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WP: Before Michelle, Barack Obama asked another woman to marry him.

Phased

Member
do you think Obama would have became president with a white wife?

I do.

If anything it may have made him more relateable to white middle class people. What it would have done to his popularity among the African American community is another thing entirely, but I'd guess he'd have won them over, he's charming as fuck.

It sounds like most of what this book is saying is that he's ambitious, and...well duh.
 
Thank God for Chicago cause I don't know if this would have applied to every other city. I can only really think of Detroit and Atlanta. We wouldn't have gotten Obama the senator or Obama the President if it wasn't for Chicago and Michelle.

Not sure how to take this comment. Thank god for a city to be bigoted enough that you can't run for office and be in an interracial marriage? I get the sentiment for the ends, but the means is :/

Am I misunderstanding the comment?
 

Glix

Member
Its funny because the reason that Diblasio won the mayoral vote in NY is BECAUSE he is in an interracial marriage
 

Deepwater

Member
Not sure I'm following you, racists would come out in larger numbers if he had a white wife than racists already did in both elections that he won?


Why? Do you have issue with any blacks dating "outside their race" or just Obama?



Did this country change when I wasn't looking and suddenly white women are less valued than black women?

Premise: Obama is more politically attractive to BLACK PEOPLE because of his black wife.

Premise 2: Obama wins general election in large part due to record BLACK voter turn out.
 
Yes? They used to lynch black men that flirted with white women.
The rural white turnout in 2016 was higher than in 2012 and 2008.

I'm not sure why you're so flabbergasted. I think you're forgetting all the racist rhetoric and propaganda that was spewed when he was running for president... Like super underestimating how prevalent that was and underplaying how much people wanted to keep a black man out of power. I'm interested in some numbers if you have them though of these hidden racists that would have shifted his wins to losses though.

Premise: Obama is more politically attractive to BLACK PEOPLE because of his black wife.

Premise 2: Obama wins general election in large part due to record BLACK voter turn out.

Why though? He doesn't understand black people because he married a white woman? We don't need to use vague generalizations, you said your attitude would wildly change if his wife was white. What is the problem you have and apparently all of the african american community have with blacks dating/marrying outside of their race? The implication has been that the change due to a white wife would be large.
 

lupinko

Member
That's interesting, like Michelle, this Sheila is also quite an academic but is more like his mother due to their respective majors.

Also this lady is apparently Japanese and Dutch.

Anyway yeah I agree this isn't really that important, the takeaway is that at 25, Barry O wanted to become POTUS.

And the whole he thought of himself as multiracial like Tiger Woods prior to moving to Chicago was already well known. In fact he's stated it in many interviews before.
 

VeeP

Member
Shadow the Obama.jpg

Lmao, everytime someone post this picture or the Chaos emerald one I laugh.

Edit: Because why not...

VtNYB4B.png

maxresdefault.jpg

$

sBZ1tKL.jpg
 

Deepwater

Member
I do.

If anything it may have made him more relateable to white middle class people. What it would have done to his popularity among the African American community is another thing entirely, but I'd guess he'd have won them over, he's charming as fuck.

It sounds like most of what this book is saying is that he's ambitious, and...well duh.

I don't think you understand the black community

Not sure how to take this comment. Thank god for a city to be bigoted enough that you can't run for office and be in an interracial marriage? I get the sentiment for the ends, but the means is :/

Am I misunderstanding the comment?

It's not bigotry, it has more to do with black people's acceptance of black politicians with white spouses.
 
I can't say for sure how it would have affected him, but one of racist white people's biggest fears is black men taking white women.

And you think the racists would need that reason to be against him? Do you guys remember 08? 80% of racists didn't sit on the sideline and keep quiet because "at least he ain't got a white wife!". You can argue if they would have been more violent, etc. but I don't see how you can say they were cool with him because he had a black wife.
 

levious

That throwing stick stunt of yours has boomeranged on us.
“In the winter of ‘86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him,” she told Garrow. Her parents were opposed, less for any racial reasons (Barack came across to them like “a white, middle-class kid,” a close family friend said)

It's amazing that someone can write this sentence and not realize how racist it makes them and the parents actually sound.
 

numble

Member
I'm not sure why you're so flabbergasted. I think you're forgetting all the racist rhetoric and propaganda that was spewed when he was running for president... Like super underestimating how prevalent that was and underplaying how much people wanted to keep a black man out of power. I'm interested in some numbers if you have them though of these hidden racists that would have shifted his wins to losses though.
How was I flabbergasted?
Compared to 2012 and 2008, look at Florida turnout in the panhandle in 2016, rural Wisconsin and Pennsylvania turnout.
Considering racism against black men that mingled with white women has led to violence, lynchings and even anti-miscegenation laws, I don't know why you don't think there is heightened racism for this issue. There are voters alive that can remember a time when it was illegal in many states for a black man to have sex with a white woman.
 
