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November 30, 2008

Race relations in the age of Obama

Several days ago the Portland Tribune published a very interesting piece on their website. I just wrote about the main theme in it over at Blue Oregon. But I'd like to breech the subtheme of the piece here. Which is race relations. Specifically, I'm thinking of African Americans.

A mile south of Geneva’s, on MLK, Nate Jackson, owner of ’N The Cut barber shop, still can’t shake the image of a young black customer who came in shortly after election day.

’N The Cut has been open only a few months, and Jackson’s shop has begun drawing a young crowd that sometimes hangs out in the afternoon. One of those kids on a Thursday afternoon was a high school junior, a newcomer. After his haircut, Jackson says, the young man asked where he could get something to eat nearby.

Told of a Popeye’s fried chicken restaurant down the block, Jackson says, the young man responded, “I don’t eat chicken.”

And that, Jackson says, led to a heated discussion.

The young man, Jackson says, was equating fried chicken on MLK with a stereotype that he refused to accept in a post-Obama election world.

“He had this new arrogance I’d never seen before, and I think it was because of Barack Obama,” Jackson says. “He was basically saying, ‘I don’t want to be referred to as a minority.’

“This should be recorded for history,” Jackson says. “He’s crossed a barrier. He said it with such a snap – ‘I’m not black. I’m African American. You can’t refer to me as black. That’s in the past.’”

One of the things that I really was curious about as I wandered around the DPO shindig at the Convention Center in Portland was how African Americans felt about Obama's win. I didn't have the courage to... what I thought would be intruding by asking. But there were plenty of African Americans working at the Convention Center as well as many attending the DPO thang. When McCain was giving his concession speech I remember looking around and watching the faces of the African Americans I could see nearby, nearly consumed with curiosity and wonder at how they felt about it all.

Chad Debnam, quoted in the Tribune piece, had a very interesting reaction.

Debnam, who is black, calls himself a Frederick Douglass Republican, after the 19th century abolitionist. He says he voted for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, both Bushes and Bob Dole. In fact, Barack Obama is the first Democratic presidential candidate for whom Debnam has voted.

Debnam says he attended a Portland State University basketball game two weeks ago and sat next to a couple, both white. He’s sure they behaved differently toward him, and he’s sure it was because of Obama’s election and the overwhelming support Obama received in Portland.

“A lot of the time you see people and they’re defensive,” Debnam says. “It’s like, ‘What do you want?’ They were open. (They thought) ‘I can now talk to this guy because you’re not going to call me a bigot or a racist, because I support Obama, too.’ ”

I sure hope he's right. I think he is. But all I really know is that he noticed what few seem to and that is that race relations are and always have been about the whole equation and not just one part of it.

So what do you think?

Posted by Kevin at November 30, 2008 06:55 PM