By Alexander Perepechko

Published on April 26, 2015

In four previous essays on Barack Hussein Obama, I left unanswered the following question: “Are theorists of elites right that in a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-ethnic or socially complex state the ruling class should be recruited almost exclusively from the dominant majority?” This question requires an answer after Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz announced his 2016 presidential bid. In his speech, Cruz dedicated the first 900 words to a detailed retelling of his origin story. That is more than most candidates will do. It seems as though Cruz plans to lean heavily on his biography to distinguish himself from the rest of the candidates and to send the message that he represents real change and the future face of America. That is exactly what Obama did during his own presidential campaigns. His background functioned as proof of how different he was from the rest of the candidates (Cillizza, 2015). After Ted Cruz, another minority candidate – Marco Rubio – announced his 2016 presidential bid.

The theory of elites gives few clues about this culturally sensitive matter. Neither bureaucratic advancement nor party patronage is the rule for a leader of a minority group. The rule is cooptation: the outsider must be like those who are already in. Indeed, the cooptation of leaders of minorities in the United States used to be quite successful. American theorist of elites C. Wright Mills (2000: 142) describes the two ways elites are formed: “Those who have started from on high have from their beginnings been formed by sound men and trained for soundness. They do not have to think of having to appear as sound men. They are just sound men; indeed, they embody the standards of soundness. Those who have had low beginnings must think all the harder before taking a risk of being thought unsound. As they succeed, they must train themselves for success; and, as they are formed by it, they too come to embody it, perhaps more rotundly than those of the always-high career.”

Like many minority leaders – a new elite – Barack Obama had a low beginning; he started his political career as a community organizer. Observers agree that Obama’s rise to become the top political executive of the United States fits Mills’s description for those who have low beginnings. But the same analysts take a mistaken direction when they use Obama’s background as an explanatory factor of his political behavior and decision-making patterns as the President. Why? At some point in their analysis of Obama’s background the analysts arrive at various ideologies of identity. These ideologies, in effect, always return to an elemental idea: the idea of Obama’s background itself as a somatic (body-related) contributing factor to his behavior. The ideologies of behavior as somatic manifestations are divided into several categories, depending on whether the observers appeal to race, religion, ethnicity, social class, or family history.

The concept of the circulation of elites described by Vilfredo Pareto (2000) states that the rise of new elites does not eliminate the distinction between rulers and ruled but merely changes the identity of those in charge. Despite the advent of formal democracy, the dominance of elites continues. Moreover, identity politics results in a growing number of ever-changing, old and new, real and surrogate groups in a society. As the society becomes more diverse and minority leaders join the ruling class, the efficiency of consensual decision-making rapidly deteriorates, and racial, religious, ethnic, and class tensions among members of the political class become acute. While studying this phenomenon, how one can avoid reductionism, which leads to the somatic trap? Unfortunately, the practice of analyzing the political behavior and decision-making patterns of Obama is often reduced to ideologically defined somatic factors.

Indeed, the exogamous family is an important reason a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-ethnic or socially complex background of a leader is challenging. To better understand this matter, we will use the data and findings of ethology, the study of human behavior and social organization from a biological perspective (see Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 2009: 4-5). Ethology and studies of elites are, in fact, interdisciplinary scientific areas. Both study the individual’s power in his or her capacity to act and especially to influence the actions and feelings of other individuals. Both are concerned with the problem of decision-making under increasing uncertainty. Discoveries of ethologists can be useful to understand differences in behavioral patterns among cultures.

European and Russian scholars (for example, Gumilev, 2008: 84-88; Smirnov, 1873: 265-270) studied the circulation of elites in the multi-religious, multi-ethnic Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. In the 16th century, the Turks naively believed that converting to Islam was simply to make the following statement: “There is no God except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” Moreover, the Turks equated patriotism and Islam. Some Christians took advantage of this situation. To get lucrative governmental jobs, many professionals from Europe converted to Islam and pledged allegiance to the Sultan. Undoubtedly, some of these renegades were energetic and useful servants of the empire. But many of these neophytes were neither good Muslims nor ardent employees of the state; indifferent and hypocritical, they retreated into their shells and lived for themselves.

It is even more important for this research that serails of Turkish nobles were filled with Croatians, Poles, Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, and other Christians. Children of the foreign women and Turkish men were called azamoglans (in Turkish agjam means “foreigner” and aglou means “child”). These children were raised in the exogamous family to become government officials. The mother’s nationality was part of the identity of an azamoglan. Azamoglans sometimes left the Ottoman Empire for the country of their mother’s origin. But most stayed and got employment in local state apparatus. Without religion and moral principles, azamoglans had no feelings for the Turks and were famously corrupt and resisted any reforms.

