The Obamas and Black Martha’s Vineyard

GAMETHEORY · Jun 30, 2009

Martha’s Vineyard is an island where the Kennedys and Clintons go for their summer holiday. This summer it seems likely the Obamas will be there too.

But as liberal as Martha’s Vineyard is, it is still divided by race. But not for the reasons you might think. As one black person put it: “On the racial stress test, I’d put the Vineyard at Canadian.”

The blacks there largely keep to themselves, not because they hate whites or because the whites will not accept them, but because they spend the rest of the year being Only Ones, as in the only one who is black. They are, Toure says:

black professional and social elites who travel in worlds where they’re often the only black person in the room. The Only Ones typically break into fields or companies that admit few blacks, move into neighborhoods where few blacks live, and send their kids to mostly white schools. They are not running from their own – they’re chasing after the best they can get. They aren’t assimilationist; they’re ascensionist.

In the rest of America they are too black for the whites and not “black enough” for the blacks. Martha’s Vineyard is the one place where they, and especially their children, can be themselves and feel good about being black. Life as it should be.

The centre of Only-One life in Martha’s Vineyard is Oak Bluffs. Their bit of the shore is called the Inkwell. Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King, Jr were there. These days you can see the likes of Lani Guinier, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Carole Simpson, Spike Lee and Reggie Hudlin. But not all the blacks of the Vineyard go there. Vernon Jordan, for one.

The question is, where do the Obamas fit in?