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A Short History of Whether Obama Is Black Enough, Featuring Rupert Murdoch

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People have been asking that since 2006, but what they mean by 
it has changed over time.

Rupert Murdoch has a very thoughtful question: Is Obama black 
enough? OK, maybe it’s not so thoughtful. The media mogul posed 
the question on Twitter:

Rupert Murdoch ? @rupertmurdoch
Ben and Candy Carson terrific.     What about a real black 
President who can properly address the racial divide?  And much 
else.
5:59 PM - 7 Oct 2015
  1,349 1,349 Retweets   1,188 1,188 favorites

Rupert Murdoch ? @rupertmurdoch
Apologies!     No offence meant.   Personally find both men 
charming.
5:14 AM - 8 Oct 2015
  200 200 Retweets   122 122 favorites

What does Rupert Murdoch mean by a “real black”? And how many of 
them does the 84-year-old Australian-born billionaire denizen of 
Manhattan’s fanciest districts know? The implication is 
offensive, sure, but it’s also remarkably banal. “Is Obama black 
enough?” is a question that’s been raised, debated, deplored, 
gnawed, and then shallowly buried, only to rise again, for as 
long as he’s been a national political figure.

What’s interesting—other than to see how many editors resorted 
to “black like me” jokes— is how the context for that question 
has changed over time. In the first phase, the question centered 
on whether Obama was “black enough” to both win over black 
voters and win a general election; as often as not, it was 
raised by black journalists. During the second phase, which 
lasted from Obama’s election until the end of his first term, 
Obama’s blackness was largely questioned and interrogated by 
white observers. (One might see this as a natural consequence of 
a society built on white supremacy: Having finally proved his 
blackness, Obama faced predictable pressure from whites.) In the 
third phase, the pendulum has swung back, as those questioning 
Obama’s blackness again seem to doubt his ability to connect 
with a demographic from which they believe he is alienated.

“What Obama Isn’t: Black Like Me,” Stanley Crouch, November 2, 
2006

One major early version of this claim, often from black 
journalists, concerns Obama’s reception among black voters, and 
whether anyone whose heritage wasn’t rooted in the slave 
experience was really a black American. In one of the earliest 
versions, the New York Daily News columnist writes, “When black 
Americans refer to Obama as ‘one of us,’ I do not know what they 
are talking about ... Obama makes it clear that, while he has 
experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, 
he cannot claim those problems as his own—nor has he lived the 
life of a black American. In Salon, Debra Dickerson made a 
similar argument: “Black, in our political and social 
vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves.”

Joe Biden, January 31, 2007

A second version of the question concerns Obama’s relationship 
with white voters. Senator Joe Biden ignited a firestorm when he 
implied that case, saying, “I mean, you got the first mainstream 
African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a 
nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

“Black Like Me,” Peter Beinart, February 5, 2007

My colleague, then writing at The New Republic, offered a more 
elaborate investigation of Biden’s point, arguing that white 
voters tend to divide the African-American community into good 
black and bad blacks. Obama benefits, he wrote, from being a 
good black, like Colin Powell: “For many white Americans, it’s a 
twofer. Elect Obama, and you not only dethrone George W. Bush, 
you dethrone [Al] Sharpton, too. But being the ‘good’ black is 
tricky. The more whites love you, the more you must reassure 
your own community that you are still one of them.” Beinart 
pointed to the struggles of Harold Ford Jr. and Cory Booker in 
this regard, but added, “Obama's African American wife, his 
connection to the black church, and his work as a community 
organizer give him racial credibility.”


“Is Obama black enough?” Ta-Nehisi Coates, February 1, 2007

My colleague, then writing in Time, excoriates Beinart and 
others: “For years pundits excoriated young black kids for 
attacking other smart successful black kids by questioning their 
blackness. But this is suddenly permissible for presidential 
candidates.” But Coates says Obama’s struggle with black voters 
came from the fact that, unlike white folks, they weren’t 
surprised to meet someone like him and wanted more. “Barack 
Obama's real problem isn't that he’s too white—it’s that he’s 
too black,” he wrote.

60 Minutes, Steve Kroft, February 11, 2007

KROFT: Yet at some point, you decided that you were black?

OBAMA: Well, I’m not sure I decided it. I think if you look 
African-American in this society, you’re treated as an African-
American.
“Is Obama Black Enough?” Gary Younge, March 1, 2007

The U.S.-based, British-born black Guardian writer surveyed the 
debate and tried to add some nuance: “There is—or should be—no 
debate about whether Obama is a black American. He is also, 
without doubt, a Kenyan-American. But the question of whether he 
is African-American or not remains hostage to interpretation.”

“The Joshua Generation,” Barack Obama, March 7, 2007

Speaking to civil-rights leaders in Birmingham, Obama himself 
made a case that the old divisions were irrelevant. He called 
the old leaders the “Moses generation” but added that it was 
only Joshua and a younger generation of black leaders, aware of 
but not tied to the 1960s struggle, that could bring African-
Americans to the promised land.

Barack Obama, August 11, 2007

The candidate arrives, with delay, to a meeting of black 
journalists and makes a joke about “CP time.” “I want to 
apologize for being a little bit late,” he says. “But you guys 
keep on asking whether I’m black enough. I figured I’d stroll 
in.”

Michelle Obama, February 1, 2008

The question faded for a bit, but after Obama routed Hillary 
Clinton in the January 2008 South Carolina primary, carried by 
black voters, Michelle Obama was asked to address it and deemed 
the questions “silly.” “That has nothing to do with me or 
Barack—that has to do with the challenges we are facing in this 
country and we shouldn't be surprised by them because we still 
haven’t worked through this stuff," she says.

“Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide,” New York 
Times, February 8, 2008

“While the senator had hoped his colorblind style of politics 
would lift the country above historic racial tensions, from Day 
1 his bid for the presidency has been pulled into the thick of 
them. While his speeches focus on unifying voters, his campaign 
has learned the hard way that courting a divided electorate 
requires reaching out group by group.”

Barack Obama, June 15, 2008

The candidate again cracks a joke about the questions. “You 
remember at the beginning, people were wondering — how come he 
doesn’t have all the support in the African American community. 
You remember that? That was when I wasn’t black enough. Now I’m 
too black.”


“Many Insisting That Obama Is Not Black,” Associated Press, 
January 14, 2009

Obama’s victory in 2008 couldn't quiet questions: “A perplexing 
new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama's racial saga: Many 
people insist that ‘the first black president’ is actually not 
black. Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan 
and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-
and-half, multiracial—or, in Obama's own words, a “mutt”—has 
reached a crescendo since Obama's election shattered assumptions 
about race.”

“Where's Dave Chappelle When You Need Him?,” Stephen Marche, 
July 29, 2009

Writing in Esquire, the white Canadian is amazed that Obama 
hasn’t solved structural racism yet, some six months into his 
term in office:

The economic crisis has predominantly hit non-white working 
class men; the collapse of the auto industry is threatening to 
destroy the basis of the Midwestern black middle class. Key 
matters for African-Americans languish the overincarceration of 
young black men that makes a mockery of American justice being 
the number one example. Government aid? That goes to bankers in 
Connecticut. If the President were white, there would be riots.
“Obama’s problem is that he’s not black enough,” Toby Young, 
November 3, 2010

A white British writer argues after the Tea Party midterm: 
“However you want to put it, Obama being just black enough 
helped him win in 2008. I think he now has the opposite problem. 
In 2010, one of the reasons he was punished by his core 
constituency is because he's not black enough.”

“?For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough,” Melissa Harris-Perry, 
April 27, 2011

Writing in The Nation, Harris-Perry suggests that one reason for 
Birtherism is that unlike black Americans descended from slaves, 
Obama knows his family history: “As a black man, President 
Obama’s confident and clear knowledge of his lineage is 
precisely the thing that makes his American identity dubious. 
Unlike most black people, he has easy access to both his 
American and his African selves.”

Morgan Freeman, July 5, 2012

Speaking to NPR, the black actor is supportive of Obama but 
draws a line. “First thing that always pops into my head 
regarding our president is that all of the people who are 
setting up this barrier for him ... they just conveniently 
forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white — very white 
American, Kansas, middle of America,” he says. “There was no 
argument about who he is or what he is. America's first black 
president hasn't arisen yet. He's not America's first black 
president—he's America's first mixed-race president.”

“Fear of a Black President,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, September 2012

Coates, who elsewhere criticizes Obama for espousing 
“respectability politics, notes how the president is constrained 
by the polity on race:

The election of an African American to our highest political 
office was alleged to demonstrate a triumph of integration. But 
when President Obama addressed the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, he 
demonstrated integration’s great limitation—that acceptance 
depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as 
black. And even then, full acceptance is still withheld.
Barack Obama, July 21, 2014

Praising code-switching, Obama makes an implicit rebuttal of his 
“authentic” blackness:

Sometimes African Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, 
there’s been the notion of “acting white”—which sometimes is 
overstated, but there’s an element of truth to it, where, okay, 
if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing 
that? Or why are you speaking so properly? And the notion that 
there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going 
to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain 
kind of clothes, that has to go.
Byron Allen, May 5, 2015

What brings questions about whether Obama is black enough back 
into the mainstream is the spate of killings of black people by 
police and Obama’s continued espousal of respectability 
politics. TMZ catches entertainer Byron Allen, and he unloads on 
Obama for referring to “thugs" in riots in Baltimore: “I say to 
President Obama, you have to remember who you are … It’s OK to 
the be president of the United States and also be a black man. 
President Obama is at this point a white president in black 
face. Black Americans would have done much better with a white 
president.”

Morrissey, August 26, 2015

The white English singer tells Larry King, “Obama, is he white 
inside? That’s a very logical question—but I think he probably 
is.” He explains later that he’s referring to relations between 
the police and African Americans: “I can’t see him doing 
anything at all for the black community except warning them that 
they must respect the security forces.”

Rupert Murdoch, October 7, 2015

The media mogul launches his ill-considered tweet about whether 
Obama is a real black. He later clarifies that he was thinking 
of a New York story on whether the president had done enough for 
the black community. The problems with Murdoch’s question are 
fairly obvious: First, who is he to judge Obama’s blackness? 
Second, what evidence does he have connecting “real” blackness 
to policy outcomes? Third, does “address the racial divide” 
mean? Even Obama’s conciliatory remarks on race have brought 
howls of rage from, well, Murdoch’s Fox News.

But Murdoch’s bringing Carson into the equation seems to presage 
a new iteration of the question. It can only be a matter of time 
before journalists will start asking whether Ben Carson black 
enough to connect with black voters.

Sorry Ben, we don't need another nigger president after obama.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/a-short-
history-of-whether-obama-is-black-enough-featuring-rupert-
murdoch/409642/
  

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A Short History of Whether Obama Is Black Enough, Featuring Rupert Murdoch "Bradley K. Thurman" <bks@panix.net> - 2016-10-15 13:07 +0200

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