Obama: Politics of Racial Identity

I've been writing a lot about Barack Obama's "politics of racial identity." As I explained, I've approached the stage of my life where I can live dangerously and -- I believe -- speak the truth about race.

The other day a fellow leader in the Missioon NoBama Movement talked about the psychology of Obama's appeal, where he appeals to deep longing and nostalgia in the American people. Ronald Reagan did some similar things, although not at the level of sophistication used by Obama.

This is a campaign about character and charisma. In this campaign, NONE OF THE ISSUES TRULY MATTER.

If you want to read a brilliant analysis of what's really going on, read Shelby Steele's brilliant essay on Black moral leverage and white guilt as practiced by Jesse Jackson and Shelby Steele. I reprinted it recently on my: http://hillarysupportersformccain.blogspot.com.)

I hope everyone will think back to a commercial from many years ago, the one inviting tourists to "come to Jamaica." Actually, the key line was to "come BACK to Jamaica." In the deepest part of our being all of us want to go back to a kinder, gentler (imaginary) time, usually our childhoods. The people who most admire Obama are invariably the most childlike.

A guy in the liberal New Republic analyzed the commercial and why it might have been the most brilliant ad of all time. The whole "come back" leitmotif touched the common chord in American that things used to be "better." The idea exploited was that American was a fallen angel, that we would perhaps never be as good as we once were (except, of course, unless we went to Jamaica). The commercial was full of happy white people and smiling Blacks.

The surface message was to go take a vacation in Jamaica. The New Republic writer said the underlying message was this: "Come back to Jamaica . . . where Black people are still nice!" In that time, like our own, some inconvenient truths rarely got articulated. But the New Republic author broke the code. He told us truths that we in fact knew at some level, but that we pretended we didn't comprehend.

In Shelby Steele's great essay, he notes that John McCain is obviously a man of "character" and "principle." He then adds, "Poor guy!" Of course, the character and principle work against him in politics, where an Obama can easily become all things to all people/voters, Black and white.

Mrs. Clinton and her campaign got chopped up by the Obama buzzsaw -- and the deep psychological messages. One hopes the same doesn't happen to John McCain.

Obama's Politics of Racial Guilt

Note: The blistering attack by African-American scholar Shelby Steele on Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama is reprinted in full on my following site: http://hillarysupportersformccain.blogspot.com. It appeared originally in The Wall Street Journal.


Mr. [Jesse] Jackson was always a challenger. He confronted American institutions (especially wealthy corporations) with the shame of America's racist past and demanded redress. He could have taken up the mantle of the early Martin Luther King (he famously smeared himself with the great man's blood after King was shot), and argued for equality out of a faith in the imagination and drive of his own people. Instead -- and tragically -- he and the entire civil rights establishment pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt.

Their faith was in the easy moral leverage over white America that the civil rights victories of the 1960s had suddenly bestowed on them. So Mr. Jackson and his generation of black leaders made keeping whites "on the hook" the most sacred article of the post-'60s black identity.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently -- that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality -- took whites "off the hook" and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group's bounty of moral leverage over whites. And now comes Mr. Obama, who became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites.

Mr. Obama's great political ingenuity was very simple: to trade moral leverage for gratitude. Give up moral leverage over whites, refuse to shame them with America's racist past, and the gratitude they show you will constitute a new form of black power. They will love you for the faith you show in them.

So it is not hard to see why Mr. Jackson might have experienced Mr. Obama's emergence as something of a stiletto in the heart. Mr. Obama is a white "race card" -- moral leverage that whites can use against the moral leverage black leaders have wielded against them for decades. He is the nullification of Jesse Jackson -- the anti-Jackson.

And Mr. Obama is so successful at winning gratitude from whites precisely because Mr. Jackson was so successful at inflaming and exploiting white guilt. Mr. Jackson must now see his own oblivion in the very features of Mr. Obama's face. Thus the on-camera threat of castration, followed by the little jab of his fist as if to deliver a stiletto of his own.

And then Mr. Obama took it further by going to the NAACP with a message of black responsibility -- this after his speech on the need for black fathers to take responsibility for the children they sire. "Talking down to black people," Mr. Jackson mumbled.

Normally, "black responsibility" is a forbidden phrase for a black leader -- not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea of black responsibility weakens moral leverage over whites. When Mr. Obama uses this language, whites of course are thankful. Black leaders seethe.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama's sacrifice of black leverage has given him a chance to actually become the president. He has captured the devotion of millions of whites in ways that black leveragers never could. And the great masses of blacks -- blacks outside today's sclerotic black leadership -- see this very clearly. Until Mr. Obama, any black with a message of black responsibility would be called a "black conservative" and thereby marginalized. After Obama's NAACP speech, blacks flooded into the hotel lobby thanking him for "reminding" them of their responsibility.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same. Why then, all of a sudden, are blacks willing to openly embrace this truth -- and in the full knowledge that it will weaken their leverage with whites?

I think the answer is that Mr. Obama potentially offers them something far more profound than mere moral leverage. If only symbolically, he offers nothing less than an end to black inferiority. This has been an insidious spiritual torment for blacks because reality itself keeps mockingly proving the original lie. Barack Obama in the Oval Office -- a black man governing a largely white nation -- would offer blacks an undreamed-of spiritual solace far more meaningful than the petty self-importance to be gained from moral leverage.

But white Americans have also been tormented by their stigmatization as moral inferiors, as racists. An Obama presidency would give them considerable moral leverage against this stigma.

