Occupying A Dream

I haven't finished the article yet but my initial reaction is simply this: Eliza Doolittle is a fictional character. Gaining a new voice needn't cause one to lose the old one, and my experience suggest that it doesn't.
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I'll go back to reading now......

He's talking down to white people —how curious it sounds the other way round! In order to say such a thing one would have to think collectively of white people, as a people of one mind who speak with one voice—a thought experiment in which we have no practice. But it's worth trying. It's only when you play the record backward that you hear the secret message.
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Oddly enough, this is a thought experiment I witness white people engaging in frequently. Most often, it's in defense of a color-blindness that preserves the status quo and downplays the cultural forces that continue to entrench inequality. In other words, its color-blindness in the service of racism.

The first stage in the evolution is contingent and cannot be contrived. In this first stage, the voice, by no fault of its own, finds itself trapped between two poles, two competing belief systems. And so this first stage necessitates the second: the voice learns to be flexible between these two fixed points, even to the point of equivocation. Then the third stage: this native flexibility leads to a sense of being able to "see a thing from both sides." And then the final stage, which I think of as the mark of a certain kind of genius: the voice relinquishes ownership of itself, develops a creative sense of disassociation in which the claims that are particular to it seem no stronger than anyone else's. There it is, my little theory—I'd rather call it a story. It is a story about a wonderful voice, occasionally used by citizens, rarely by men of power. Amidst the din of the 2008 culture wars it proved especially hard to hear.

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I'm capable of appreciating complex ideas, but this is...well, masturbatory at best.
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What the hell is the practical application of "..a creative sense of disassociation in which the claims that are particular to [an individual] seem no stronger than anyone else's...? Dreaming whilst in a coma?
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This is a very, very lovely piece, written in an engaging style, demanding the full attention of the reader over time, etc.
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This is also a mildly silly piece of over-the-top, meandering, coy idol-worship mixed with vague appeals to some morally superior sense of anthropological objectivity.
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Thanks for linking to it, Joe Klein, it was an enjoyable, if not terribly serious read.

Love Zadie Smith too. Thanks for the link.

You can listen to Smith's talk here http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=4698

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Many words used to express a relatively simple point: Obama is 'transcendent' because of the wide range of experiences that formed him.
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stuartzechman: I'm capable of appreciating complex ideas, but this is...well, masturbatory at best.
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Well, Smith does teach creative writing at Columbia. Cambridge prolly doesn't help, either.
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What the hell is the practical application of..
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Nearest I can tell, Smith's stating that Obama has managed the trick of making whatever it is he's talking about not about him...I could easily be wrong. Anyway, you pulled the key paragraph in the piece. The other bits - if you can get past the flowery prose - are other examples Smith uses to support her 'little theory'.

I haven't finished the article yet, but here's a thought -- Obama while a unique figure in American politics, there are a lot more like him at home. African Americans have long been forced to internalize the dominant culture as a requisite for upward mobility.
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Whether you call it game face or being bilingual, unless you have settled for a ghettoized existence, you have your feet firmly planted in at least two cultural worlds. Our voice changes when we pick up the phone between talking to the boss or to our girlfriend about the Boss.
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A product of second class citizenship and racism is a constant vigilante eye on the dominant culture in order to detect subtle changes that might reveal danger. Yes we learned to read between the lines of whomever is speaking and you don't do that without understanding these characters as your own.
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Surprisingly, it still comes as a surprise that most African Americans who cross over possess the ability to give voice to the shoes others walk in.

Thanks, g_crush.

@Dee,
I think that the need to maintain two voices is more universal that you realize. "Upward mobility" itself represents a subculture that not everyone subscribes to. I have all the advantages that accrue from being white, male and articulate but that doesn't save me from the feeling that I inhabit two different worlds when I compare myself to those who view acquiring wealth vastly beyond what's needed to live comfortably as desirable, let alone important.

The idea that there's something wrong with the existence of a "dominant culture" needs questioning, IMO.

Golly, SZ, I had you pegged for a "secular relativist," a pigeonhole that normally includes as dogma the idea that all cultures are equally valid. Please expound.

a pigeonhole that normally includes as dogma the idea that all cultures are equally valid
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I don't think there's anyone who actually believes that. It sounds more like something that Michelle Malkin and Pamela Geller dream up as a straw man to attack people who don't hate Muslims as much as they do.

