March 19, 2008
The Obama Bargain
By Shelby Steele in the WSJ:
The answer is that one “bargains.” Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love this bargain — and feel affection for the bargainer — because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.
The analysis reminds me of the Why White People Like ‘Stuff White People Like’ article.
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Sorry, Shelby, that’s complete bull shit. This ‘bargaining’ is simply a way to defuse your own racism. People that support Obama do so primarily because he is a talented, intelligent person running for president. He gives all of us the opportunity to challenge the concepts of race in this country, and, if we do it correctly, to transcend them.
Steele can bargain all he wants, but really all he’s doing is undermining a gifted politician and playing to stereotypes by pretending intellectual analysis. The good thing is, this pandering is beginning to wear thin and most Americans are beginning to see through it. That’s another good thing about this race.
Pun not intended.
This is one of the most offensive op-ed pieces I have ever read, especially in light of yesterday’s speech (which I assume this was written before). I can’t believe I’m reading it in the WSJ.
I suspect we would have heard more about this op-ed piece if Shelby weren’t African American.
I appreciate this I suppose since I just don’t have any white guilt. So, it’s about the only way I can understand the attraction of BHO.
I read the entire article yesterday and it should be read in it’s entirety. Here’s a salient quote that extends the argument:
“His actual policy positions are little more than Democratic Party boilerplate and hardly a tick different from Hillary’s positions. He espouses no galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by “change” or “hope” or “the future.” And he has failed to say how he would actually be a “unifier.” By the evidence of his slight political record (130 “present” votes in the Illinois state legislature, little achievement in the U.S. Senate) Barack Obama stacks up as something of a mediocrity. None of this matters much.”
that certainly adds a twist!
The wiki article on Shelby is useful for context.
Michael, are you saying the only way a white person can be interested in Obama is because of white guilt?
I assume that’s not what you meant.
As a strong supporter of Obama’s, I recognize that he and Clinton share almost identical positions on every major issue. Of course, Obama voted against the Iraq war and was proved correct about that. I do find that difference meaningful.
Additionally, I find Obama’s ability to articulate a vision for the country unifying. Clinton (Bill) was blessed with this ability (for people with progressive sympathies) and I felt his ability to articulate that vision helped moved the country in that direction. I think Clinton (Hillary) is less adept at that and therefore is less capable of articulating progressive principles to a generation of Americans ready to hear why progressive values are a way forward for the country at this moment.
I think Obama is the most capable of conveying and enacting that. I think Clinton would also be a good president. My support of either or both of them has nothing to do with white or male guilt but rather with pride that the true values of this country are embodied in these two candidates.
Steele’s articulation of ‘white guilt’ is even more offensive since he is a black man. He has no sense of where my pride for Obama comes from. He has no sense of what this country can become.
I value Obama’s integrity, and while all of the other candidates often seem to stumble in this regard, I have seen nothing in Obama’s character yet that works against this perception I have. The authority of his call for unity arises from his honest view of broad differences that don’t have to divide us. What I have less faith in is the ability of many people to set aside their unspoken faith in division–in keeping some misplaced sense of advantage locked up and “conserved,” in doing exactly what Obama warned against so eloquently: seeing one’s own hopes as being achievable only at the expense of other people’s hopes. We want the same things–except for those who want “others” to fail so they may advance.
Utopians concern me. Concern me very much. They either produce great heartache, disappointment and tragedy or, if they last, great cruelty. I guess all I can do is point to the last few days and his response. Steele again:
“Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama’s political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday—for 20 years—in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage (“God damn America”).
How does one “transcend” race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?
What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to “be black” despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn’t this hatred more rhetorical than real?”
A parallel to the “fellow travelers” the 20s, 30s 40s and 50s. But a racial “fellow traveler.” I agree with Steele that his is a cautionary tale.
I’m pretty talked out about this one. Anyway, who changes his position as a result of interchanges in venues such as this? Pretty rare.
Best of luck with your candidate.
Michael,
Your comments are pretty unsettling to me (as perhaps mine are to you). I think you are correct that minds changed in forums such as these are pretty rare. I wish you luck.
Forums, like campaigns or debates, seldom convert the opposition. They simply mobilize the faithful.
Utopians concern me. Concern me very much. They either produce great heartache, disappointment and tragedy or, if they last, great cruelty.
I know what you mean, since Mao’s “great leap forward” caused twenty million deaths and untold suffering. But it’s good to think of utopians in the context of dystopians–in this case a person like John McCain, who sees endless war as the image of the future we must “successfully” enter. Even if his view turns out to be more accurate–as it most likely will, considering the state of the world’s dwindling resources and the proliferation of terrible weapons–might we do better by approaching this future with some hope of setting aside even the oldest of differences? If one must be marked as utopian for holding such a hope, shouldn’t we ask–what real reward awaits those who have set aside faith in everything but hate and self-interest and military might? I would rather fail by way of a belief that we may do better by each other, than succeed in a verification that human kind deserves to become extinct.
sorry–did it again–the post above is from me, Daryl