{"id":46683,"date":"2016-04-23T15:26:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T15:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46683"},"modified":"2016-04-23T15:35:07","modified_gmt":"2016-04-23T15:35:07","slug":"will-jawando-doesnt-have-to-be-the-next-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46683","title":{"rendered":"Will Jawando Doesn\u2019t Have To Be The Next Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Jawando Doesn\u2019t Have To Be The Next Obama<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

MTV News<\/a>
\n2016-04-18<\/p>\n

Jamil Smith<\/a><\/strong>, Senior National Correspondent<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are rules<\/a> for knocking on someone\u2019s door while campaigning. And Will Jawando<\/a>, a few weeks back, broke a big one. \u201cRule 101 in canvassing,\u201d he told MTV News<\/em>, \u201cis that you don\u2019t go inside.\u201d This makes sense. There\u2019s only so much daylight to use knocking on doors, and there are significant security concerns for all parties involved. \u201cBut as the candidate, I can break the rules,\u201d Jawando said.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t seem like there would be any harm in this case. The woman who invited him in was a 90-year-old Holocaust<\/a> survivor from Germany<\/a>. \u201cShe wanted to talk, and I told her about my background: My dad coming to this country on the heels of a civil war in his country, and [me] growing up here,\u201d Jawando said. \u201cYou could tell that she related.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jawando, 33, is the youngest candidate in a crowded Democratic primary race in Maryland\u2019s<\/a> upper-crust 8th Congressional District<\/a>. But as he sat in this stranger\u2019s living room, both of them were just different shades of the American immigrant story. The same thing can be said for Jawando\u2019s former boss: President Obama<\/a>. And the similarities between the two men are uncanny.<\/p>\n

Both Jawando and Obama are the telegenic sons of African immigrant fathers and white mothers from Kansas<\/a> (that\u2019s where Jawando\u2019s father, Olayinka, met his mother, Kathleen Gross, in the early 1970s, after fleeing Nigeria\u2019s civil war<\/a>). Both lost their first attempts to win public office: Obama in a congressional primary, Jawando for a Maryland state representative seat. Both are policy wonks with a talent for retail politics. Both are even married to women with the same name who are both accomplished attorneys; Jawando\u2019s Michele<\/a> is a vice-president at the Center for American Progress<\/a> policy institute. Jawando served as the White House associate director of public engagement<\/a> in 2010, and, if he wins in Maryland, will become the first Obama administration alumnus elected to public office.<\/p>\n

Should he get there, of course, Jawando wouldn\u2019t be<\/em> Obama. Diverse black American lives have long been reduced to a monolithic \u201cexperience,\u201d and that problem gets exacerbated when you happen to share uncanny biographical similarities with the President. Both men also have considerable political talent and a love for the wonkish<\/a> details of policymaking, but Jawando makes it clear that he has his own reasons for entering politics…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Jawando Doesn\u2019t Have To Be The Next Obama MTV News 2016-04-18 Jamil Smith, Senior National Correspondent There are rules for knocking on someone\u2019s door while campaigning. And Will Jawando, a few weeks back, broke a big one. \u201cRule 101 in canvassing,\u201d he told MTV News, \u201cis that you don\u2019t go inside.\u201d This makes sense. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1245,8,26,20],"tags":[20253,5972,8411,23613,21216],"class_list":["post-46683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-jamil-smith","tag-maryland","tag-mtv","tag-mtv-news","tag-will-jawando"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46686,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46683\/revisions\/46686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}