July 7, 2008: Conservative Columnist Tallies Positives, Negatives of ‘Black-ish’ Presidential Candidate’s Race

Conservative columnist John Derbyshire writes a column for the National Review speculating that Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) enjoys a slight net gain of positive associations because of his race (Obama is African-American), even though the negative associations are quite high. Derbyshire refers to Obama’s mixed parentage—having a white mother—by qualifying Obama’s race as “black-ish.” However it is phrased, Derbyshire says that Obama’s “blackness” is “an obvious positive in that it gets him the enthusiastic votes of blacks and guilty white liberals.… Obama’s négritude will help him with a lot of politically vague types who are neither black nor distinctively liberal, but who have been oriented the Obama way by decades of watching Numinous Negro types saving the world, or defying it with a supernatural level of dignity and gravitas, in the movies and on TV.” Many voters like the idea of “finally” electing a black president, Derbyshire continues: “[A] lot of people might think that having a black president is a thing we shall have to try sooner or later, so it may as well be sooner. Let’s get it over with.” And, he adds, having a black president may win the US some kudos with foreign citizens. On the negative side, Derbyshire writes, many white Americans will vote against Obama because of his race and their own racial prejudice, even though, Derbyshire asserts, “[w]hites simply don’t care that much about blacks one way or t’other. Whites don’t regard blacks as consequential. White/black conflict is often annoying and occasionally scary, but it’s never existentially acute.” Some whites will vote against Obama, Derbyshire writes, as a way to “work… off resentment against other whites,” particularly liberal whites in the media, academia, and politics—the so-called white “liberal elite.” Many white Americans hate those “elitist” whites who, Derbyshire asserts, “cover up for minority misbehavior,” and will reject Obama as a way of thumbing their noses at these “elitists.” “There aren’t many ways that resentful whites can get back at the media and cultural elites who browbeat and lie to them,” he writes, “but they can at least decline to vote for ‘their’ candidate, even if they don’t object to the guy’s blackness per se, or to anything he has said or done.” Obama’s unusual name makes him an “exotic,” Derbyshire continues, and many Americans do not take well to such people. “Our country has always had a scattering of high-achieving exotics, but none of them ever got close to the White House,” he writes. “In their presidential preferences, Americans of all parties are conservative. Other things being equal, we prefer boring white guys.” Moreover, some will be suspicious of Obama because of his East African descent. Most American blacks are descended from West Africa, and thusly: “The minds of many nonblack voters—and perhaps some black ones, too—will contain, at some level well below the surface, a thought like: He’s a black guy, but is he one of OUR black guys?” [National Review, 7/19/2008] In late 2003, Derbyshire described himself as “a racist, though… a mild and tolerant one” (see November 11-18, 2003).