BY YOSHI JOHNSON

In print | Published March 20, 2008

Finally! At long last! How foolish for anyone to have thought that the grand serpent de mer would just go away. After a suspenseful wait, the beast has reared its ugly head. We are finally forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room. The emperor, truth be told, has no clothes, or perhaps more accurately, the emperor is a black man. What is this all about? Well surely you must have heard by now!? Why, Barack Obama finally came out — as a black man!

And thank goodness, since I was starting to feel a bit hopeless about the man. For quite some time now, I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye croon away in “I Want You” and fancying the song to be a coded account of my feelings for Barack. Marvin pines: “I want you / But I want you to want me, too / Want you to want me, baby / Just like I want you. / I give you all the love that I want in return, sweet darlin’ / But half a love is all I feel.”

And so too do I yearn for Barack. I don’t mean in a sexual sense, mind you, at least not for the purposes of this column. No, the feelings that Gaye so poetically captures for me are not so much passionately romantic as they are passionately political.

You see, I’ve wanted Barack for the black community and people of color everywhere for awhile. In fact, I’ve wanted Barack ever since I heard him speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. With so much of the lights-and-smoke media blitz spotlighting following the convention, I just knew he was the one for me -err, us. I was sure, what’s more, that he was the real deal, a born leader and champion if I ever saw one. I wanted him to want to lead the black community, and I wanted him to want me - err, us — too. We’d been invigorated in the past, most recently by the hoopla surrounding Harold Ford, Jr. and Condoleezza Rice, but eventually, it always became apparent that these ones were for one reason or another just not meant to be.

Now that I mention it, Barack initially seemed like he was heading the way of Condoleezza until this Tuesday, and that’s what had me so hopeless. It seems to be the trend that once you reach the heights of power and get a whiff of the air up there, the political stratosphere becomes your world. Try as people might, it’s hard to live in that world and not be of it; sooner or later, they forget where they came from and why they started out on the path of power in the first place. That’s the explanation I like to believe for the Condoleezza types, anyways.

As for the Harold Ford, Jr. cut of black political superstars, they’re the type that try to assert themselves -their concerns and their agenda, as informed by their upbringing and their communities - but they are politically persecuted and maimed for doing so, casualties of a sublimated but still-vibrant undercurrent of racism in our society.

This Tuesday, however, Barack proved that he is it, the one: the lucky guy who beat the odds to champion our community and our causes. Sure, the media and other political players have been trying to narrowly define his candidacy in terms of race, continually hijacking the debate with exit poll demographic breakdowns and allegations of phantom ‘race cards’ left and right. The Obama campaign, for their part, always downplayed Barack’s race, sometimes evading the issue altogether. These tactics led some people (myself included) to fear that he did not want to have anything to do with the majority of black people. Following some testy and pressing questions about his pastor, though, Barack, rather than continuing this evasive action, did an about-face and addressed ‘the race issue’ head-on, delivering a truly inspirational speech.

Granted, he invoked his blackness inadvertently, masterfully casting the issues of race and the black community as a part of the nation’s issues, American issues, but now, whether he intended to or not, he has indisputably thrown himself in with the lot of black people everywhere. Some analysts say that this speech could pave the way for his effective marginalization, and by extension, the downfall of his candidacy.

Heck, I say he’s more likely now to get my vote in November than ever. (For the record, I haven’t yet decided between the candidates.) Some people say that his cushy, cosmopolitan upbringing under the care of white relatives means he isn’t really black, but I’ll be the last person to make any point about authenticity. I say I’m just glad to have him on board!

He said, “I can no more disown [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community.” I say hallelujerr, man, you’re finally some makin’ sense! I’m glad he has claimed blackness in a public and decisive fashion. Barack, if you’re out there, thanks for coming out as a black man. Lots of us have been wanting you for a long time now, and I sure am glad to know for sure that you want us, too, just like we want you. Now if only you could get your girl Oprah to come out…err, as a black woman, that is.

Yoshi is a senior. He can be reached at ajohnso1@swarthmore.edu.

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