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

[Bradley K. Thurman]

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.

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history-of-whether-obama-is-black-enough-featuring-rupert-
murdoch/409642/