I don't think you understand the black community



It's not bigotry, it has more to do with black people's acceptance of black politicians with white spouses.

I mean you can argue definitions if you like but if you say he is unacceptable and your view turns vastly negative towards him because of the race of his wife then yeah, I feel ok saying those people are bigoted in their opinion.

How was I flabbergasted?
Compared to 2012 and 2008, look at Florida turnout in the panhandle in 2016, rural Wisconsin and Pennsylvania turnout.
Considering racism against black men that mingled with white women has led to violence, lynchings and even anti-miscegenation laws, I don't know why you don't think there is heightened racism for this issue. There are voters that are alive when it was illegal for a black man to have sex with a white woman.

Sure, but as I said in my other post above, I think you can absolutely argue that it would be more violent, outspoken, however you want to call it but I don't see how that matters since it wasn't a massive voting block that would have swung key states and prevented him from becoming president. There was enough racist bullshit (even now that he's left office) that saying they would act more racist isn't really impactful in the grand scheme of things and would have done nothing to prevent his political career from happening.
 

VeeP

Member
I don't think you understand the black community



It's not bigotry, it has more to do with black people's acceptance of black politicians with white spouses.

I have no idea how true this is, but I remember in the OJ documentary on Netflix they mentioned that black women sometimes don't like when black men marry white women.

And maybe that's 100% untrue. I don't know much about the black community, just thought I would throw it out there.
 

Deepwater

Member
I mean you can argue definitions if you like but if you say he is unacceptable and your view turns vastly negative towards him because of the race of his wife then yeah, I feel ok saying those people are bigoted in their opinion.

See now you're just projecting. I didn't say my views would turn "vastly negative", I said they would change. My perception of who he is, would change.

It's a culture thing, in the complexities of how (1) black women aren't seen as good enough to successful black men, and (2) the optics of the first black president having a white wife.

It's incredibly simplistic to just reduce it down to "who cares all love is love". Because while it is, that's really not the takeaway here.
 
His interaction with black folk would have went a LOT different in 07-08 with a white wife, period. Regardless of how "strong" she was. I can't even imagine Barack with a white wife. My opinion of him would change instantaneously.

And I'm not saying Michelle doesn't deserve credit for being herself, but I'm saying there is a lot of merit to the idea that Barack needed a black woman to be able to springboard his political career in Chicago, at the very least.

People seem to forget that Is Obama Black Enough? was a thing. He probably wouldn't have had the same amount of support from black women as well.
 
I have no idea how true this is, but I remember in the OJ documentary on Netflix they mentioned that black women sometimes don't like when black men marry white women.

And maybe that's 100% untrue. I don't know much about the black community, just thought I would throw it out there.

It's true. Lots of black people hate on black celebrities who have white wives. Especially if they were with a black woman before that.
 

numble

Member
I mean you can argue definitions if you like but if you say he is unacceptable and your view turns vastly negative towards him because of the race of his wife then yeah, I feel ok saying those people are bigoted in their opinion.



Sure, but as I said in my other post above, I think you can absolutely argue that it would be more violent, outspoken, however you want to call it but I don't see how that matters since it wasn't a massive voting block that would have swung key states and prevented him from becoming president. There was enough racist bullshit (even now that he's left office) that saying they would act more racist isn't really impactful in the grand scheme of things and would have done nothing to prevent his political career from happening.
I named some key swing states. Turnout was up in Pennsylvania and Florida compared to 2008 and 2012, so it does seem to have swung key states. I think it's acknowledged that the surge of voters in the panhandle (who did not show up in 2012 and 2008) won Florida for Trump.
 

Phased

Member
I don't think you understand the black community



It's not bigotry, it has more to do with black people's acceptance of black politicians with white spouses.

I don't, however nobody can deny how good he was at being relateable to huge swaths of the population. With Michelle he managed to win a significant portion of the White vote, I have to believe he could do the same with the Black vote if he focused on it enough.

