For a variety of reasons, Obama chose not to pull back … which left him in the ugly position of having to carry out twenty years’ worth of moderate political triangulation in a span of fifteen minutes with a dozen cameras on him.

To use the Newsom comparison, there are definitely gay and lesbian politicians who, in their heart of hearts, support gay marriage and everyone knows it, but who call publicly for civil unions and have done so for years because they knew that you have to take the thing in half-steps and appear more moderate — and the gay community tacitly lets them get away with it. What they don’t do is hold fast to the more radical position for decades and then try to make a moderate of themselves within fifteen minutes, when they suddenly have to appeal to a demographic beyond their original base.

Witness when Clinton was on the Ellen show, and both she and Ellen knew damned well that the civil unions position was inconsistent and insufficient … but when Clinton came out with supportive but very moderate language about gay and lesbian partnerships without once mentioning the word “marriage,” Degeneres let her dodge on the subject. There was an unspoken “we’ll let you get away with this one” between them. Had Clinton been a total gay marriage devotee for years and then suddenly gotten wishy-washy, it would have felt like a lot more of a betrayal.

It’s just a matter of his trying to carry out two decades worth of triangulation in the space of fifteen minutes. That make sense as a metaphor?

So it’s not like I’m not used to seeing politicians look askance at stuff they’ve supported out of a desire to have a broader appeal. But this is the first time I’ve seen a politician spend two decades in a relatively radical atmosphere, use it to propel his career, and then disavow it.

It’s as if Gavin Newsom were running for Governor of CA having gotten vast amounts of support from the gay and lesbian community, being almost on the brink of making it, and suddenly talking about the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. You’d hear the howls of outrage from the far side of the Moon.

It does strike me that Wright is reacting to some realization that he and his church has been used to create a blackness of some sort. There’s been a Newsweek article lately that has talked further about this, specifically about why Winfrey left the TUCC and Obama stayed, where the piont was made that she may have left because she felt less like she had something to prove. The phrased used in the article was “more secure in her blackness,” and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard biracial people say that they often go out of their way to identify with the most radical cultural elements of their heritage in an effort to prove membership in some way.

The thing is here that Obama’s gone backwards after appearing to cast himself in completely with a very strongly black-identified church and culture, and when it became a serious problem, he backed away from it — indicating that he feels it’s something he can back away from, that he feels that he can or should stay on some sort of fence. I don’t know. That reaction plus the way that his campaign reacted to his being compared with Jackson in SC indicated to me that he almost hoped white people wouldn’t notice that he was black.

It’s a rough thing, because I think that a candidate with a long, illustrious history of working on behalf of the black community wouldn’t have convinced the DNC bigwigs that he’d had the “crossover appeal” that they figured he’d need. Women have to do that dance all the time — you get put in charge someplace, in a position where you can make even a small difference for other women, and at that point, you are terrified to do just that because you feel that it will label you as The Woman — out of some illogical but existing hunch that if you don’t call too much attention to it, no one will notice. Believe me, that’s one balancing act I can have total sympathy with, and it’s misogyny and racism that MAKES people have to do it.

Sorry if this is rambling; I’m on a text browser and can’t go back and edit. But whatever “blackness” may be, it’s true that there are things that read as “more” or “less” black according to some probably contradictory, constantly changing, and impossible-to-pin-down standard used by white people and I’d imagine by black people as well.

And that Obama spent twenty years firmly identified with that long enough to have relied on it to give him a push toward a national ambition that then requires he stiff-arm it. And after 20 years of what must have seemed like unshakeable commitment, Wright’s resulting anger makes sense.

I’d simply ask “what is blackness?” and who determines it, and is it a one-size fits all definition?

It seemed to me that he sat in that church to get a black identity for himself, and not because he expected to put out any real sweat and effort on behalf of the community. Other well-known black leaders like the already-mentioned Jackson Sr. have done so. Men and women like him and the late, great Barbara Jordan, and even entertainer Winfrey as well, have really put out effort on behalf of the black community. They went to the mat for their community, repeatedly. Obama never has.

And it feels like to me, on some level, Wright has come to an ugly realization that he and his church were used by this man to obtain credibility. This man who, for want of a better way of putting it, isn’t black. Or at least, wasn’t until he created a black identity for himself that was black enough to gain the support of black voters (for whom he’s done nothing) but white enough not to creep out white liberals.

Basically, he’s crafted a blackness for himself — and this was a conscious effort on his part, I am FIRMLY convinced — to be black enough to work as a surrogate for black aspirations, but not so black that upper-class white liberals would be scared off.

And you can’t craft a black identity like that without stiff-arming black issues. If he’d been actively black, a real advocate for the community, he’d have been too black for white rich people like Dean and Pelosi and those zillionaires in San Fran to want to have anything to do with him.

And now, because it’s equally expedient for him to slide out of his black identity by stiff-arming Wright and go around giving interviews where he mentions his DNA (bi-raciality, in other words — don’t forget, listeners, my mother was white!), this is what he’s doing. Sliding OUT of his black identity like he’s sliding out of an overcoat.

But he wouldn’t do that if it had been something he’d really worked his ass off for! If you work for something, you’re not willing to put it under the bus for anything. You treasure it, and Obama’s blackness isn’t something that I get the feeling he treasures. He pulls it on and slides out of it depending on who he happens to be talking to, and on a national stage, that sort of chameleon act will get noticed.

I hope I’m not doing the ideological equivalent of belching in church over here; I admit I’m not the most deft person when it comes to the finer points of issues of black identity although gawd knows ethnic and general outsider identity is something I know all too well. I also don’t want to step on toes as an outsider talking about who’s “really” black and who isn’t. But it seems to me that Obama tossing his own blackness aside now that it’s lived out its political usefulness to him, and that Wright is (or seems) angry on a thermonuclear scale that he and his church were used by this man to create a blackness for himself that is valued so little that he feels free to slide in and out of it at will.

I think the part of her letter that caused it was this:

“After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear “No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and–who knows?–maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.”

I find it disturbing how the Obama campaign, especially Jessie jackson Jr., call the Clintons racists. The Clintons strike as many things, but not racists.

What I find missing in Obama is a celebration of the rich and beautiful African-American culture–especially the literature and music. I have always been drawn to this culture as I am drawn to Iirsh music and literature, even though I’m not either.