The First Family
Obamas Reinforce Sense of Family among Blacks

 

By Zenitha Prince
Washington Bureau Chief

(November 19, 2008) - For the past two years we’ve peeked into their lives—the infamous fist bump and the president-elect’s solicitous hand on the small of his wife’s back; Sasha’s mischievous smile and Malia kissing her father goodbye as he dropped them off at school; and even Michelle’s mom, Marian Robinson, clutching her son-in-law’s hand while watching the poll returns on Election Night. Those glimpses into the inner workings of the future First Family have enchanted many and, among African Americans, have engendered a sense of inspiration and pride.

“It’s a beautiful thing to behold,” Princeton professor and Black intellectual Cornel West told the AFRO. “To have the image of the First Family, a Black family, in the White House—a White House built by slaves and laborers—but now a Black precious family there….“And you can see that their family love is real; it’s very, very real,” West continued. “It’s not an artificial kind of thing.”

President-elect Barack Obama and his family represent the sort of Black family model that some have not seen beyond the fictional Cosby TV family that was a rare phenomenon in itself.

And it begins with the romantic relationship between president-elect and his leading lady, who can often be seen leaning into each other, holding hands or poking fun at each other as they did in their interview on “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday.

“There is great passion there but also friendship. It’s definitely a relationship of equals,” said relationship guru, LaDawn Black, of Baltimore.

And the bond is genuine, Tartt added.  “It’s hard to fake intimacy,” the psychologist said, adding that the Obamas give credence to the idea that “Black healthy love is real.”

“A generation of us didn’t believe it existed,” he said, and that’s because typically, the images of Black families and relationships are negative.  “We don’t see happy couples [or] nuclear families,” Tartt said. “We see the normalization of men not being monogamous or divorce. And, the images of Black women are [that they are] overly dominant, hostile or they’re yelling at their man.”

But those portrayals of dysfunction are but a “small story” in the Black community, contends Black.

Now, because of the Obamas, “all the African Americans out there who are doing OK, they have a face now,” she said.

Still, the Obama household—two married, working parents with kids and the yet-to-be-inducted family dog—is not the typical Black family, said sociologist Maurice St. Pierre, chairman of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Morgan State University.

“Forty percent of African-American families are headed by a female and the African-American male has a relatively weak structural position” due to disproportionately high rates of unemployment and incarceration, St. Pierre said.
That systematic breakdown of Black nuclear families, which began during slavery, also has been promoted by government practices.

“We’ve gone through tremendous efforts to destroy Black families,” said Stephanie Myers, co-chair of Black Women for Obama, who emphasized that her comments were in no way a denigration of single-parent families. “There have been government policies (such as welfare relief programs that were denied mothers if their husbands were in the home) that made it difficult to keep Black families together.”

The absence of fathers—something Obama himself suffered after his father abandoned the family when he was 3—has led to a generation of “boys don’t know how to be men and how to be good fathers because there are no male models present,” St. Pierre said.

But now Obama can be that model of responsible and engaged fatherhood, Tartt added.  “Obama represents a renaissance of the Black man,” he said. “Seeing Obama with his children will awaken the spirit of Black men to what they should be doing with their own children.”

Throughout his stint on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, the president-elect called Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, every night and never missed a PTA meeting. He also made reading their special time and that will likely continue, family friend Ann Walker Marchant told The Los Angeles Times.

“Books are a huge bonding between him and his daughters," Marchant said.
And they are father-daughter bonds that remain strong, largely in part, to the role Michelle Obama plays in holding the family together.

Mrs. Obama, who juggled a career through most of her motherhood—the Harvard grad was a hospital executive until her husband ran for president—has said she plans to eschew any position at her husband’s decision-making table to focus on being a mother.

“Michelle’s decision to be chief mom and chief wife is brilliant,” said Myers. “To see [her], a professional woman, provide 100 percent support to her children and husband and keep her home intact is a statement that it’s possible to rebuild Black families.”

Throughout the campaign, she has signaled her intent to make the girls’ lives as normal as possible—including going to school; making their beds, setting their alarms and other chores; pouring their own milk and cereal and, also, having fun.
“We want to make sure that we're upholding what that house stands for. But, I couldn’t help but envisioning the girls running into their rooms, running down the halls…and with a dog,” Michelle Obama said on “60 Minutes” of their new life.

Right now, the girls aren’t “self-conscious” nor do they “have an attitude," Obama said, and maintaining that sense of normalcy is one of his “greatest worries."
“If at the end of four years, just from a personal standpoint, we can say they are who they are; they remained the great joys that they are; and this hasn’t created a whole bunch of problems for them, then I think we’re going to feel pretty good,” he told CBS’ Steve Kroft.

The Obamas will receive assistance, not from a cadre of paid nannies, but from Mrs. Robinson, 71, who could very well join the White House as the “First Granny.”

“Marian Robinson is one of the unsung heroes of this campaign. We couldn’t have done it without her,” said Obama of his mother-in-law, who retired from her job as a bank secretary to look after the girls when their parents were away on the campaign trail.

That extended family model is one that is prevalent within the Black community, sociologists and others said.  “That’s always been a great strength of ours—extended families, in which grandparents, brothers, cousins, etc., can help educate or provide child care, support spouses when the other is away on travel,” said Myers, who received support from her own parents during her 12-year stint as a political appointee under three administrations.

Even with the additional help, life at the White House for the Obama family will be tough. But there’s a bright side, Michelle Obama said—her husband will work from home now.

“Now we get to be together under one roof, having dinners together and I envision the kids coming home from school and being able to run across the way to the Oval Office and say ‘hi’ to their dad before starting homework….and he’ll be able to tuck them in at night,” she said, adding, “There’ll be moments of deep seriousness and times of great focus but we’ll be together doing it and that gives me reason to be very excited.”

AFRO Staff Writer Sean Yoes contributed to this article.