to respond is, in fact, because Nader is pretty much right with this:

Nader also said Obama is making a concerted effort not to be “another politically threatening African-American politician.”

“He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”

Now, ‘white guilt’ is a charged term but it seems to me that the essence of Nader’s analysis has legs. I don’t think that it’s Obama’s ‘fault’ (although Nader tries to portray it as such) but I do think that it’s essentially true. Obama just can’t let himself get painted into the Jesse Jackson mould, can’t seem to be a Race Warrior from the oppressed side because he’s competing for the votes of group from whom the oppressing Race Warriors were drawn. Indeed, that’s a large part of the political promise of ‘transcending race’, which is something you have to do if you’re considered to be from the impoverished minority but which can, as Nader crudely puts it, become an actual advantage with some of those voters.

So, why do Nader’s comments leave a bitter taste? It’s certainly not because I like Nader and am disappointed in him — I think that he’s allowed his ego to far outstrip his appeal, which for me is very limited* in any case — but it’s because of the way he’s couched it. ‘Half African-American’, the presumption that he should be looking after his fellow black Americans (even though he’s only ‘half African-American’; why did you make that distinction, Ralph), the immediate leap from ‘blacks’ to ‘ghettos’, the idea of ‘talking white’ and the mention of ‘white guilt’. Even in the context of Nader considering himself to be competing with Obama, it’s somewhat unpleasant even though one or two of those elements would have been OK in what is, if not a consistent argument, one made up of defensible components.

*Limited in the way that zero is limited.