Mixed Race Studies

Othering Obama: How Whiteness is Used to Undermine Authority

Altre Modernità/Other Modernities
ISSN 2035-7680
Number 3 (2010)
pages 112-119
DOI: 10.6092/2035-7680/517

David S. Owen, Associate Professor of Philosophy; Director of Diversity Programs, College of Arts and Sciences
University of Louisville

In this paper, I argue that the sociocultural structuring property of whiteness has been utilized to marginalize President Obama and effectively undermine his presidential authority.  Whiteness functions in a largely invisible and ostensibly deracialized way to normalize the interests, needs, and values of whites, while at the same time marginalizing and devaluing the voice of people of color.  Analyzing the health care debate through this theoretical lens generates insights into how the debate reproduced the system of racial oppression, and how whiteness functions in political discourse.

Introduction

The election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency in 2008 was undoubtedly a truly historic moment. The election of a self-identified black man to the highest political office in the nation was symbolic of a degree of progress the U.S. has made towards racial justice. However, there has been considerable disagreement in public discourse about how substantive a change this Obama presidency reflects. Some have  claimed (and did so immediately after the election) that the Obama presidency signals the end of racial oppression in the U.S. Others have argued that while the Obama presidency is significant, it does not indicate that the system of racial oppression has dissolved over night. This debate was sharpened in the summer of 2009 by the public discourse concerning health care reform. To many, that discourse often devolved from rational policy critique to racist attacks of Obama. And, in fact, the topic of racism broke into explicit discourse during this period, culminating with former President Jimmy Carter accusing many of the president’s critics with racism. Much of the debate around whether or not the critics of health care reform were behaving in a racist manner turned on the question of intent: Did they, or did they not, intend to send a racist message? I will argue in this paper that this question misses the point. The system of racial oppression, which was not dissolved on election night in 2008, is maintained and reproduced by behavior that echoes and carries forward racist imagery, representations, and symbols of the past in the guise of structures of whiteness. While there were clearly explicitly racist actions taken by the health care reform critics, much of the harm and effectiveness of the racially oppressive behavior is found in what ostensibly looks like non-racial behavior. Such behavior appears to be non-racial because it presumes the norm of whiteness. These debates provide a constructive case study for understanding how people of color can be marginalized and devalued—even when they have achieved very high accomplishments…

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