Review of Obama biography "The Bridge"

[depakid]

The reviewer is the former Labor Premier (cf governor) of New South Wales, often noted for his interest in and knowledge of American history and politics.

Excerpts:

Boiled down, it is a story of race in America in which - ludicrous as this may at first sound - Obama emerges as blacker than you expect. That is, he was not a mainstream politician who just happened to be black but rather someone who worked and thought himself into the African- American community, even planted himself in it by opting to live near Harlem and on Chicago's South Side.

As a lawyer, he specialised in civil rights law; as a community organiser, he worked for black public housing tenants; and until 2004 he represented a constituency that was overwhelmingly black.

Yet he had enjoyed a loving white mother and white grandparents and had been raised in a state where there were few blacks, a multicultural island. In benign, tolerant Hawaii, no one was forced to ride in the back of a bus. But it was here the school-age Obama made a decision to become part of black America. Sure, there had been some racial humiliations. "Run like a black man," an athletics teacher had yelled. In this sense his racial identity was served up; he was always going to be seen as black. Still, there was an element of choice.

It was with deliberation, says Remnick, that "he began immersing himself in an African American culture that seemed to live thousands of miles from where he was". Obama listened to Stevie Wonder and Miles Davis; he read Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and the autobiography of Malcolm X. His maths teacher recalled that Obama even changed his gait as he instructed himself on how to be black.

A friend said Obama was knowledgeable about "the arcana of black politics" because he studied it and crafted it: ''He had to learn the cultural repertoire of African Americans … he made himself, like a kind of existential hero. He picked this out and that out, and he created himself.''

The Fox News madmen of American politics continue to loot Obama's background for evidence of association with radicals. But, according to Remnick's book, even as a young man he steered away from radical gesture politics. One small example: at Columbia University he concluded that Edward Said, the exalted Palestinian scholar, was "a flake" - Obama would rather read Shakespeare than the convoluted postmodernist criticism.

At Harvard Law School, conservatives were impressed by his conciliatory nature, his "preternatural calm". The content of his education and his personal style render him the most truly elite President since Kennedy, says Remnick (overlooking, I would suggest, George H.W. Bush). Obama said he was helped by his "mid-western newsreader's voice". Some African-Americans saw him as too lawyerly, too Harvard, insufficiently Chicago and insufficiently black. Without these calibrations, though, his candidacy would have died.

In 2000, he was insignificant: few Americans could name their state senator. That year, when he flew into Los Angeles to see his party's convention, his credit card status didn't allow him to rent a car and he could not get a pass to sit on the convention floor. Four years later, at the next convention, he was a candidate for the US Senate, nominating John Kerry for president. Four years after that, he himself was the party nominee. And his luck held when on September 15, 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers destroyed McCain's campaign.

The wonder is not that Americans elected as president an African-American but rather someone who had sought out a black identity and, unlike a Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, had not just inherited it.

A bet on the future? Barring a second recession, Obama will be no one-termer like Jimmy Carter. And barring an assassination, Remnick's biography will be one of a shelf of books on the 44th president, sound, readable and, for a time at least, indispensable to those who still think, yes we can.

More: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/books/president-who-made-himself-20100514-v3m5.html

[Pirate Smile]

1. The part about his gait wasn't from a math(s?) teacher, it was from Bobbie Rush mocking Obama which

seems to be what he always does re Obama - so I didn't find it particularly credible.

I read the book. The review seems a bit off because of his view from outside American culture. Interesting but slightly off.

[depakid]

2. That's actually what I find interesting about outside observers- they tend to be a bit off

and give a perspective that people absorbed in the culture won't always see.

[Pirate Smile]

3. I agree that it is interesting but it also kind of distorts what Obama was dealing

with and doing re race. When he said the wrong person made the comment about Obama's walk that seems like an obvious and easy screw up. It wasn't an impartial person or a person friendly to Obama. It was from someone slamming him. That was pretty clear in the book. It seems weird to mess that part up.

[depakid]

4. Agreed- he ought at least to have gottem the fact right on that point

[Jennicut]

5. All of Obama's attempts to make an identity for himself are natural

with someone who is biracial and who did not have a strong relationship with his father. It is that confusing, who am I? multiplied by 10. Everyone goes through at as they become young adults. But for someone like Obama, I imagine it must have been a very confusing and unsettling time. My husband is white but grew up without much contact from his father. He has had 3 step fathers since and there has always been a quest to really find himself and a lot of questions as to he he is. Much more then me, who had a very stable family life with two parents who are still married.