Obama Banter

Obama Banter

Originally published in the Brooklyn College Kingsman (March 24th, 2008)

    A panel of journalists and writers gathered last Wednesday at Brooklyn College’s Woody Tanger Auditorium to discuss “The Obama Phenomena,” a presentation on the Zeitgeist surrounding presidential candidate Barack Obama.
    Race was the most prominent topic of the panel. During a clip played from a BET interview show, Obama addressed the issue of just how “Black” he is. “When people say, ‘is he black enough,’ I always have to ask, compared to who[sic]?” the Illinois Senator asked the interviewer, adding “I’m not running against Flavor Flav.” Keith Brown, the Vice President of News and Public Affairs at BET and a panel member, related how race affected him in the voting booth. “When I got there in the privacy of that booth, and got ready to pull the lever for Hillary Clinton, my hand kind of jolted back,” Brown said with a nervous laugh, as if voting for Hillary was breaking some taboo. “In the end, before I left, it was a vote for Barack Obama.”

    Gary Younge, a staff columnist for the Guardian in London, said that he observed race becoming a major factor in the South Carolina primaries when “Bill Clinton basically went off his meds” and “started to inject a kind of racial tone into the debate,” especially in disregarding Obama’s win there as meaningless because Jessie Jackson won it in 1988. “When [Bill] started in that way, that really flipped a lot of people into really deciding they were going to do it, and they actually were going to come out and vote [for Obama],” he said in a thick British accent. Younge dismissed Hillary’s chances at winning the nomination. “Hillary is like Mike Huckabee right now,” he said, adding “the only way she can win is bureaucratically.”
    The race topic reached a boiling point when one member of the audience claimed that white people were voting for Obama because his relatively light skin tone put him in a “safety zone” for them, and another claiming that Obama represents the “privileged black, the lighter black.” In response, Brown fired back that “light-skinned blacks were lynched in this country,” and Eisa Ulen, an author and english professor at Hunter College, pointed out that “Obama is about the same complexion as Malcolm X.”
    Technology and the youth vote was another key part of the discussion of the Obama campaign. “If we look at this election, this is probably the first in a long time that you’ve actually galvanized young people the way that you have, using technology,” said Noel Anderson, the moderator of the panel and a professor of political science at Brooklyn College. “For example, Obama’s campaign contribution’s, a large percentage of them come through the internet, from young people.”
    “I think the young people are moving forward without us,” said Ulen, who believed that most of America has fallen behind the times. “I actually think that Obama and his candidacy represents America right now, and that some of us who are older just aren’t with what’s happening in America right now.” She also identified the Obama candidacy with youth culture, referring to it as a “Hip-Hop” campaign.
    When asked what Britons think of the Obama campaign, Younge said that they see a candidate they can relate to. “Obama,” said Younge, continuing after a deep pause, “can speak to European demons.” He also believed that Britons see him as being a more international president. “Obama looks like a potential president that can speak to the rest of the world. And that’s not something the rest of the world has felt that they’ve had for the past eight years.” Brown added that Europeans he talked to in London and Paris recently worried that Obama would be assassinated if elected president.
    The symposium was the second in the series; the first was held back in 2004, to discuss the impact of the internet on the presidential campaigns.