Shelby Steele: Obama the Bargainer
By NoQuarter on March 21, 2008 at 2:11 AM in Barack Obama, Bill Moyers Journal, Race, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Shelby Steele
You have probably seen Shelby Steele on C-Span’s BookTV, on PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal on January 11, 2008, or on numerous more thoughtful television and news programs. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University, has written a book — A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win — and numerous articles based on his extensive research into the issues of race, on being a black man in America (as he is), and on politics. On March 18, he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that has generated widespread and thoughtful interest from hundreds of thousands of readers.
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Below, I am excerpting his important op-ed, and giving you the videos — in four parts, interspersed throughout this post — of his important appearance recently on Bill Moyers’ Journal (provided to us by our video master, C.S.): Wall Street Journal |
| … How to turn one’s blackness to advantage?
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. |
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| 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. |
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Steele’s WSJ column continued throughout:
| This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong.
Mr. Obama’s extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence. |
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| 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. | |
| Race helps Mr. Obama in another way — it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform.
His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America’s tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. |
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| Will his victory mean America’s redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another? | |
Shelby’s column continued …
Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans — black and white — Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America’s very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.
And yet, in the end, Barack Obama’s candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton’s or Jesse Jackson’s. … [...]
But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don’t know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . .” And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama’s Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a “blank screen.”
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?
But 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. …
Read all: “The Obama Bargain”
Explore Bill Moyers’ Journal interview, video, and transcript of Shelby Steele’s appearance on January 11, 2008.
AND THANK YOU, C.S., FOR ALL THE WORK YOU DO FOR US AT NO QUARTER. Your video contributions mean so much to all of us.
Here’s some background if you want to know where Shelby’s coming from.
Most of the readers at this site are well aware that Shelby Steele can be a right wing conservative loon, but in thi election cycle, some of the right wing loons are showing surprising signs of lucidity and functional brain activity, having not been slipped a “roofie” by the cult of Obama. Some of them actually see what is right before their eyes, and, whatever their likely nefarious motivation may be,they are willing to talk about it.
A MORE PERFECT UNION = The Ballot Or The Bullet + Message To The Grassroots
http://tinyurl.com/2g5xuq
http://tinyurl.com/2hl8q5
Trosky Forever and ever, eloquent speechs but dangerous for Nations Unity and Liberal Progressives Evolutionist.
Nobody have attackt him, but the reallity is the best judgment.
Bill Richardson to endorse Obama
John Murtha endorsed Hill on Tuesday and CRICKETS from the MSM. Watch how much MSM attention the Bill Richards endorsement gets. Double standard indeed.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/18/john_murtha_endorses_hillary_c_1.html
I know I can’t believe that Murtha’s endorsement got so little play. I’ve been watching TV some this morning and they keep talking about the passport thing, on my paper it was like page 8A or something. It’s ridiculous
Sorry I think this is a lot of b.s. Interesting — but not relevant to me.
As a woman I see continuing sexism from Obama — and near total dismissal of Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign.
I have zero guilt about American’s “tortured racial past”. Perhaps because I’m an American “mutt” — and I know the history of women’s struggle to be accepted as human beings — yep at one time there was a debate on this subject. Also I have Native American in my genealogy — now that’s a subject that hasn’t been addressed adequately by the history books.
Obama is merely a user — he grew up in Hawaii where it is a the norm to non-white. He didn’t experience any of the same educational and social bias that African Americans in the mainland experienced. And that would be AA of the less affluent — who attended Public Schools. But then I attended public high schools that were well integrated and churches. Obama went to Punahoe — supported by his grandmother (the one he threw under the bus). Punahoe is a very private and very expensive high school in Hawaii.
This discussion would be relevant for someone who comes from the authentic African American roots — went to Public schools and college. (That sounds wrong — but his father was from Kenya and returned to Kenya, abandoning his wife and child.)
Obama really is a special case — and he’s someone who uses the color of his skin when it to his advantage. Otherwise he tries to run as “non-racial” — unless he wants to pull the race card.
As I said — Obama is a user — he uses people.
Northwest rain,
As one mutt to another, as one woman to another, as another with a small amount of Native American in my genealogy, I agree completely.