@Paul Dirks -
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Yeah. I think what SZ is getting at - although I really do want to know what he thinks, preferably at length - is that there is going to be a dominant culture, even if by default ("Hey - now there are 3 of us and only 2 of you!"), and that what makes that culture dominant is not ipso facto bad.
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On the other hand, I don't want to be deprived of my civil rights or my opportunities for personal expression if I happen not to belong to the dominant culture, whatever it may be. Unfortunately, this is often the fate of people in "non-dominant" cultures when they come into contact with the dominant culture.

I have many thoughts on this piece...
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But I haven't described Dream City. I'll try to. It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion. Naturally, Obama was born there. So was I. When your personal multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin—well, anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues. That's how you get from your mother to your father, from talking to one set of folks who think you're not black enough to another who figure you insufficiently white. It's the kind of town where the wise man says "I" cautiously, because "I" feels like too straight and singular a phoneme to represent the true multiplicity of his experience. Instead, citizens of Dream City prefer to use the collective pronoun "we."
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That's basically true, especially for people who don't have the option of "passing" in one way or another.
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It's the fear of being mistaken for Joyce that has always ensured that I ignore the box marked "biracial" and tick the box marked "black" on any questionnaire I fill out, and call myself unequivocally a black writer and roll my eyes at anyone who insists that Obama is not the first black president but the first biracial one. But I also know in my heart that it's an equivocation; I know that Obama has a double consciousness, is black and, at the same time, white, as I am, unless we are suggesting that one side of a person's genetics and cultural heritage cancels out or trumps the other.
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But to mention the double is to suggest shame at the singular. Joyce insists on her varied heritage because she fears and is ashamed of the singular black. I suppose it's possible that subconsciously I am also a tragic mulatto, torn between pride and shame.
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Not so true. What some people miss is that denying other non-white elements of someone's heritage can "suggest shame." If Tiger Woods for example simply called himself black he would be denying an Asian heritage that also risks being seen as a source of shame. Joyce's insistence on acknowledging her French heritage when she ticks a racial box is not the same as her insistence on acknowledging her native American heritage.

@Paul D. -- I didn't mean to come across as implying that no one else's circumstances might give rise to a need for multiple voices. I was simply remarking that in the case of Obama it is uniquely unremarkable for blacks in this country to do so. To paraphrase Poussaint "As a people who share a common problem rather than a common culture" we tend to produce a common response and that is to internalize multiple voices as a means to understand the world and interact safely in a hostile environment.
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In the case of Whoopie Goldberg it launched a career and Obama it has allowed him to sculpt the next phase in our history. But the bottom line is internalizing multiple voices is a survival skill that we learn at an early age and one we had better perfect before stepping outside the five mile safety zone of the predominantly all black neighborhood.

Thanks for this link. Great lecture. It reminded me of this description by Obama of his own book, elicited by a University of Vermont English prof who was also a delegate to the Democratic convention, and who writes a Vermont political blog.
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“I'm teaching Dreams From My Father [Obama's autobiography] in a postmodern American literature class in the spring,” I told him, “and I think I know what I want to say about it. But if you were teaching it, what would you want to dwell on that people tend to miss? How would you want it taught?”
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It had almost exactly the effect I was after: Obama widened his eyes, and stopped completely and thought for a minute, a little smile playing at the corners of his lips. And then he gave me a beautiful, carefully formatted answer, just like that.
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“I think what I'd want stressed is that the patchwork formation of identity, that I talk about in the book, is a quintessentially American phenomenon, as well as modern, or postmodern. That questioning about who you are is another way of talking about the limitless possibilities of who you can be in America, how many elements and strands can make up your identity. So when the book turns to Africa at the end, there's the sense that in addition to Africa having something to say to me about who I am, my roots, America has something to say to the world about how we can conceive of ourselves as individuals.”
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http://vermontdailybriefing.com/?p=710

Kathy, thanks for that excerpt. Fascinating.

Hi Rose. Haven't seen you for awhile.

Thanks, Joe. I enjoyed it very much. PD already picked out one of my favorites: "It's only when you play the record backward that you hear the secret message."
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There are so many things about Obama that makes him different and it's easy to list them, but this does a good job of explaining it, and how this type of multi-voiced individual rarely gets the opportunity Obama has. OIA.

