Obama: There's no longer time for excuses for black men

[kwassa]

73. I agree it is not the same.

but I don't think that even the African-American experience is universally the same. My wife grew up in the country, and doesn't relate to the African-American urban experience at all. Racial relations are different geographically in this country, as the degree of segregation and separation can be quite different. My wife was the first to desegregate her kindergarten back in the middle 1960s. My mother-in-law took her family to the white church on Easter, same denomination, and upset the whole congregation. More recently, a relative, African-American, had a funeral there and nobody thought twice about it.

We are also in a time of great transition, as immigration brings many people of color from around the world, all from different cultures. One local high school has African-American students as a minority of the black students in the school, outnumbered by students from Africa, the Caribbean and South America.

Obama's experience is unlikely and unique, and he has had to thoughtfully sort out his own identity that really fit nowhere. Hawaii is a unique environment unto itself, though multi-ethnic way back then, and another place in the US where whites are distinctly in the minority, though there are very few of African heritage. It is mostly pan-Asian and Pacific Islander.

I think Obama has a great ability to empathize, and his experience in Chicago acquainted him with the problems of poor blacks in the urban environment. He may not be able to internalize it the way Michelle probably can, but I think he can be close.