So it has to be acknowledged that, on the level of cultural and historical symbolism, an Obama presidency might nudge the culture forward a bit -- presuming of course that he would be at least a competent president. (A less-than-competent black president would likely be a step backwards.) It would be a good thing were blacks to be more open to the power of individual responsibility. And it would surely help us all if whites were less cowed by the political correctness on black issues that protects their racial innocence at the expense of the very principles that made America great. We Americans are hungry for such a cultural shift.


John McCain is simply a man of considerable character, poor guy. He is utterly bereft of cultural cachet. Against an animating message of cultural "change," he is retrogression itself. Worse, Mr. Obama's trick is to take politics off the table by moving so politically close to his opponent that only culture is left to separate them. And, unencumbered as he is by deep attachment to principle, he can be both far-left and center-right. He can steal much of Mr. McCain's territory.

Mr. Obama has already won a cultural mandate to the American presidency. And politically, he is now essentially in a contest with himself. His challenge is not Mr. McCain; it is the establishment of his own patriotism, trustworthiness and gravitas.

He has to channel a little Colin Powell, and he no doubt hopes his trip to the Middle East and Europe will reflect him back to America with something of Mr. Powell's stature. He wants even Middle America to feel comfortable as the mantle they bestow on him settles upon his shoulders.

Mr. Steele is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).

Barack Obama: The Invisible Man

Note: Todat on another site (http://newjerseyforjohnmccain.blogspot.com), I have an important piece called "Can McCain Win New Jersey?" NJ is the ninth-largest state. If McCain can win New Jersey (and Pennsylvania, the sixth largest state), he should have no trouble winning the election.

Photo: Obama, Not Totally Happy to See Jesse Jackson

"Words crack and break . . . will not stay in place." (T. S. Eliot)

Here's what I wrote prior to Obama's Tuesday remarks on race: I expect the usual "deep baritone filibuster," loaded with self-serving rhetoric. Rev. Wright's anti-American statements are similar to many Obama heard -- and probably internalized -- in his years at Harvard (where Michelle also attended). He will talk about his "love" for America, but I fear the country he loves is one most of us wouldn't recognize.

He will discuss how he "profoundly disagrees" with some of Wright's comments, but he won't discuss exactly which ones or why precisely he dissents.

Also, I wrote the following yesterday to an important Black conservative, Lloyd Marcus, whom you'll hear a lot more about on this site:

I believe in his speech Obama is going to do what he called recently the "okie dokie," an exercise in deception. In his first book, he talks basically about being ashamed of his (white) mother, whom he should be portraying as the heroine of his life story. Brought up by a white mother and white grandparents, he will somehow proclaim his expertise about the "Black experience in America." In short, he'll talk out of both sides of his mouth.

The notion that Obama "had no idea" what America-hating Rev. Wright was up to is the candidate's version of "the dog ate my homework." He's a little bit like novelist Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man." We don't know him -- or know what he believes. We fear he may share many more beliefs with Wright than he lets on.

His wife Michelle, who apparently has spent her entire adult life being ashamed of her country, is a typical Princeton/Harvard graduate, convinced of her superiority to her countrymen and countrywomen. Her point seems to be: How can she be proud of a country which isn't run by people (Ivy-League graduates) like them? The general view is: "America is a terrible place, but if I ran it, the country would be a much better one."

Here's how Shelby Steele, of Stanford's Hoover Institution describes the "Obama phenomenon":

". . . Now, the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

"No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His [Obama's] is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself."

Steele is suggesting that one reason we don't know Obama is that he doesn't know himself. Coming from faith and community traditions of Black separatism, he claims to be the man who can transcend racial polarities. He wants to become President of a country that his pastor and his fellow congregants abhor. It makes no sense.

What Shelby Steele means by "bargaining" is that Obama is making a trade with white people: in exchange for their votes and money, he'll enable them to feel good about themselves. Basically, he'll allow them to assuage their guilt over past racial sins by a single act: supporting his candidacy.

Obama is now engaged in a desperate balancing act: his long-time minister and his wife both despise their native land, America. Whether Obama disagrees with them remains uncertain.
Again, he's the Invisible Man, someone we'll never be able to pin down on his beliefs. He will "disagree" with Rev. Wright, the man who claims the U.S. government "invented HIV" to kill Blacks, but he will not disown him, as he should. The most liberal member of the Senate, Obama claims to have a special ability -- one never demonstrated -- to reach across the aisle and bridge political divides. On every issue, Obama is a programmatic liberal.

Is he just lying to us? Or is he truly uncertain of the contrast between what he says and what he does?

Again, we don't know Barack Obama -- and we probably never will. That's the real message of Tuesday's speech.

STATEMENT BY JOHN MCCAIN ON TIBET

For Immediate Release
Contact: Press Office
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
703-650-5550

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain today issued the following statement on the situation in Tibet:

"The unfolding tragedy in Tibet should draw the attention of the entire world. I deplore the violent crackdown by Chinese authorities and the continuing oppression in Tibet of those merely wishing to practice their faith and preserve their culture and heritage. I have listened carefully to the Dalai Lama and am convinced he is a man of peace who reflects the hopes and aspirations of Tibetans.

I urge the government of the People's Republic of China to address the root causes of unrest in Tibet by opening a genuine dialogue with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Reports of shutting down YouTube and confiscation of SIM cards are disturbing and reports of multiple deaths are far more so, especially in a year when China is preparing to host the Olympic Games.

I urge the Chinese authorities to ensure peaceful protest is not met with violence, to release monks and others detained for peacefully expressing their views and to allow full outside access to Tibet."

Note: If you'd like to get up-to-minute releases and news from the McCain Campaign, please e-mail Patrick Hynes at: phynes@calypsocom.com.