printThere is a “difference between learning a culture and learning the ideology that is abstracted from it,” explains Jack kerwick, with reference to what he terms Barack Obama’s Blackism. “The difference between culture and ideology is the difference between a living faith and a static creed.”
“Blackism is an ideology,” contends kerwick. “The Blackist sees the entire world, from ‘the beginning,’ so to speak, to the present, in terms of racial categories, yes, but, more importantly, from the perspective of black deprivation. Race is the organizing principle of his schemata…the ideology of Blackism is not to be confused with black culture. This, though, isn’t to suggest that there is no relationship between the two. There is: the former is a caricature or abridgment of the latter. …”
“That is, like any other ideology, the ideology of Blackism is an abstraction from a complex, concrete, historically-specific tradition. In this case, the tradition in question is that of what we call black culture.”
Blackism, like any other ideology, supplies for its adherents a method, a relatively few basic principles or rules to which any black person living in any place and at any time can subscribe. To put it more clearly, unlike so-called black culture, Blackism doesn’t require immersion in a traditional form of life. Fluency in a culture is like fluency in a language; it is a hard won achievement that can be had only after much practice and over an extended period of time. Mastery of an ideology, in glaring contrast, is something that can be gotten within no time, for the rules or principles of an ideology are propositions that readily lend themselves to memory.
Obama has embraced “Blackism” for obvious reasons. Read “Obama and the Ideology of Blackism”; it’s a most provocative and thoughtful piece.
UPDATE (April 19): I agree with George. I don’t know if Kerwick presumes intelligence, but BHO is most certainly not overly intelligent, and he is certainly no intellectual, as I tried to show in ‘You Can’t Fix Stupid.’
It may be taken as implicit in the raves about Obama’s innate intelligence – the smartest President ever – not that he has some great capacity as a thinker but that his ideologies smartly line up. Blackism, I think, timeshares Obama’s loyalties and prejudices with other ideologies making him a paragon cosmopolitan; racial, cultural, ideological, and religious. It is no surprise then that his greatest impression is that of a greatly disordered personality.
My daughter is arguably more Chinese by blood than Obama is black by blood. Yet she has no inclination to any “Chinism” or “Asianism” … but there is the white/Indonesian/Hawaiian raised Obama who barely knew his adulterous sperm-donor father (who abandoned him) into this stuff.
It is also sad how these “leaders” almost subconsciously harken to some “good old days” of segregation and lynching when their currently fatuous demagogic ranting would sound wise.
Another irony is that while there are ethnic subgroups that basically are culturally cohesive (Amish, Hasidic Jews, various Asian immigrants..) and where people speak in their native jargon 95% of the time – associate primarily among themselves.. etc., it doesn’t revolve around some solar orbit of “white racism”.
Kerwick’s 2 columns make some interesting points.
Humans have a preference or they do not. Political classes will never understand this and will continue to try and influence. Why can’ we all just get along. The answer is because we are human.
Thanks Ilana, another great note of interest! I had to reread your terrific piece, ‘You can’t fix stupid”!
You’ve pointed it out before, Ilana, how both Barack and Michelle claim to be ‘blacker than black’. BO is clearly compensating for his ‘white’ upbringing.