The azamoglans and neophytes controlled, respectively, local administration and many technical services of the empire. By their ideas, feelings, and preferences the azamoglans were closer to Croatians, Poles, Italians, Greeks, or Hungarians than to Turks. Unmoved by the values and ideals of Islam, and indifferent to the customs, beliefs, institutions, and principles of Turks, azamoglans and neophytes existed by materialistic desires and temptations. Devoid of ideal motives (see my February 17, 2015 post), these petit bureaucrats were busy with unlawful appropriations and usurpations of the national patrimony. These petit bureaucrats lived in Sodom and Gomorrah and abused drugs. Some scholars believe that the decay of the lower strata of the political elite was an important cause of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Thus, the emergence and significance of a multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic local bureaucracy in the Ottoman Empire had serious consequences. These consequences in specific circumstances were primarily caused not by somatic features of azamoglans and renegades, but by their behavioral patterns. In addition to scholars, many writers and travelers reported on bifurcation in the life of the Ottoman Empire. On one side, they observed “authentic” Turks, described as direct and honest. On the other side, these observers described awful government officials whose behavior had nothing in common with “genuine” Turks. These petit bureaucrats oppressed Muslims and Christians, Turks, Croatians, and Greeks alike.

This historical precedent belongs to the domain of the mingling of cultures (in French le métissage culturel). This concept is slippery and relatively neglected in the United States (see Dear & Burridge, 2005). The example of the Ottoman Empire reminds us that only the endogamous family transfers an established pattern of behavior to a child. In other words, the endogamy is a transporter of the tradition. In the case of the exogamous family in the Ottoman Empire, the mingling of two cultures has a startling outcome: the two different patterns of behavior cancel each other! Again, we are not talking about somatic differences of the parents of a child; instead, we are conversing about behavioral dissimilarities of these parents.

Good will is usually enough to change a citizen’s allegiance. However, the good will is not enough to change patterns of behavior. Behavior formation and change come not only through family (such as exogamous marriage in the case of the Ottoman Empire) but also through peer groups in school, at the playground, and in business. Any change of patterns meets resistance in the domain of sensations. In his seminal The Mind and Society Pareto (1935: vol. ii) defined sensations (he called them sentiments) as subconscious beliefs which serve as standards (ideals) of evaluation. It is well known that sensations are not always properly interpreted by the consciousness. Patterns of behavior, including those involved in political decision-making, are manifestations of the soma and occur in the central nervous system, underneath the layers of conscious critical thought. Some behavioral manifestations (Pareto (1935: vol. iii) called them residues) reflect the sensations (sentiments). These behavioral manifestations materialize in some hidden (and difficult to rationally explain) instincts and nuances of a person’s character. Finally, derivations (Pareto, 1935: vol. iv) are ex post facto accounts people devise in order to make past events seem natural, logical, reasonable, or just. For example, Obama’s opponents interpret his decisions as somatically determined – by his race, religion, presumed country of origin, etc. – to which they attribute ideology. Put differently, derivations are specific reductionist mechanisms, leading to the somatic trap.

Compatibility of two different cultures (le métissage culturel) is not an aim of this research. But for the purpose of this essay we need to know a few basics. To become “one of us”, a newcomer needs to inherit the traditions and ideals of the new country. In a new country this is possible only when one was not raised by his or her own biological parents. For all others, we deal with the mingling of cultures. In the example of the Ottoman Empire, parents in exogamous families belonged to Islam and Christianity (the West), two conflictual civilizations. These families were societal factories for the reproducing of the lower strata of the political elite. A father and a mother had different religious-ideological ideals, which engendered dissimilar patterns of behavior. As a result, their children had no standards (ideals) of evaluation.

Secularization, education, and modernization of Late Modernity did not soften antagonisms between the West and Islam but instead added a new dimension to these antagonisms. Indeed, Pareto (1984: 35) noted that belief in a metaphysical principle (e.g., equality) provides people with much the same kind of phenomenological experience that faith in a deity does. Nowadays, Huntington (1997: 245) considers Islam and Christianity (the West) among the “more conflictual” civilizations.

In terms of this analysis, the place of birth and somatic attributes (such as skin color) of the top political executive of the United States do not matter. What is relevant to the discussion is that he was born and raised in an exogamous family and belonged to peer groups whose traditions and religious-ideological ideals belonged to three civilizations: Islamic, Christian, and African. Each of these civilizations creates idiosyncratic patterns of behavior; some patterns bear a resemblance to each other, others are dissimilar. There seem to be emerging alignments between African civilization and the West. At the same time, we observe continual antagonisms between Islamic and Christian (Western) civilizations and between Islamic and African civilizations (see Huntington, 1997: 245).

In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Obama’s birth father and stepfather were Muslims. Barack Obama lived with his birth father in 1961-1963 and with his stepfather in 1965-1971. We also know that formation and change of behavioral patterns come through peer groups. In 1967-1971 Obama lived and went to school in Jakarta, Indonesia. In this period he associated himself with his peers there and his beliefs and behavior were certainly influenced by this group. There is no doubt that he got a “piece” of the Islamic civilization.

