Making an "other"

One thing I really relate to with Obama is that he sees himself as a person who's always felt like he was a bit of an outsider. I moved from England to a small, southern style town in the midwest before the age of 10, the daughter of a liberal Christian minister in a conservative, Catholic, farm town. I never "belonged." I rarely go back. But that town and those people are very much a part of the American that I've become.

Barack Obama is as American as anyone. Only Indian Americans can claim native pedigree. The rest of Americans can only claim deeper generations than others; I see that Obama's pedigree goes at least as far back as Cheney's, so there's no competition there.

In my town there was a distinct line between black and white America. This is the most divisive thing about Obama's candidacy. Even black Americans don't think he can win. I know liberal Americans who don't think he can win. But if not this black American, who? If not now, when?

I'm not aware of anyone (maybe Pat Robertson) who says Obama can't win because he's black in public--but it's probably a fear of every one of his supporters. Instead, there seems to be a different kind of "othering," attempt, tying him to the Muslim other. Perhaps it is a more accepted form of bigotry. The article above should immediately define Obama as the Christian he has CHOSEN to be (not just a "member" of "blank"). But there is an effort to make him foreign, unlike you, unlike America. These are the people who are making intelligent, patriotic American leaders _our enemy_. These people don't just come from the right.