Dark thoughts

How much does it matter that Barack Obama is black?

I guess much of the Caribbean was watching his acceptance speech in Denver last night (except people in Jamaica and Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who had more immediate things to worry about). With its largely African ancestry and its dislike of the hard right, the Caribbean naturally gravitates towards Obama. Last night he did his best to look presidential — soberly dressed, trim, fit, authoritative, articulate, aggressive without being crude. If Americans have any brains left at all after eight years of Lil' Bush, this is the man they will elect in November.

But there's a lot of scepticism in the Caribbean about whether they will. For one thing, Americans have become so militarist that they think they are electing, not a president, but a "commander-in-chief". That's how the debate is framed: is Obama strong enough, old enough, firm enough, experienced enough, to be a "commander-in-chief"? Code: would he be willing to bomb Iran, keep possession of Iraq, protect Israel and screw the Palestinians? Sadly, Obama has to stick out his jaw and pretend that, yes, he would. But everyone can see that Obama is not a militarist: he is an instinctive peace-maker and consensus-builder. When it comes to the crunch, that may not do him much good.

But then: maybe the "commander-in-chief" thing is itself code for "The man is black." Historically, African Americans have been inferior beings in the US. Gradually accepted, integrated, allowed to vote and sit at the front of buses etc., but still, somewhere deep in the American psyche, other. The Caribbean is well used to racism in all its disguises, and knows what many Americans are thinking, maybe without knowing it. "Can we trust a black man in the [aptly named] White House? Could he really be as good as a white man? No matter how smart, does he really see things as we see them? And a black woman as First Lady? Are we ready for this?"

And they look at John McCain, already well into his seventies, looking like a genial grandfather, wisecracking and plain-talking, looking solid and dependable and totally and unmistakably American, looking how a commander-in-chief ought to look, strong jaw and silver hair. And people think: hmmm, I like Obama, but maybe I'll play safe and vote McCain ...

And McCain will be pushing that image like mad over the next two months. The firm hand on the tiller. War hero. Unchallengeable patriotism. One of us. Paid his dues for America in a Vietnamese prison camp. (Of course, if McCain was as perfect as all that, he would not have been fighting in Vietnam in the first place — it was one of the nastiest, stupidest wars ever fought, and achieved nothng but horror and pain. The people with real guts refused to to go, valuing freedom of conscience over mindless conformity. But that's another story.)

And there's another thing I've heard people asking about Obama: "What will they do to him?" They shot two Kennedys and Martin Luther King (the argument goes), turned Jimmy Carter into a helpless clown, and impeached Bill Clinton — all people positioned to effect change of one sort or another. "They" being some sinister combination of "lone gunman", mafiosi and "military-industrial complex" (a threat articulated by a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address in 1956).

So if Obama wins (the question goes), how long will he last, what sudden catastrophe will overtake him? For there are forces in America which will not allow structural change, especially not the sort of change this black pretender is suspected of of seeking.

So, yes: how important is it that Obama is black?