I feel no guilt when a white person commits a crime and I feel no guilt for the tortured, racist, sexist past of this country. Both my grandfathers, one an Irish Immigrant and the other a French Canadian/Oglala Sioux were not exactly welcomed with open arms. I do not deny nor am I trying to minimize the fact that black were dragged here against their will and were held in bondage. Theirs is a tortured history.
But many of us have histories that are tragic too. Check out the treatment of the Irish for a thousand years in their own land. Anglophiles like to ignore this as do Americans who like to pretend that somehow we did anything other than invade and steal this country from the rightful owners and slaughter them when they had the temerity to resist.
To me someone’s history, unless it is a personal history is not a reason that a person would make a good leader. Those who rise above such things and work for a world where it doesn’t happen to anyone else ever again are leaders. Anything less is simply politics as usual. As is Barack Obama.
quite a lot of Catholic Irishmen joined the British army and became prominent heroes in that capacity, many emigrated to England…that’s the Irish half of my family.
So it’s a very complex subject. Of course you could argue that Kennedy used that status too.
Yes, he’s an opportunist. BIG TIME! And this is why what Steele has to say IS important. Obama has co-opted the AA experience. And AAs have let him get away with it in their delirious excitement of having the symbol of a black man as POTUS. (I won’t use ‘our’ because I am terribly upset by this.)
Shelby raises some important realities. They’re worth noting.
Another way to describe Obama is manipulator. I always feel slightly angry after hearing him speak. I feel like he is trying to trick me and something is supposed to be wrong with me if I do not go along. Great leaders make people want to follow, manipulators try to shame them into doing it. More and more people are resisting him.
I have the same reaction.
Never heard it said that way, I think you’re right.
“This discussion would be relevant for someone who comes from the authentic African American roots — went to Public schools and college.”
Dividing African Americans into 2 categories as Shelby Steele has done is entirely racist. You seemed more on target describing Obama as an opportunist. Then you had to add the line I quoted above. Lots of African Americans who are descendants of black slaves in this country attend the best schools available, public and private, thanks to work, scholarships, and enormous student loan debts (as the Obamas had until they paid them off with sales from his book). What makes an African American authentic?
This whole issue just shows how tied up in knots we still are over race. Shelby Steele makes his fame categorizing African Americans while rightly denouncing the use of categories for people. Obama attends a black nationalist church for 20 years then tries to run a race neutral campaign, then uses racist language against whites to explain his racial explanation. People on this blog use racist language to discuss Obama’s racial hypocrisy and explain their own racial tolerance while complaining about being called racist for leveling mostly legitimate and accurate criticism against Obama but with racist overtones and assumptions. I think you, Susan UnPC, and Larry J. should just leave the issue of race alone for now and concentrate on economic and international issues in the campaign.
This is the usual Obama campaign tactic. Obama supporters can talk about race but no one else can because it is racist. It any one gets near the truth yell “racism” to shut everyone up. Manipulation through guilt eventually backfires. Some of us choose not to be manipulated any longer. The proprietor of this blog can discuss anything they bloody want to.
I was pretty specific. You should leave the issue alone because of the way you discuss it, not because I would ever tell anyone to “shut up” as you put it. Did you bother to read what I wrote? Here is the last part again:
“What makes an African American authentic?
This whole issue just shows how tied up in knots we still are over race. Shelby Steele makes his fame categorizing African Americans while rightly denouncing the use of categories for people. Obama attends a black nationalist church for 20 years then tries to run a race neutral campaign, then uses racist language against whites to explain his racial explanation. People on this blog use racist language to discuss Obama’s racial hypocrisy and explain their own racial tolerance while complaining about being called racist for leveling mostly legitimate and accurate criticism against Obama but with racist overtones and assumptions. I think you, Susan UnPC, and Larry J. should just leave the issue of race alone for now and concentrate on economic and international issues in the campaign.”
Maybe I should have added that if Obama can’t discuss race without referring to a “typical white person” then he needs to leave it alone, too.
Also, how do you defend Steele’s 2 categories for African Americans? I don’t put people of any race into categories like that? Do you have a category for yourself or Caucasian Americans or just African Americans?