"The idea that there's something wrong with the existence of a 'dominant culture' needs questioning, IMO."
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Not surprisingly, this is most often said by members of dominant cultures. But your framing is interesting. How can there be something wrong with the existence of a dominant culture--they do in fact exist in macro and micro terms across society. Our beloved MSM is surely one of them. In practical terms, they're necessary, and not merely in a Darwinian sense. Whether it's straight, white, bourgeois et al. Where I'm at it's "yamato," with plenty of "nihonjinron" to explain their uniqueness and superiority racially and culturally. But as a minority of fractional size, can I say there's something wrong with the dominant Japanese culture? No. At least for now, as expat vs. aspiring citizen or father of a mixed race child.
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However, I would say that the term dominant (courtesy of M-W):
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1 a: commanding, controlling, or prevailing over all others b: very important, powerful, or successful
2: overlooking and commanding from a superior position
3: of, relating to, or exerting ecological or genetic dominance
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May strike members of subaltern groups as well, problematic.

In my 30 years of involvement in the Black community, I can say that I've acquired a mild "second voice" too.
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My job takes me to the world of science, acedemics, agencies, and politics on a local level. My home takes me to hot links, maybe ribs on the barbecue on the weekend, and more than a little old and new school Black vernacular.
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This cuts both ways, and isn't something that is bad. Not in the least, it's a good thing, because I've known many freinds who "shift gears" in accordance with who they are talking to.
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I've always looked at those who practice this as a sort of "universal" attitude, of working in one world while living in another (the exact same thing I do, but the immersion aspect is opposite to the point where I have to worry about slipping into my second voice). In a sense, its a virtue and a necessity:
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In the working world, Black Americans speaking Black vernacular is not acceptable (I just get funny looks when I slip), and this a necassary adjustment if one wants to retain their job.
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I admire the effort and don't see anything wrong. Think of it as speaking in French with your family then switching to English at work.
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No more and no less...

sz punches right through to get to the essence of this piece...
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I'm capable of appreciating complex ideas, but this is...well, masturbatory at best.
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it all drivel -- the ramblings of a pothead in love with their own intellect, trying to explain her "transcendent" weed induced revelations ("Its really deep, man")

And while this kind of exposition may work in a novelistic form, where entire universes can be constructed from which elegantly phrased insights pertaining to that universe can be derived, when its exposed to the harsh light of reality its shortcomings become all too obvious.

If Tiger Woods for example simply called himself black he would be denying an Asian heritage that also risks being seen as a source of shame.
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I'm curious:
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"being seen as a source of shame" by whom, Rose?

I'm curious:
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"being seen as a source of shame" by whom, Rose?
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stuart, Wider society and people who haven't found a way to process the racism they encounter. Asians attract a LOT more racism than French people! When you encounter prejudice for the color of your skin, two things often happen: a. your race begins to feel like a source of shame and b. other people act like your race is a source of shame. My point is that Smith is treating someone who chooses not to embrace the singular black because they're part French like someone who chooses not to embrace the singular black because they're part Native American or Asian. That's dumb, frankly.
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I also don't want to imply that I agree with Smith's unreserved condemnation of black people who don't embrace the singular black and insist on acknowledging their Caucasian heritage. I see her point, but I'm uncomfortable with her judgmental and conformist attitude. I don't really care what someone labels him or herself. (It's also strange that later in the same piece she - without explanation - refers to her half-Indian and half-English friend. So Indians aren't being ashamed of their heritage if they don't embrace the singular but black people are? She really needs to clarify her thinking there.)
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Kathy, Hi!

Let me clarify this "source of shame" issue a little further...
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If you deny your Native American heritage, for example, by embracing the singular anything (e.g. black, white, Jewish, Asian etc.) you are denying a potential source of shame. Which is the logic Smith uses to argue that black people regardless of their other heritage(s) should embrace the singular black. So by her very own logic - half-white half-black people should call themselves black because otherwise they're implying shame - black people who have other heritages that can be seen as sources of shame should embrace those heritages in their "self-label." (BTW, this use of "should" is not mine; I'm channeling Smith here.) By extending Smith's logic, if Tiger Woods simply called himself black he would be denying a potential source of shame: his Thai heritage. Similarly Joyce would be denying another potential source of shame: her Native American heritage.