With that said, maybe not. I'm still glad it was with Michelle that he won for a variety of reasons.
 
See now you're just projecting. I didn't say my views would turn "vastly negative", I said they would change. My perception of who he is, would change.

It's a culture thing, in the complexities of how (1) black women aren't seen as good enough to successful black men, and (2) the optics of the first black president having a white wife.

It's incredibly simplistic to just reduce it down to "who cares all love is all love". Because while it is, that's really not the takeaway here.

Maybe I misunderstood but you seemed to definitely be implying that your opinion would change and it would be a negative change, not a positive change. Again, opics and crap don't matter, I'm asking why specifically the black community would become more negative on him for the race of his wife? And to the current question, how is that even possibly not a bigoted view if you think less of him depending on what race his wife is?

I named some key swing states. Turnout was up in Pennsylvania and Florida compared to 2008 and 2012, so it does seem to have swung key states. I think it's acknowledged that the surge of voters in the panhandle (who did not show up in 2012 and 2008) won Florida for Trump.

Ok? Your data isn't supporting your assertion that the higher voter turnout was all racists that would have only come out if he would have done the unforgivable action of marrying a white wife. I'd argue to the average person who's not racist that him being less "really black" (mixed race and a white wife) that it would likely helped him if there was any change. No one is saying there's not racists but extreme racists thinking back to the good old times of lynching black men for holding hands let alone marrying white women isn't a large voter base that could have swung the election in 08/12.
 

kirblar

Member
I named some key swing states. Turnout was up in Pennsylvania and Florida compared to 2008 and 2012, so it does seem to have swung key states. I think it's acknowledged that the surge of voters in the panhandle (who did not show up in 2012 and 2008) won Florida for Trump.
This was something we were hearing about on election night but just vanished from the discussion afterwards.
 

Hazmat

Member
And you think the racists would need that reason to be against him? Do you guys remember 08? 80% of racists didn't sit on the sideline and keep quiet because "at least he ain't got a white wife!". You can argue if they would have been more violent, etc. but I don't see how you can say they were cool with him because he had a black wife.

I didn't say that some racists were cool with him because he has a black wife. The poster I was replying to wondered how having a white wife could have been a negative and I gave an example of a group that could be angrier if it were the case.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
I think the thing that really sold Obama for president is the way he handled himself in debates. He seemed genuine and nice. I remember him not attacking people, and taking attacks against himself like a champ. He even answered the "what is your biggest weakness" question in a way that didn't make him seem perfect iirc.
 

thefro

Member
I don't doubt that they dated. It is true that Obama got more ambitious once he found out he couldn't make as much of a difference as he wanted to (as a Community organizer), but the rest sounds like BS.

Obama could have picked much easier paths and he made a lot of decisions that are inconsistent with someone with Presidential ambitions, like supporting gay marriage in 96 or going up against the Chicago political machinery.

The big reason he picked to live in Chicago was he wanted to belong to the African-American community (per Dreams from My Father). He sought out and chose that instead of going straight to grad school or working on Wall Street for longer than he did.
 
I didn't say that some racists were cool with him because he has a black wife. The poster I was replying to wondered how having a white wife could have been a negative and I gave an example of a group that could be angrier if it were the case.

Sure, but it doesn't matter if that group holds no statistical significance...
 

Deepwater

Member
Maybe I misunderstood but you seemed to definitely be implying that your opinion would change and it would be a negative change, not a positive change. Again, opics and crap don't matter, I'm asking why specifically the black community would become more negative on him for the race of his wife? And to the current question, how is that even possibly not a bigoted view if you think less of him depending on what race his wife is?

Because his commitment to the black community would have been challenged (moreso than it already was) with a white wife.

There's already a lot of "not black enough" for biracial black folk. With a white wife that's a whole other debacle.

Again, love who you love, but CULTURALLY amongst black people I would be less inclined to trust a (biracial) black male politician with a white wife to do work for the black community.
 
Do we have to break down the cultural nuances of black men with white wives? Because I have time

I understand the cultural nuances. To be clear, I think you're totally on point about how he'd be perceived. My issue is cheering that on and blowing it off as "Eh, it's a cultural thing" which isn't wrong but damn. If Obama was the exact same Obama with a white wife and you think less of him or more negatively for it, that's bigotry.
 
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