i went to a lecture this week

I went to a lecture this week. The lecture was from author David Hollinger who wrote, among other things, the book we are reading titled “postethnic America.” His lecture was mainly broken own into 2 parts, with a small 3rd part. First he mainly talked about ethno-racial relations, with obama as an example. Many people have questioned whether obama is “black enough,” I never fully understood why that was even a question. Except possibly on the level that some people would say he doesn’t “act black” or “sound black” which I have always found incredibly offensive. According to Hollinger, there is a different part of the story I wasn’t aware of. In the united states, immigrants or children of immigrants from Africa or the carribean statistically do better economically, educationally, and intermarry more often than African-americans who have been here since the slave trade. So, because obama is the son of an immigrant, he is automatically set in a different category. I was curious about how many generations a family has to be here before this difference is no longer noticeable. If a family came to this country in the early 1900s, they would not have had to deal with being a part of the slave trade, but they would still have been heavily discriminated against and would have been part of the civil rights movement possibly…. During the lecture, someone asked if language was part of the problem. Hollinger did talk a little bit about language, he had a quote from colin powell about how having only a little African American in him made him black no matter what, but he didn’t sound black so that also set him apart. I think that was the gist of his quote, maybe I changed it a little bit to what I was thinking about, but either way, I thought colin powell was another great example of the situation that obama is in right now. the 2nd and 3rd parts werent as interesting to me, the 2nd part was about the jewish relationship to identity. the short 3rd part was about how hollinger was post-idaho when he finally met a jewish person when he was growing up.

All of this goes back to what our identities are made up of. We saw the “new authentics” show on Tuesday, what a great show, everyone should go see it. I believe its up until mid april. All of the artists in the show were jewish in some way although not all would have considered each other to be jewish. I know I already spoke a little about the show so I won’t go over it all again.

I don’t know if it is just because I am tired (again) or if I am just in an abnormally wistful mood, but I wish we could somehow comprehend a person’s identity always as an accumulation of their personal history- as well as understand that their identity can change at any minute in answer to that personal history or in response to a contemporary situation. But I think that would require us all to be mind readers. And if we were all mind readers I guess we probably wouldnt have the life experiences we end up having.