I have no idea what black culture thinks of him elsewhere. I suppose to be honest, I don't see him as culturally very black. He wears an expensive suit. He wears a tie. He speaks in a certain way and has certain ideas. He's not so different to all of the other men in suits and ties around Washington who think and speak in a certain way.

I don't really get the tokenism behind the Clinton and Obama campaigns because canned narratives frighten and depress me.

Being black or a woman or gay or white or male doesn't inherently make you a certain kind of person. People behave how they behave - anyone can be generous, and anyone can be exploitative. Certain castes get more play than others, but tokenism always seems more about getting caste membership to be more permeable than about getting rid of the castes altogether.

Obama is in the political class, and that's how he appears to me. His heritage gives him an angle with a certain kind of leverage from a certain kind of narrative. But that doesn't mean the narrative is true - only that some people might want it to be.