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"He's Not All That Black"The first difficulty is that part of Obama's appeal to white America has to do with the widespread Caucasian sense that Obama "isn't all that black." Many whites who roll their eyes at the mention of the names of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton - former presidential candidates who behave in ways that many whites find too African-American - are attracted by the cool, underplayed blackness and ponderous, quasi-academic tone of the half-white, Harvard-educated Obama. Obama doesn't shout, chant, holler or drawl. He doesn't rail against injustice, bring the parishioners to their feet and threaten delicate white suburban and middle-class sensibilities. He stays away from catchy slogans (like Jackson's "Keep Hope Alive") and from emotive "truth"-speaking confrontations with power. To use Joe Biden's revealing terminology, Obama strikes many whites as "clean" and "articulate" - something different from their unfortunately persistent image of blacks as dirty, dangerous, irrational and unintelligible.
(senate.gov)
"Obama doesn't rail against injustice, bring the parishioners to their feet and threaten delicate white suburban and middle-class sensibilities."
Obama has no moral or political obligation to shed his biracial identity, "multicultural" background and elite, private-school education to "act [more classically and stereotypically] black." But whites' racial attitudes are less progressive than might be assumed when their willingness to embrace a black candidate is conditioned by their requirement that his or her "blackness" be qualified. When ingrained gender sensibilities lead you (all other things equal) to prefer your "straight-acting" gay uncle over your outwardly "effeminate" gay nephew, your tolerance for non-traditional sexual orientations might be less enlightened than you think.
