Exactly how does it follow that Obama has to convert to Catholicism just because he choose a Catholic priest as a spiritual adviser?
Benedict Obama, Catholic
- Thread starter David T
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Exactly how does it follow that Obama has to convert to Catholicism just because he choose a Catholic priest as a spiritual adviser?
Well, he wants to be a part of the parish. And maybe he is just attracted to Catholicism by Father Pfleger. Anyway, you could just as well ask why he has to convert to the United Church of Christ just because he chooses Jeremiah Wright as his spiritual adviser.
According to Obama's team itself they considered strongly Biden, Kaine, Sebellius and Bayh as running mate. As Biden and Kaine are Catholics and as a Black-Woman ticket could be too much, this leaves Bayh.
This may be a silly question, but would the memory of Benedict Arnold be a real stumbling block to a candidate named "Benedict", above and beyond giving his opponents an easy cheap shot to take at him?
Oh, I have to stand corrected. On the last page, I said that Wright was Congregationalist, not UCC.
Though the UCC did absorb some Congregationalist churches. And this actually sort of backs up my point about Catholicism being a stronger identity marker, since I would be unlikely to confuse a Catholic priest with any other denomination.
Might make him more popular in Britain.
(But seriously, if you can win in post-911 America as a black guy with a Muslim father and the middle name Hussein and a surname that sounds like "Osama", you can probably win with a first name that sounds like some guy from the 18th Century whose villainy is now only discussed, if at all, for about one paragraph in high-school history texts.
And anyway, apart from maybe taking it as a baptismal name, there'd be no reason why Obama would have to start calling himself "Benedict" for everyday purposes.)
Well I have access to a comkputer now without a non-English spell check.
I do not claim that Barack Obama isn't African American
But I don't see anything absurd or weird in noting that Barack Obama didn't grow up in the African American community or really had any significant social connection to it, as his father family lived in Africa. He grew up in Hawaii with his White mother and grandparent, then he spend 4 years in Indonesia where he lived with his mother and Asian stepfather, when he moved to Hawaii again to live with his grandparents again until he turned 18, on Hawaii he was sent to a private school, which according to his Wiki was one of the top private schools in Honolulu (of course it may be me who have the preconceived notion that a elite private school in Hawaii in the 70ties likely had few African American children).
None of this run counter to Barack Obama being African American, but being part of the community also mean a lot of socializing into the cultural mores, cultural shorthands and learning cultural traps, something which happens by interact privately with the group in question. By entering a African American Church and marrying a African American woman, he did receive this socializing . But even with that and 16 marriage with Michelle Obama he was attacked in 2007-08 by members of the African American community (and it was Democrats) for not being "Black enough".
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Oh yes, I made that misspelling a few times in his early presidency for both name.
I think they married because they loved each other, not over some political prospect to make him seem "more African-American" which also doesn't make any sense; just because his father was Kenyan and he was raised by a white mother didn't mean he didn't grow up African-American or was considered by society that way.
(1) St Sabrina, despite having a white priest, is an African American church in term of its membership and orientation. True, it is part of a larger church whose leadership is not predominantly black, but the same could be said of the Trinity United Church of Christ. (And if it be objected that the Catholic Church is more centralized than the UCC, an obvious reply is that Father Pfleger certainly didn't prove to be a mere tool of the hierarchy and indeed was always getting in trouble with it.) An Obama who worships at St Sabrina will still be a black person living in a black-majority neighborhood and who worships in a predominantly African American church. Nor do I see why he would be less likely to marry an African American woman--he met Michelle Robinson through Sidley & Austin, not through the church.
(2) I think the election results of 2008 and subsequently show that the argument that Obama (because one of his parents was white or because he is not the descendant of slaves in the antebellum South) is not "black enough" was never taken seriously by most African Americans. (BTW, Alan Keyes had already tried more-African American-than-thou against Obama in 2004 with no success.)
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It was never in the general election where Obama was at risk of losing the African American vote. It’s his career until then where it matters. A Black man who identify as African American, is Democratic and the first potential AA POTUS will always be treated with enthusiasm in the general election. I suspect that if Kamala Harris had survived the primaries, would have been embraced in the general election no matter how much unenthusiastic the AA have been about her in the primary.
But you’re right most AA did see him as authentic Black.
Philip
Donor
I think you are over estimating Arnold's position in America's memory. I wouldn't be surprised if more than half of American adults couldn't identify him. If anyone, he would have been associated with then Pope Benedict.
Probably too early for Benedict Cumberbatch.
Maybe eggs benedict?
When I said the elections showed that he was regarded as African American, I meant the primaries as well as the general election. E.g., in the 2008 Pennsylvania presidential primary (which he lost) "Obama drew more than 90 percent of the vote among Pennsylvania's black voters, who are heavily concentrated around Philadelphia." https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/22/pa.primary/ In Illinois, African Americans "backed Obama 93-5" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Illinois_Democratic_primary "He beat Clinton 88 percent to 11 percent in Maryland, and 89 percent to 11 percent in Virginia, among black voters." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obama-won-the-potomac-primary/
Or going back to the 2004 Senate primary, he got almost 90 percent of the vote in predominantly African American wards--and he wasn't even the only black candidate running! (There was a minor contender named Joyce Washington.) In the 21st Ward on the South Side, he got 92.66%, in the nearby 34th he got 92.94%; in the 6th Ward, he got 94.43%! https://chicagoelections.gov/en/election-results.asp?election=95&race=12&ward=6 In the West Side 24th Ward he got 88.68%. And so on...
It was actually the conventional wisdom at one time that he couldn't possibly win because his last name sounded too much like "Osama"...
