Joe the Plumber

Ah … the joys of being in one of the swingiest of swing states (Ohio, which is probably right up there with Florida as the most swinging). … First, you get inundated with more campaign ads than anyone (oh, joy!). Second, you’re bound to be connected to some sort of national news every presidential election …

Make it two in two weeks for northwest Ohio. Last week, ABC News broadcast from Bowling Green State University and Charles Gibson watched the debate with a group of BGSU students. This, week, Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, which is a suburb of Toledo, made national news after being mentioned, apparently, 26 times during the presidential debate on Wednesday night. (I wouldn’t know, but for the fact that I’ve been told so by news sources; I finally lived up to my credo and didn’t watch the debate.) Wurzelbacher apparently spoke with Barack Obama the other day while Obama was visiting the Toledo area and that discussion on taxes provided fodder for McCain and Obama last night.

In keeping with my ongoing interest in the passing references to cultural phenomena that people make, I found part of one interview with Wurzelbacher kind of interesting. Just before the 3 minute mark in this phone interview with Katie Couric of CBS, Wurzelbacher makes such a reference, by referring to Sammy Davis, Jr. Specifically, Wurzelbacher states that in asking Obama a question, he hoped to “really corner” a presidential candidate and “get them to answer a question for once instead of tap dancing around it.” He then goes on to say, “Unfortunately, I asked a question, but I still got a tap dance … almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.”

The thing that strikes me about this reference is why he referenced Sammy Davis, Jr. I don’t know if Wurzelbacher intended any kind of symbolic association of Obama with Davis, other than that Davis was a tap dancer and Wurzelbacher was talking about tap dancing. Perhaps that was the extent of his conscious connection. Or perhaps he saw more of a connection. After all, Davis was, like Obama is, African American. Perhaps Wurzelbacher did not consciously make that connection as he spoke. Or perhaps he did and thought it was funny. The point is that, within larger cultural discourse, the connection involving race exists and it does mean something, particularly when a white guy from suburban Ohio, using the connection to invoke a sense of critique about Obama, makes the reference. It evokes—and, thus, reflects and potentially reinforces—a larger cultural stereotype of black men as “shifty,” in line with the coon caricature that has been a prominent part of American representations of black men. Indeed, the argument can be made that the stereotype is so engrained in white understandings of black men that the connection of Obama to Davis seems “natural” to folks like Wurzelbacher, without conscious recognition of the underlying implication.

It seems to me that this is a good example of the need for recognition of social position. When, for instance, white people want to argue things like “Why can a black person use the word ‘nigger,’ but it’s not okay for me to do it?” I (along with plenty of others) argue that a major part of that is social position. A white person occupies a more privileged social position in the racial power structure of American society than a black person and, so, use by a privileged person of a term that has historically been a mark of imposition of power means something very different than use of that term by a person who has had power enacted against her or him through that term. As such, all individuals should be wary of their positions within power structures and should strive for greater and greater awareness of how those positions influence the meanings circulated by the things they do or say. It’s similar to the controversy earlier this year involving golf report Kelly Tilghman saying that other golfers should lynch Tiger Woods. Whether or not Tilghman meant to invoke the historical connotations involving race that are associated with the word “lynch,” her use of the word, particularly because she is white, does invoke those historical connotations. Similarly, a white man saying that Obama is tap dancing and referencing a prominent black tap dancer as a kind of (unneeded) aside to emphasize the connection seems to me to invoke a fair amount of historical connotation involving race as well.