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NEW YORK, United States?Anyone who thought that somehow the issue of race had been transcended by the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States?that we have overcome and are now in a post-racial society?should have been quickly disabused of that with unmistakable signs, such as the rancorous debate on health care.
The hostility manifested in a number of town-hall meetings that legislators conducted with their constituents when they went home to their respective districts during the summer recess wasn?t simply due to the predictable fears that are aroused every time major changes are proposed that could affect citizens? lives in dramatic ways. It was the combination of a black president with a centrist agenda (and even this is seen as too radical, labeled ?socialist? by folks who believe that the government-run Medicare is a private program) that has sent the conservative, largely white segment of this country into frenzied diatribes against change. Change to them is anathema. Why? For the simple reason they know that things ain?t never gonna be what they once were. That is not going to stop them from trying, even if many of these efforts are lunatic. Obama as a Nazi? As a Communist? Health-care reform resulting in death panels? Every society has its share of loonies; in this case, having a black president has certainly brought them out of the woodwork.
The one moment that seemed to encapsulate this tangle of emotions and buried resentments was that infamous ?You lie!? outburst by Congressman Joe Wilson, of South Carolina. (The Republicans seem to have a penchant for instantaneous spokesmen named ?Joe.?) The obscure lawmaker became an instant celebrity among the rabid right-wingers who would love to see Obama fall flat on his face. Watching this on television, I felt that Wilson left unsaid what a typical good ol? Southerner would have added back in the day when blacks had to ride at the rear of the bus: the word ?boy,? complete with exclamation point. It?s not a fanciful notion.
According to Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist and one of many who heard that unspoken word, Wilson ?belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina?s state capitol, and denounced as a ?smear? the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ?48 segregationist candidate for president.?
Asked about his outburst, Wilson denied that it was racially motivated. But, given his unabashed nostalgia for a society that hews closely to a pre-Civil War South, who is lying now?
President Obama doesn?t see the hostility towards him as primarily racially motivated?on the David Letterman Show, he commented facetiously that he was black even before the election?but such a diplomatic response is to be expected; in his capacity as commander-in-chief, he didn?t want to add more fuel to the fire, as he did when in a moment of candor he characterized the arrest of academic star and African American, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates as ?stupidly? handled by the arresting officer who was white. To my mind, the choice of epithet was fitting, though obviously not the most judicious. To arrest and handcuff someone in his own home, for expressing outrage (a perfectly mundane exercise of the constitutional right of free speech) was stupid. Isn?t a man?s home supposed to be his castle?
Part of what drives the anti-Obama crowd is the underlying sentiment of seeing the uppity black (or Asian, or Latino, or Native American) given his comeuppance. In this constricted world-view, a ?boy? doesn?t deserve to be a member of the exclusive all-white fraternity, no matter how many degrees he has or tomes he quotes or well-tailored suits he wears. He will always be a ?boy.? Such a term would, of course, be innocuous in the Philippines where the term and nickname ?Boy? has a decidedly more affectionate, familial, and, from my perspective, infantilizing context.
?Boy? reminds me of how we were once described by the US colonizers: as little brown brothers. The intent wasn?t really to imply a fraternity between the white imperialists and their brown charges, but more importantly, to stress the tutelary relationship incumbent upon the Big Brother with regards to the younger one?a relationship that went hand in hand with the missionary impulse of indoctrinating us in the civilizing ways of a good Christian society. The US would, in short, forever be our Kuya?a script Malacañang has always adhered to in exemplary fashion?and the differences, of being little and of being brown, would always be there as a reminder of the essential disparities that mark the historical bond (or is it bondage?). A Hollywood film that encapsulates this perfectly is the World War II drama, Back to Bataan, where John Wayne towers over his Filipino troops, men who would follow him to the very jaws of hell, and an intense Anthony Quinn plays a Filipino officer who happens to be the grandson of Andres Bonifacio.
As for the role of blacks in American society Hollywood has explored that sentiment too. Two classic examples are In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who?s Coming to Dinner, both films released in 1967 and coincidentally starring Sidney Poitier as the brainy, well educated, and polite black man whose very presence challenges orthodox views of his race, whether held by Southern rednecks or Northern liberals. Come to think of it, Obama is our latter-day Poitier, charming, well mannered, a Harvard graduate, a man of substance capable of high-level intellectual discourse and a good game of basketball.
Of course this sentiment feeds right into the xenophobic fears that continues to pollute public debate in this country and which it will do so for a very long time. Wilson himself couldn?t have made it any clearer: He accused the president of lying when the latter said his health-care program would not include illegal immigrants. In fact, the president was right: As has been pointed out in various media sources, the proposed reforms do not provide relief to illegal immigrants. What makes the subtext of Wilson?s ill-founded accusation all the more repugnant is the link to the persistent attempt of portraying Obama himself as an alien.
What a shock: illegal immigrant occupying the presidency of the land! Isn?t that the whole point behind the birthers, i.e., those who insist Barack Obama was born outside the United States. The logic, such as it is: Obama cannot be an American, period. Therefore he must have been born in another country. This is the school of ass-backwards reasoning, and I know a good number of Filipinos duly enrolled in such a school. I do have some sympathy for this ad hoc group and am willing to cut them some slack. For one thing, they provide a few easy laughs at their own expense. For another, I sometimes believe that the previous president may have been born on a dark and distant planet and was placed on Earth by cosmic satirists and provocateurs, just for laughs, at our expense.
On the other hand, there are places?and minds?in this country that do operate as though they don?t belong to the vast sea of humanity, whom the colors of the rainbow repel rather than attract. There is no need to search the galaxies for black holes: They exist right here, sucking light, reason, and civility completely from the air we breathe. And that is no laughing matter.