One final irony in light of your statement:
“This is the usual Obama campaign tactic. Obama supporters can talk about race but no one else can because it is racist. It any one gets near the truth yell “racism” to shut everyone up. Manipulation through guilt eventually backfires. Some of us choose not to be manipulated any longer. The proprietor of this blog can discuss anything they bloody want to.”
I started reading this blog and was proudly recommending it to other African Americans supporting Obama and 2 Caucasian Americans (1 Clinton supporter and 1 unknown) because I was considering switching to Clinton and wanted to discuss the issues raised here with my friends. The issues raised are not any less potent, but there are racist attitudes and assumptions displayed here in presenting them. You can’t hide behind the fig leaf that somehow you are being accused of being racist just because you level justifiable criticism against Obama. That is not the case. Nor is any discussion of race or racism racist. The ultimate irony is that this blog was making good headway before turning to racist stereotyping - dividing blacks, per Shelby Steele’s world view, into 2 “types” like breeds of animals or inanimate objects - to attack Obama. As Simon says below, and as I said in a different way, it just shows how “dicey” the issue is. People on this blog went from being clear-headed, fact driven critics in a sea of drivel, to being actively racist, with new categories for their readers and supporters if, and only if, they are African American. What an unnecessary waste.
It was your candidate who made race a key issue in this campaign. Hell its his weapon he uses to silence critics.
The gist of his speech on race - don’t like my association with Wright? then you must be a racist.
The guy is seriously twisted.
The greater point is not to turn Obama into a victim.
By continuing the argument in terms of the greater black community, Obama profits, and given he is using racism deliberately in a horrifically divisive manner, this is the last thing anyone wants, to reward him.
So, it’s like a boomerang effect.
Words matter, and must be parsed very carefully.
The race issue is still incredibly dicey.
Northwest Rain: I am posting a piece about AND FOR women that I think you will love. Stay tuned.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/wp-images/TUCChamasColumn072207.jpg
a link to another page from his church’s assoc.
The Steele interview explains why Obama felt the need to play the race card in South Carolina. it also explains the “hoodwinked” and “bamboozled” speeches.
Damn, now I have to go buy Steele’s book.
I’d like to read his book too… when i get time, i’ll add the Amazon book jacket image in the middle column… but you can search for it via our Amazon search tool — and then we get a percentage of the profit!
Rev. Wrights church has ties with Hamas. Is that why someone is pushing Obama on us? Could it have anything to do with Hamas and Israel. Is he being used for something? There is a sinister element involved in the presentation of this clueless, inexperienced candidate that the American people are not being told about. How could the media be controlled so thoroughly. However, Bill O’Reilly is allowed to produce a watered-down version of his show that makes it bearable for me to watch TV. Never would I believe in a million years that I would watch O’Reilly. This is a puzzle that needs to be figured out by someone smarter that I am.
OT:
Has ties with Hamas, other than printing the Hamas primer?
Do you have a link?
I ask because I’ve been hearing things here and there, but I can’t find any links, yet, to verify.
I know Rashid Khalidi was with the PNA as a media liaison, (John Batchelor has accused him of being a PLO agent), and I know he is now a professor at Columbia, as well as an Obama friend and contributor.
I don’t know of his relationship to Wright, or Hamas, if any.
Off the cuff, someone mentioned something about Hamas and Alsammarae, but, who knows, it might have just been gas…
The Rev Wright is revealing Obama’s thin “bargainer” veneer.
I’m more than upset about Richardson. You think Obama plans a Obama/Richardson ticket? If Obama gets the latino base for the GE, that would be HUGE. But still polarizing to many who will see it as an ethnic divide. Oh boy.
Richardson is my idiot governor. He gave big tax cuts to the higher income people as soon as he was inaugurated the first time. What a TIN EAR…to endorse now. He is not that well-loved down here in NM.
I’m wondering how much money Richardson got, and from whom.
It all comes down to cash, and the people who endorse Obama are the people, in the democratic party, who cannot win elections.
So, thank Obama for eliminating the deadwood.
And it was a one two punch, btw.
First Obama the victim via the passport incident, and two, Obama receiving Richardson’s endorsement.
