U.S. is ready for biracial president, multicultural leader Walker says
Presidential candidate Barack Obama's mixed-race background is a great asset to him, to the country and to the world at a time when leaders have to be able to relate empathically to people who are very different from themselves, multicultural expert Rebecca Walker said during an interview in Madison on Monday night.
During her earlier 90-minute talk, "Hyphen-Nation: The Role of Race in a Globalized Society," and subsequent question-and-answer session that kicked off the University of Wisconsin-Madison's 2008-2009 Distinguished Lecture Series, Walker only mentioned the presidential candidate parenthetically.
All reporters want to know her feelings about Obama, Walker said afterward.
"The paradigm of whiteness as the dominant global power is waning, and so Obama's unique background can be very beneficial to stabilizing America's position in the world," said Walker, the biracial daughter of Pulitzer-winning novelist Alice Walker ("The Color Purple") and prominent Jewish civil rights attorney Mel Leventhal.
"I think when I travel around the world the fact that America could elect a person of color to lead the country is very inspiring to many people around the world," Walker said. "And so I think that his background, in addition to his total competence and brilliance, is a beacon for people around the world who feel that if America can do this, so can the world be truly more democratic."
UW-Madison Afro-American studies professor Suzette Spencer introduced Walker as "one of the most important feminist voices today."
Spencer called Walker's a fresh, bold voice -- "one that insists that we must continue to re-examine the ways differing inter-generational perspectives on gender, sexuality, race, class, sex, politics, frame our complex identities, shape our relationships with each other and perhaps most important, our visions for sustainable futures."
Walker was named one of the 50 future leaders of America by Time magazine and received the Women Who Could Be President Award from the League of Women Voters. Her first memoir, which she read from Monday night, "Black, White and Jewish," remains a landmark in the field of biracial studies.
Walker said she thinks America is ready to elect a biracial leader because Obama can respond to the needs of Americans in a realistic way.
"I think that if Barack Obama couldn't do that and if John McCain could, then I would vote for John McCain," she said. "I think at this point the question is: Who is able to do a better job in rebuilding and repositioning this country?"
After her parents divorced, Walker split her childhood between her father's home in Bronx, N.Y., and her mother's largely African-American environment in San Francisco. When she was 18, she changed her last name from Leventhal to Walker, her mother's maiden name.
She graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1992 and then co-founded Third Wave Foundation, an activist organization that works to support young women and transgender youth between the ages of 15 and 30. Walker is considered one of the founders of third-wave feminism.
Walker edited the Third Wave primer "To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism." With a foreword by her godmother, Gloria Steinem, the book is taught in gender studies programs around the world.
A contributing editor to Ms. magazine for many years and a columnist for the Huffington Post, Walker has had her work published in the New York Times and Harper's, Mademoiselle, Essence, Glamour, Interview and Buddhadharma magazines.
Walker told a crowd of about 400 in the Union Theater that the discussion about race has become toxic in American culture and globally.
It's a challenge to talk about race in America, she said.
"It's so toxic ... it has the potential to keep lovers from feeling intimacy," she said. "It has the potential to keep friendships from forming. It has the potential to keep qualified leaders from becoming elected. And it has the potential to keep families from feeling peace."
She criticized a recent op-ed article her father wrote based on his experience working with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. His message was that white people need to be reassured that if there is major change that they will still be able to maintain some level of privilege, she said.
"It was sort of a message to Obama that he should assure people that he will hire white people in his Cabinet. Then he would make sure that affirmative action would be based solely on need. That there wasn't going to be a mad rush to fill the colleges and all the higher institutions with black people," Walker said.
"I felt it was catering to white racism," she said.
"So even in our family -- and this is my father, whom I love -- it is almost impossible for us to have a discussion about race that isn't filled with this kind of anger, rage and toxicity."
The example is indicative of where we are as a country at the moment, she said.
"Can you imagine if, say, Obama said that John McCain would be a terrible president because he's white? Or if John McCain said Obama wouldn't be able to lead white people because he's black?" Walker asked.
These feelings are running as an undercurrent, but if they were actually expressed pandemonium would break out, she said.
"We are dealing with a situation where it is almost impossible to discuss race in a straightforward way that has a healing, forward-moving momentum."
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Rebecca Walker: "Obama's unique background can be very beneficial to stabilizing America's position in the world."
