Will The Right Make This Obama’s “Wise Latina” Moment?

VIDEO

by Steve Krakauer | 2:38 pm, July 20th, 2009

» 10 comments

obama_7-20 Over the weekend a tipster directed our attention to a part of the “President Obama’s African Journey” AC 360 special featuring the interviews Anderson Cooper conducted with President Barack Obama during his trip to Ghana.

One line of the President’s stood out as possible fodder for criticism in much the same way Judge Sonia Sotomayor‘s “wise Latina” comment became a conservative talking point.

Here’s the full passage:

That’s part of the African American experience. You are, in some ways, connected to this distant land, but on the other end, you’re about as American as it gets in some ways. African Americans are more fundamentally rooted in the American experience because they don’t have a recent immigrant experience to draw on. It’s that unique African American culture that has existed in North America for hundreds of years long before we actually founded the nation.

The key line, of course, is “African Americans are more fundamentally rooted in the American experience.” Obama did not expand on this, nor did Anderson Cooper ask a follow up. So did Mr. Obama mean that African Americans are more rooted in American experience than other Americans, or more rooted in American experience than the African experience? Or does it really matter?

Perhaps more importantly, will this become a “gotcha” moment? The quote could imply, at least without proper context, something similar to Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment. It could be the calm before the storm – it hasn’t even been a week since the interview first aired. So far it has been picked up only in the context of a discussion on the African American experience.

Whether the line becomes a conduit for a larger discussion on race in this country, or a talking point for the Obama detractors remains to be seen.

The interview is below, with the key passage starting around the 6:45 mark:

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mantis

So did Mr. Obama mean that African Americans are more rooted in American experience than other Americans, or more rooted in American experience than the African experience?

Obviously, he meant that African-Americans are more rooted in the American experience than African immigrants to America, as they “don’t have a recent immigrant experience to draw on.” One would think a reporter would know how to consider context, or at least read all the way to the end of the sentence.

Whether the line becomes a conduit for a larger discussion on race in this country, or a talking point for the Obama detractors remains to be seen.

Well, it likely would have become neither, as it was a perfectly banal comment. However, you’re possibly deliberate misreading will of course provide plenty of fodder for the reality-challenged right wing. Good work!
libra blue

The problem I had wih this comment by Obama is that he has lumped all African Americans into one group and everyone else into another. Of course some African Americans will be more “rooted in the American experience” than people of other cultures, but not every non-African person came over on Ellis Island.

Except for the first question about the stimulus package, Anderson did not challenge Obama on a single topic, this was not an interview in the true sense, it was just another way for CNN to give Obama a platform to say whatever he wanted without opposition.

Also, when is Anderson going to acknowledge that Obama is not African American, but multiracial? I wonder if Obama intends to educate his children on their white heritage as he did their black heritage.
Schiele85

I think it’s clear that he’s referring to African Americans being more fundamentally rooted in the American experience, over an African experience. As a Ghanaian with African-American friends, I have had this conversation a few times, and for most of my friends, their American identities / background IS, and will always be the primary experience that they draw on.