The Invisible Man at The RNC

Tonight, I watched Clint Eastwood at the RNC in Tampa address an empty seat as though he were talking to The President of the United States, Barak Obama.  During the whole convention we kept hearing that Barak Obama is an absentee leader in a time that demands real leadership.  We were then told that the "real" leadership is Ryan/Romney, unlike the invisible leadership of Barak Obama.

As I watched Clint Eastwood's 12 minute monologue, I thought to myself that something was really wrong with this obvious jab at Obama.   What is the metaphor and rhetoric being offered up in this empty chair piece?  For me, like many of my friends, I mused, in cynicism, that Mr. Eastwood was going senile having left a local Tampa nursing home headed in the direction of a microphone at the RNC convention.

But then I heard Toni Morrison's thought offered up in  Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, (as paraphrase) sometimes the greatest revelation about people's understanding of race is best understood when you are not around.  It was this criticism in literature that began to shed light on me about what I was seeing in a mostly monolithic (White American) crowd as they began to share in jest about President Obama.

To use an empty chair as a descriptor of his leadership was ultimately to reify the entire novel by one Ralph Ellison.  Ellison offers through his protagonist, "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me."  This quote sums up much of what I'm thinking tonight.

As the Republicans seek to take office, I am concerned at the way in which they have painted distortions of Obama through their heavy-handed take on his leadership which they want us to consider as problematic.  Only, they want us to forget the derelict leadership of one dubious George W. who was a critical contributor to the problem we see today.

They want us to dismiss context and concentrate on the immediate.  This approach has never served black people well...because it distorts the reality of what we see, hoping to disconnect past from present.  But, we must be ever watchful of anybody or anything that will tell us to brush off the past as though it was/is inconsequential.  Our current predicament is always dancing in the dark of the past, and are ultimately conjured notions of race that inform this present-day.

Thus, when republicans get on stage and talk to an invisible Obama, there are many things that are being offered up for consumption in the public square.  I think they are saying that we see you Obama as insignificant, as an aberration in our history.  I think they are saying that Obama is ineffective.  I think they are saying that Obama must be overlooked: he is just a spook who sat "in the wrong chair."  I believe that Eastwood is calling Obama a paranormal figure in our world.  His presidency is invisible and empty.  This is not just absolutely racist...it is downright saddening.  Its disrespectful...and it is hard to take seriously the RNC's desire to have black folk join them in their efforts, particularly as they have sought to reinvigorate powerful metaphors that describe the intersection of race and gender.

It's hard to believe that the RNC are simply that stupid, or that under-educated, when they seek to lead this United States of America in an international world (which is full of people of color with experiences that MUST be taken into consideration).  While the use of Morrison's literary theory in this historical moment sheds light on what was conceived in this political moment, it is challenging to continue to see racialized images heaped upon the president in this election cycle.  While I admire the Christian convictions often championed by the conservatives, I shudder at their heavy handed use of race that seem to operate as a sort of glaze to their political agenda.

What might be invisible to them is this racial glaze making everything taste a bit off.  However, it is not invisible to the rest of us who are watching the RNC make our president invisible on a stage and in a space that seems to lack diversity (and at the same time making an unconscious commentary on both of those realities).  It might be good for them to know that we are not interested in going back to days when people looked down, hid in corners, and entered through the back doors...as if we/they were invisible.  Further, our president is not invisible and neither is the depth of racial conceptualizations that are being served by the RNC.  I'm sorry, I'll pass on your Invisible Man entree, I've already read the book by a much more thoughtful artist.