Tour de France winner Ottavio Bottecchia (Photo BeppeBlog)
Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday night certainly marked a major moment in American history. Blogging for Playboy.com, my good friend Carol Keeley put it best: “Because this is the dream that Martin had. This is it, realized. And we all got to bear witness, peacefully.”
I cannot, however, think of Obama’s ascent without contemplating the fate of Ottavio Bottecchia.
In 1924 and 1925, Ottavio Bottecchia became the first Italian cyclist to win the Tour de France. Bottecchia accomplished the feat by shunning his Italian compatriots and racing with Automoto, a high-paying elite French team. After his first two wins, Bottecchia lost narrowly to his teammate Lucien Buysse, but remained a major contender on the tour.
In June 1927, however, Bottecchia was found murdered on an Italian roadside. Though his death remains mysterious, most experts agree that his attacker was likely an Italian fascist party memeber embittered by Bottecchia’s French-found wealth.
Many fear Senator Obama will be assassinated. We watched so many charismatic, transformative figures struck down in the 20th century that 40 million watchers collectively held their breath as the lanky Illinois senator walked out into the open air of Invesco Field on Thursday night.
Obama, as a potential ‘first-of-a-kind,’ shares many of the same risks as Bottecchia.
The socialized taxonomy of America positively identifies Obama as black: here’s the dark skin, the full lips. Here’s the high school basketball photos, complete with an unruly afro.
But calling Obama black smacks of old slavery’s “one drop rule,” which attributed the African race to anyone that possessed even one drop of black blood in their veins. Although Obama identifies strongly as an African American, he was raised as by a white mother and grandparents. Considering his background in Hawaii, part of his childhood in Indonesia, then his eventual education at Harvard, many would argue Obama shares culturally very little with most African Americans.
This puts Obama on the borderline, hung between two races that remain undoubtedly unsure of one another despite their recent maturation.
When Bottecchia left Italy to race for France he never denied his Italian heritage. Nonetheless, his transition was seen as a betrayal by Italians and a tepid abdication by French. For Obama, his ascent to presidential candidacy may also be perceived in the same manner. As a bicultural man, he suffers criticism from both sides. His white supporters wonder why he emphasizes his blackness, his black supporters wonder why he doesn’t downplay his white upbringing.
In the end, Bottechia’s murder investigation yielded two confessions, both dismissed. The first came from a farmer, who said he did the deed because Bottecchia was stealing his grapes. The second from a New York mafioso that claimed is was a contract kill.
For Senator Obama, both are unwanted but potential ends. A professional hit is obvious. But Obama steps into the open air often, speaks frankly, and I fear he may one day be misunderstood.
Let us hope that the social gains we’ve made as a country in the last century will not go forgotten in the months and years to come, and that our quest to understand one another allows boundaries to be crossed without violent retaliation. May the U.S. political equivalent of the yellow jersey never again be stained with red.
