“I forgot he [Obama] was black!” I cringed when I heard Chris Matthews say this last night, immediately at the end of the State of the Union Speech. A very interesting feminist anaylsis on this statement by Feministing.com got me thinking. My first impression after hearing Chris Matthews is that he equated Obama’s confident, sensible, and powerful speech to being “white.” His comment ushered in a dicotomy of white, power, politics, versus what it is to be ”black,” and political racial tensions, etc. Not to mention, Matthew’s implication that Obama has seemling transcended his racial identity to where people forget race is at play here… Absurd. My question is, how would one of his speeches be “black” or what we would remember he was black? Matthew’s assumption that race, particually, racial identity is something one can “turn off” or that goes away is false, in every sense of the word.
