The Master Mentality and Obama

After Barack Obama's victory in South Carolina, the crowd in Columbia chanted "Race doesn't matter!" and the candidate himself expanded on the theme, arguing that

"his victory disproved those who argue that people "think, act and even vote within the categories that supposedly define us . . . I did not travel around this state and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina," he said. The election, he said, "is not about rich versus poor or young versus old, and it's not about black versus white. This election is about the past versus the future."

Unfortunately, the past seems to be reasserting itself even as Obama edges into the lead for the Democratic nomination. There's a set of Obama jokes that reiterate the master mentality among whites by posing Obama in the role of omniscient servant.

For example, there is a web site at http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/ that has Barack Obama widgets like "Barack Obama thought you could use some chocolate," "Barack Obama warmed up your car for you," or "Barack Obama offered you his seat." On this site, Obama is represented as a kind of super-cool, androgynously handsome version of the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day. There's something typically but still disconcertingly white in all of this. The implicit expectation is that Barack Obama would be doing favors and service for white people and that white people are people who can normally expect to be served by black people even if those black people are super-hot presidential candidates. If you're white, Obama will warm up your car, get you some coffee, and find out the weather for you before you even know you need these things done.

I'm surprised they didn't say Obama would shine their shoes.

The link for the widget site came from an article by Slate's John Dickerson on Obama. For Dickerson, this is a matter of whether Obama can become "too cool."

But how could Obama bringing me hot chocolate be too cool?

Dickerson has a couple other examples of the Barack Obama "super-servant":

And on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors, Ellen Tarlin, heard one woman joke to another: "Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?" To which the other replied: "Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?"

I'm not sure what to make of this yet. One thing I'm interested in is whether these kinds of people are going to vote for Obama. In a way, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. But if that's the case, it's a sign of how far we're getting away from the faux macho of the Bush era. It's also an indication of how deeply entrenched the white master mentality is even in those who'll be voting for a black president.