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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
DeWayne Wickham talks about African-Americans' overwhelming support for the 42nd president, and why they like him more than Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson.
Feb 20, 2002 | In her now-famous defense of a scandal-plagued Bill Clinton, Nobel prizewinner Toni Morrison, went so far as to call him "our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime." "Clinton," Morrison wrote in the 1998 New Yorker essay, "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."
I remember reading Morrison's essay and choking. Morrison's estimation of Clinton's blackness seemed shallow, offensive and beside the point. At the time, I wasn't the only one unnerved, and I'm sure many people still have problems with calling Clinton "the first black president," no matter how Morrison intended it. Yet, in retrospect, I realize that my sharp reaction had something to do with age: I was pretty young when Reagan and Bush were in office. Like most white people, I didn't understand how Clinton related to the African-American community; I also had a limited memory of how other presidents treated blacks.
DeWayne Wickham's "Bill Clinton and Black America," mostly a collection of interviews he conducted with such African-Americans as NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, actor Tim Reid and columnist Betty Baye, fills in both gaps. The book specifically illuminates how blacks responded to Clinton and just how different his presidency was from every other one in American history. The latter might be Wickham's more important point.
Clinton, despite some notable blunders (especially welfare reform), impressed blacks with his policies -- particularly his many appointments of African-Americans. More famously, Clinton radiated a certain style. As Bill Campbell, former mayor of Atlanta, notes, "We know when white folks are comfortable around us and when they're not." And while some of that convincing style had to do with Clinton's genuine interest in black culture, much of it had to do with -- as Morrison and many others have pointed out -- his poor, Southern roots.
Wickham, a columnist for USA Today, spoke to Salon about what that Toni Morrison essay really meant, why Clinton tops Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson in the eyes of black Americans and why it doesn't really matter whether Clinton's sincere or not.
I've been waiting for a book about this because I remember the Toni Morrison piece ...
And you wondered, "What does she mean by that?"
Yes, and I remember thinking that the reasons why she called him the "first black president" were offensive. What was the general reaction to that piece?
It was very mixed among the people I interviewed. Keep in mind -- I set out to interview people who like Bill Clinton. That's the purpose of this book. The purpose of the book was not to figure out who likes him and who doesn't like him and why each side takes a position. Ninety percent of African-Americans like Bill Clinton. And when I talked to these people, even among them, I found a variance of opinions about the notion that Bill Clinton might be the first black president. Nobody takes that idea seriously, but people attempted to explain why one would think that way, and there were some who, like you, were offended at the suggestion.
My initial thought was, It can't sit well with African-Americans to call any white man, a black man. But you note that it was tongue-in-cheek, right?
It certainly was tongue-in-cheek on Toni Morrison's part. Anyone who reads the totality of what she said clearly understands that she's painting a picture. But I think that in many ways it diminished what Clinton did to suggest that he is black. Because if you're black and you did those things, now you begin to argue, "Man, you could have done more than that [for us], brother." But the fact that he is white and did that much is quite remarkable.
Why do you think white people might wrinkle up their noses at the idea?
Largely because they don't understand the history of the relationship between African-Americans and the 41 white men who have encumbered the Oval Office.
You do explain how poorly previous presidents have treated -- or haven't treated at all, for that matter -- the black community. Do you think the black community's enthusiasm for Clinton has something to do with the fact that Reagan and Bush were particularly insensitive? Was Clinton refreshing?
Ronald Reagan and George Bush I were part of a long line of presidents who just didn't get it when it comes to people of color, particularly African-Americans. Of the first 15 presidents, 13 of them were staunch supporters of slavery. Eight of them actually owned slaves. Only John Adams and John Quincy Adams had no stomach for the institution. When you start talking about 41 presidents, you've already lost a third of them right there.
Then, what you find is that most presidents ran away from the black community. It was a difficult issue during slavery for white politicians. It was a difficult issue in the post-slavery period for politicians. It was a tough issue for a lot of presidents during the Jim Crow era when blacks were knocking on doors, demanding anti-lynching legislation, and Southern politicians were coming into the halls of Congress and the Oval Office, saying, "Not on our watch will you push that kind of legislation upon our people." The legislators had the power of the vote in Congress, and African-Americans had only, on their side, the moral high ground. Most presidents opted for the power of the vote. You have to get up to FDR and LBJ -- on whose watch the important civil rights legislation in our history was passed. So the list is very short.
