posted June 13, 2008 10:23 AM            

WASHINGTON - If Barack Obama is looking for a theme song, he should
consider "Stuck in the Middle With You."
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And not just because there are clowns to the left of him and jokers to
the right.

It's because the man is stuck in the middle.

Anyone who looks at him — his hair, his face, his honey-toned skin —
is bound to see a black man.

But the thing is, his mother was white, his father was black. He's
both and neither, a completely gray place to be.

So, really, Obama's fortunes in this race for the White House hang
less on his race and more on his identity.

His black identity.

Every time Obama takes a step toward November, blacks and whites pull
on him as if he were a wishbone, expecting him to build up or water
down his blackness as evidence that, if he becomes president, he won't
drag them out of their separate silos to confront America's race
problem; he'll just join them where they are.

Obama hoped the tug of war would go away back in March when he gave a
speech about race in Philadelphia. He tried to explain the anger of
his much maligned former black pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He
tried to explain the soft bigotry of his white grandmother. He laid
bare his own struggle with being "too black" or "not black enough"
with all the passion he could muster and said he'd sincerely like to
light the way out of this mess.

Here's what he's getting for his trouble:

Skeptical whites say, Vote for this guy? The United States isn't ready
for a black president. He'll be bad for business. He'll be too
friendly to the likes of Iran and Cuba.

True-believer blacks say, Vote for this guy! We are beyond ready for a
black president. He'll end that war and he'll stand up for us. Surely
they wouldn't kill him for that.

A plate served cold, with a side order of expectations.

To put it in perspective, Obama is one of more than 6 million
Americans of mixed race and one among the 0.3 percent of Americans who
are of mixed black/white race. He is not the first person of black and
white parentage to identify culturally as black, nor would he be the
first of his particular racial blend to become the first black
something or other — Halle Berry, for example, is the first black
woman to win an Oscar for best actress.

Black people are glad enough to claim Obama according to the one-drop
rule. The blood of his African father makes him black enough and,
besides, there are other black/white mixed-race people out there who
look whiter than Obama does and identify just as black as he does, if
not blacker.

They look Obama over and beg him, Yo, Barack, keep it real for us,
bro. Make that White House the Black House. Stick with your pastor.
Play them hoops. Don't shake my hand, hit me with a fist pound. Leave
Hillary alone. While you're at it pick a brother as your running mate
too. You can't go white on us if you want to be our president.

White people are glad enough to claim Obama, too, what with his
Midwestern roots, his international flavor, his Ivy League degrees and
all.

They look Obama over and say, Listen, dude, you need to cut off that
loud preacher of yours. Tell your unpatriotic wife to keep her
opinions to herself. Put on a Brooks Brothers suit, be an elitist. No,
wait, don't be an elitist. Put on a plaid shirt and bond with the blue
collars. Leave Hillary alone. You need an established white man as
your veep so you'll be more electable. What's that fist pound about?
You're a secret Muslim, aren't you? You can't do all that black stuff
if you want to be our president.

Whenever the expectations clash, Obama should just start singing
"Stuck in the Middle With You," a piece of 1970s pop music by Stealers
Wheel that warns of the contradictions bred by success:

"Trying to make some sense of it all/But I can see it makes no sense
at all ... Well, you started out with nothing/And you're proud you're
a self-made man/And your friends, they all come crawlin'/Slap you on
the back and say/Please ... Please ...

"Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right, here I am/Stuck in the
middle with you."

Obama may not be a first in his mixed-race subset, but he is a first
in the realm of presidential politics. Therefore, black people have to
come to reckoning with the fact that he is not MLK or Malcolm X or
Jesse Jackson, and white people have to come to reckoning with the
fact that he is not FDR or JFK or Bill Clinton.

If Obama does win the election, he's got to be president of all the
people.

Perhaps Obama should talk Stealers Wheel into doing a remix especially
for him: "Stuck in the Middle, With Hue."

EDITOR'S NOTE — Sonya Ross, an African-American, is a former White
House reporter for The Associated Press who occasionally writes about
race.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080613/ap_ca/obama_in_the_middle;_ylt=\
AkwxX9Qn.7lAAn79GRm0o3hsnwcF

She really nailed it...especially what a bi-ethnic black,white person
deals with. I observe that's the whole deal that's been going on with
Barack. I see how people view him, and that people have different
expectations of him in relative to how they see him and their own
background. There is a conflict between being black and being white
reflected by what's going outside of him even though he seems to now
have a clear identity of who he is inside after some soul searching
long time ago.

I do feel that transiting Saturn square his Moon in Gemini in 4th fits
with having to confront his ethnic identity too.

Interestingly, his Moon is in 3'21 Gemini, and that conjuncts my
retrograde Saturn in 5'08 Gemini,and squares my Moon in 3'11 Pisces
and my Saturn/Neptune midpoint in 3'28 Virgo (Sabian Symbol for 4
Virgo: Black and White Children Play Together)

Transiting Saturn is in 3'08 Virgo Right now.....so its in the 4 Virgo Sabian Symbol Degree: Black and White Children Play Together.

According to Lynda Hill's 360 DEGREES OF WISDOM

4 VIRGO
BLACK AND WHITE CHILDREN PLAYING HAPPILY TOGETHER

Keywords: Universal brotherhood. Overcoming prejudices and boundaries
that separate people. Knocking down social barriers to relate freely.
Being able to let go,relax and have fun with people from anywhere.
Adopted siblings. Foster homes. Affirmative action. Trust and joy.
Play that unites people.

The Caution: Morality that is swayed by public opinion. Not adjusting
psychologically to situations that require creative responses. Racial
and social prejudice. Seeing things in black-and-white terms. Social
demarcations that separate people or situations. Apartheid. Illusions
based on the separative perceptions of society.

It seemed like we both have been confronting our ethnic identity throughout the presidential race. Of course,his confronting his ethnic identity is far more public and collective.

Raymond