Obama vs. Eurocentrism, Privilege In The Democratic Party

The Grand Rapids Times
March 21, 2008

Commentary by Rev. James Williamson

At the 1972 National Black convention that was held in Gary, Ind., Rev. Jessie Jackson made a very insightful if not prophetic statement. Rev. Jackson stated that “African Americans can ill afford to rest in the hip pockets of the Democratic Party or lay in beds of laurels of the Republican Party.” Here we are in 2008 and the vast majority of African Americans are still in the hip pockets of the Democratic Party. Because of our resting in the hip pockets of the Democratic Party, are we being taken for granted (bamboozled)? When I was a graduate student at a university in Ohio, I made a decision to register as a Republican. This decision was based on the amount of personal, social and financial support that I had received for Afrocentric projects and community based programming (1976-1997) from individual members of the Allen County Republican Party. What I saw in Ohio especially in Allen County was a grand illusion of support from the Democratic Party on issues that were particularly impacting the African American community. This illusion, if people will open their eyes, has come front and center in Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency of the United States. Although I am a registered Republican, I am pro Senator Barack Obama. Being pro Obama, I have been diligently following the political battles between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I have religiously, on a daily basis, channel surfed back and forth between Fox, MSNBC, ABC and CBS television stations to analyze the media coverage of Barack Obama. What I have discovered is a subliminal Eurocentric mindset among former President Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as those operating her presidential campaign. When I was an undergraduate student, I majored in political science and sociology. The word politics is a derivative of the word polity (games). I also recognize the subtle messages of race. The subliminal message of privilege was injected into the presidential race from comments made in South Carolina by President Clinton in reference to Jessie Jackson in his 1980’s when he ran for the presidency. Since South Carolina and because of Obama’s primary victories, especially with the wide support among African American, subtle race baiting escalated. The attacks on Senator Obama have a flavor of Eurocentrism, privilege and patronage. The patronage applauds him in his ability to draw large audiences that cut across race, class, gender and ethnic lines. He is further applauded in that he has progressed further in his bid for the office of the president of the United States than any African American in the history of this country. Eurocentrism comes into play when he is attacked because of his charismatic ability to inspire and rally the same groups of people, then having his speeches dismissed as nothing but empty rhetoric (fluff) lacking substance. These attacks were not initiated by Republicans but Senator Clinton, members of her campaign committee and her supporters. When I was an undergraduate student in Ohio (1970’s), I had undergraduate and graduate friends who were majoring in music, art and literature. During my undergraduate years there were many militant arguments being made by my friends in their perspective college departments. These friends of mine as well as myself were engaged in verbal intellectual battles with some professors who were questioning the aesthetic legitimacy of African American art, music, literature and scholarly aptitudes. This questioning by some Caucasian professors, characterized African American poetry as “protest poetry”, African American art as being “too subjective”, and African American music as not being “sophisticated” or “legitimate” as Euro-classical, symphonic or operatic music and our scholarship lacking proper analytical substance. When I look back at the anger and frustrations of my undergraduate and graduate colleagues, I now understand the academic ethnocentric conflict and Euro-American attitudes that existed amongst some Caucasian professors. These ethnocentric attitudes did not die in the 1970’s. When I returned to graduate school in the1980’s, I discovered amongst some of my professors that subliminal ethnocentric attitudes were alive and dawning new mask. It is these types of patronizing paternalistic attitudes that I classify as the “Euro-American Mindset” that are linked to subconscious and conscious “privilege” (rite-of-passage). Eurocentrism is the known practice of viewing the world from a European perspective with an implied belief either consciously or subconsciously, in the pre-eminence of Euro-American culture, concerns, beliefs and values at the expense of non-European Americans. Privilege as defined by Dr. Stephanie Weldman is “a systemic conferral of benefit and advantage, triggered not by merit but by affiliation, conscious or not and chosen or not to the dominant side of a power system.” Because of the success of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential primary campaigns, some of the “chickens in the Democratic Party have come home to roost.” What is meant by the “chickens coming home to roost”, is that whether it’s Senator Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro or members of Senator Clinton’s campaign, we are witnessing the unveiling of a Euro-American Mindset, sprinkled with privilege. It is this mindset that has now opened the door to right wing radio talk show hosts (Sean Hannity etc.) and right wing Republicans to viciously attack Senator Obama. The same Eurocentric Mindset that denigrated the legitimacy of African American art, music, literature and questioned our scholarship during my undergraduate and graduate college years is now in-play against Senator Obama. The Eurocentric mindset says that we can be charismatic and inspiring but not analytical, practical or scientific. The correlation of these hypothetical arguments carried over into the world of sports. African American men could be great tight ends, running backs and wide receivers but what haunted predominantly Caucasian colleges and the NFL was whether African American men could think fast enough to be quarterbacks. The Euro-American Mindset would applaud Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, Judith Jamison and Authur Mitchell but would give a rousing standing ovation to Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly and the New York Ballet. The Euro-American Mindset would applaud novels by James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Charles Chestnutt and Zora Neale Hurston but give rave reviews to novels by William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neil, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Alan Poe. The Euro-American Mindset would recognize poets such as James Weldon, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Gwendolyn Brooks as protest poets but embrace Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Henry W. Longfellow. The Euro-American Mindset would remove Egypt from Africa and not recognize the impact of African civilizations on Greco-Roman culture; philosophers (Aesop, Plato and Pliny who studied in Timbuktu) and the father of medicine (Imhotep vs. Hippocrates). The Euro-American Mindset would dismiss the historical scholarship of Carter G. Woodson, J.A. Rogers, Cheikh Anta Diop and Asa Hilliard but embrace Eric Foner, Alfred Knopf and the racist southern historian U.B. Phillips. The Euro-American Mindset would dismiss the illicit relationship of president Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemming and their mulatto offspring as well as the mulatto lineage of President Warren G, Harding. This exaltation of Euro-American culture over African American culture whether subconsciously or consciously has a lot to do with the psyche of “color confrontation” (Dr. Francis Welshing, “Theory of Color Confrontation”) real and unreal beliefs of race and privilege. I am of the belief that most of the attacks upon Senator Barack Obama to gain political ground have a lot to do with the hidden belief of privilege (rite-of-passage). If a person would analyze Senator Clinton carefully, they would discern that she believes that she has some type of rite-of-passage to the White House and standing in her way is an African American man named Obama.