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...Obama himself has clearly thought deeply about these matters, and the excitement surrounding his candidacy stems in part from what he has to say about us as a multi-racial nation with a history scarred--and ennobled--by our struggle over racial difference, power and justice. His remarkable autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, is a deeply moving contribution to this discussion.
But I'd like to flip the question about Obama in a way, just to see what we might come up with here. So, instead of asking, "Is Obama black enough?" how about asking, "Is Rudolph Giuliani white enough?"
Huh?
Rudybio04_2
Well, just as "blackness" is an identity we invent and impose on each other (a "socially constructed concept," as they say), so is "whiteness." And "whiteness"--or the "lack" of it--might also have important political ramifications.
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III is a proud Italian-American; both his mom and his dad were immigrants. He was mayor of New York City--perhaps the world's greatest experiment in diversity. And he's running for president in the Republican Party, a party that even former chairman Ken Mehlman has acknowledged faces genuine problems reaching out to non-whites. In 2000, George W. Bush won 62 percent of white males--and lost the popular vote. Bush won 60 percent of the white male vote in 2004--and just 50.7 percent of the overall vote. As any GOP strategist will tell you privately, the Republican Party has become too dependent on white male voters.
So what does this have to do with Giuliani? He's a white guy, right? Well, yes and no. Who counts as white in America has been a fluid concept in our history, and Italians have only recently--and perhaps incompletely in some quarters--been admitted to the racial club.
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