Obama was raised in a Muslim milieu and later became a Christian. He confessed that he changed his tradition and ideals “by choice” (Parsons & Nicholas, 2010). At the same time he became obsessed with his African cultural inheritance. In Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2004: 300-301), Obama brought up his fascination with the African American component of his identity: “It wasn’t that Europe wasn’t beautiful; everything was just as I’d imagined. It just wasn’t mine. I felt as if I were living out someone else’s romance; the incompleteness of my own history stood between me and the sites I saw like a hard pane glass […] Stripped of language, stripped of work and routine – stripped even of the racial obsession to which I’d become so accustomed and which I had taken (perversely) as a sign of my own maturation – I had been forced to look inside myself and had found only a great emptiness there.” Several pages down Obama (2004: 305) described his feelings at the moment he was called by name at Kenyatta International Airport: “That had never happened before, I realized; not in Hawaii, not in Indonesia, not in L.A. or New York or Chicago. For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people’s memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, “Oh, you are so and so’s son.” No one here in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue. My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges that I did not yet understand.”

The mingling of three cultures, three civilizations, is called creolisation (in French la créolisation). This mixing does not use the operators of addition and subtraction, as does métissage. Instead, creolisation involves diffraction. Raphaël Confiant highlights the fluid nature of this phenomenon: “[…] the mixing was done by way of diffraction […] and far from erasing the evidence of their origins, the cultural contributions of […] continents were incorporated here and juxtaposed there without ever […] disappearing as such […] The Creole does not possess a new identity […] but new identities. The phenomenon of creolisation invented from all the pieces a multiple identity” (cited by St-Hilaire, 2011: 33). Putting it differently, the multiplicity of identity in the current global era is characterized by fluidity in patterns of cultural identification.

There are plenty of Gods in the era of globalization. Unlike in pre-global time, more people today can concurrently assume and share multiple civilizational identities. These days, a person may attend an Islamic ritual prayer in the morning, participate in an Episcopal Church prayer in the afternoon, and communicate to the uyoma (Luo witch shaman from Africa) in the evening, or …ignore them all at once. Allah, Jesus, and the Luo shaman cohabit not in an ecumenical sense but as facets of one identity, incessantly mixing and unmixing. When Obama announced that he changed his tradition and ideals by choice, we do not need to assume deceit. This is about his fluid identity…

Thus, racial and ethnocentrist ideologies have imposed reductionism on studies of the circulation of political elites in the global era. This unavoidably directs many analysts to the somatic trap. The mingling of cultures in the time of Late Modernity makes the American political class more diverse and global. In terms of the theory of elites, creolisation can create political leaders whose decision-making patterns are less “heroic”, less patriotic, and less oriented toward the key foundation of western civilization and the jewel of this civilization – the nation-state. Historical examples of exogamy and cultural métissage, analyzed in this study, should not be neglected while discussing the cultural inheritance of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Indeed, these politicians belong to the aligned Western and Latin American civilizations. These factors definitely play a role in forming the patterns of behavior of these candidates.

Cillizza, C. Ted Cruz and Barack Obama have more in common than you think. The Washington Post.  March 23, 2015. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/23/how-ted-cruz-channeled-barack-obama-in-his-presidential-announcement

Dear, M. & Burridge, A. (2005) Cultural Integration and Hybridization at the United States-Mexico Borderlands. Cahiers de Géographie du Québec. Vol. 49, n° 138, décembre: 301-318.

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N.d. photograph. Barack Obama, viewed April 26, 2015. Available at https://gromike.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/barack-obama-chantera-t-il-obamasque-de-la-compagnie-creole-via-second-life-ou-bien-le-makossa-de-manu-dibango-via-myspace/

Obama, B. (2004) Dreams from My Father. A Story Race and Inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press.

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Pareto, V. (1984) The transformation of democracy. London: Transaction Books.

Pareto, V. (1935) The Mind and Society [Trattato di Sociologia generale]. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Vol i-iv. Available at http://www.archive.org/stream/mindsocietytratt01pare/mindsocietytratt01pare_djvu.txt

Parsons, C. & Nicholas, P. Obama says he became a Christian by choice. Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2010. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/29/nation/la-na-obama-religion-20100929

Smirnov, V. D. (1873) Kuchibei Gomurdjinskii i drugie osmanckie pisateli 17-go veka o prichinakh upadka Turtzii [Kuchibei Gomurdjinskii and other Osman writers of the 17th century on reasons of a decay of Turkey]. St. Petersburg: V. Demakov Press

St-Hilaire, A. (2011) Kwéyòl in postcolonial Saint Lucia: globalization, language planning, and national development. Philadelphia: John Benjamins North America.