The words ‘black’ and ‘white’ are no longer restricted to race. They have become, for better or worse, reflective of political ideology. And this new phenomenon is best understood by the differing reactions to Barak Obama’s presidential bid. The question raised everywhere is: how will Obama define himself? He has black roots, but has grown up in elite circles. So whom does he represent then? But the larger question is: how has it been possible that Obama’s star has risen so quickly, and that it is within the reach of a Black man to become the next president of the United States?

The answer may lie in the fact that the US’s large White majority, and indeed the mainstream press, have supported Obama because although he is Black, his politics are construed as White. As Debra J. Dickerson puts it in Salon, “Black, in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics.” Thus, Obama, who has a White mother and a Kenyan father, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia as a child, might be Black in appearance, but not in experience. His life would be more comparable to Whites, Asian immigrants and African Americans. Dickenson continues, “(America is) not embracing a black man, a descendant of slaves. You’re replacing the black man with an immigrant of recent African descent of whom you can approve without feeling either guilty or frightened.”

... contd.