The Art of Identity in 21st Century America

There is an art to identity. In a recent article, right-wing commentator Shelby Steele misinterprets the obvious, getting himself trapped within the need promote a conservative ideology. Ideology locks us in small boxes. Within Steele's little box, Ronald Reagan is always the hero, the ever-meaningful icon of his right-wing political ideology. President Obama is misinterpreted, in contrast, as being "hampered by a distinct inner emptiness."

Other popular right-wing ideologues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have flooded the talk radio airwaves with open frustration over the popularity of the newly-elected President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. The radio audience is repeatedly told that Obama is nothing but an empty suit, a symbol without any substance or fundamental values, and that the masses are enthralled with a cipher that we don’t really know anything about. I would argue that they are absolutely correct. Obama, in all of his identity travails—those internal to his separation from his father, those foist upon him by his current political detractors, and those resulting from the continuing navigation of those structural inequities of identity interpretation still strewn across the American landscape because of this nation’s forefathers inability to dismantle their homegrown racist inclinations—has been loosened from any fundamental moorings about the capability of Black men to become a floating signifier of identity. His signifying achievement is likewise the potential of all who travail, those who do not fit neatly the labels and the diminishments and the detractions, who wander the earth without certain identity.

Ultimately, Obama changes everything. All United States Presidents prior to Obama have signified a power structure that is derivatively Western and, thus, anti-Other. Obama, non-Western both in appearance and in his given name, has forever complicated the conversation about race and identity in America. Does Obama as POTUS and figurehead of the American experiment actually represent the American social drama we have known throughout history, an America that has been represented almost exclusively by non-Blacks in the media and public imagination? Of course he does, perhaps better than anyone else prior, whether everyone likes it or not. A cipher, yet to be fully told, can indeed represent a nation.

Of course, no identity is actually fixed; all identities tend to unhinge themselves over time. However, when a person becomes a floating signifier they also work to redefine the other identities in whose contexts they become enthralled. Within Obama’s proximal zone, the Democratic party and it liberal constituency have been redefined; the Republican party and its conservative constituency also finds itself redefined in their opposition to Obama’s success; Blacks have been redefined; people of mixed lineage have been redefined; marginalized people groups and their agency have been redefined; and the list goes on.

Steele is wrong. President Obama is not empty. Like me, like any other floating signifier, he is pregnant with possibility. He is full. There is an art to identity that makes all such symbols full. I discuss these matters and more in my new book, Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook About Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff That Matters, which will be published by AltaMira Press in 2010. I consider it a work of arts-based research. I'll let you know when it's available.