Yawn.
Big deal.
It was a deliberate attempt to undermine Clinton’s momentum, and focus away from Wright.
Correct. And RIchardson couldn’t even influence the Hispanics in his own state.
Clinton won New Mexico.
This was for media distraction, to change the subject.
Off topic but can anyone explain how Bill Richardson- at this time - throws his friends the Clintons under the bus and jumps aboard Obama’s Titanic??? Is he really that stupid or did Obama offer him the VP slot?
Obama probably hinted at a VP spot but will not be held to it. Late endorsements are called the stampede of opportunists for a reason.
Not really certain Richardson himself can deliver those. People acting like hispanic American voters are leader centric and not experience oriented are mistaken.
It would be enough to switch one state for certain though.Granted that would be quite a selling point as a VP choice- flip flop point man.
As for the interview, it was a plausible soft sale. He actually distanced Obama from being black, reinforced every white talking point used going into states that had such as its larger voting base, saves his most biting statements for late within an interview.
It was basically a nuance item, like a John Kerry disclaimer ’summarized’ by John Kerry. Somewhere in all of that he made a point, who benefits from it might take a panel discussion to determine.
Again to repeat, hispanic voters for the Clintons are voting their own better experiences. These are not just people voting on choices known for various PR items, chamber of commerce interests, etc.
Richardson’ almost certainly been offered the VP spot - his resume fills in most of the blanks on Obama’s. Doesn’t make a substantial difference, but would be a good marketing tool in the GE.
And Shelby Steele is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, which isn’t exactly the same thing as Stanford University.
Right — Hoover Institution is a very very conservative think tank. An example of how the Right Wing takes care of their own.
I agree he is a huge opportunist who wears a mask, and he and his campaign are clearly sexist. This is why adult women in huge numbers reject him completely. Older women tend to recognize sexism easily, having lived through those times when they strugged against sexism in the workplace and pretty much everywhere else. They made it easier for the younger women who are now too complacent to imagine that things could be reversed for their own lots in life. Every woman over 35 I know despises Obama. They also resent the implication that they are all lower level people with mediocre salaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. That’s a lot of women about to vote for McCain if Obama is nominated. The resistance to this man is huge. I won’t even get into the latinos, who can just as well go with McCain, especially since most of them voted Republican in the past and all three candidates are in favor of dealing with the illegal alien issue in a more humane way. Barack Obama is living an illusion. He will never be president and the numbers will be embarrassing. The super delegates were put in place in the 70s after this type of embarrassment. Their job is to make sure the nominee is actually a potential winner and doesn’t go down in hopeless flames in the General Election. That would be Obama at this point. But the Obama campaign has them living in fear, which portends the way in which he will lose the General Election. Americans do not like to vote in fear of reprisals from a racially sensitive campaign that pretends to “unite”. To many, especially after Wright, he is the same kind of “uniter” as Bush. No uniter at all. If he were, he wouldn’t have fractured the base. Much as he blames this on Clinton, he is part and parcel to that himself. This will turn out to be a most embarrassing drama for the Democratic party in November.
Absolutely damning. He expresses the sentiments of many.
Mrs. Clinton cannot win the nomination except by extraordinary action of the superdelegates, in which case black America will sit out the election and she will be soundly trounced by Senator McCain. It is highly unlikely that the superdelegates will give her the opportunity to suffer such a trouncing.
This is a thoroughly just and proper result. She and her husband debased themselves by playing the race card following the South Carolina primary, and continuing to play it through their surrogates. One healthy result of all of this has been that the polls now show Mr. Clinton with higher negatives than positives.
There shall be no Clinton Restoration. The electorate knows them now, and will not tolerate them any longer. The Corrector’s chest is swollen with gloating, triumphant joy.
You know, again, you make assertions without understanding the greater implications of the information. You’re regurgitating spin, or ideas you may have picked up here, or there.
Your specious reasoning is suspect.
You’re incapable of real analysis, or insight.
Do you understand?
There was no race card played in SC by Bill Clinton if you took the time to see his entire interview in answer to a specific question posed.
Obviously, you also missed the race card played by Obama. His phony prancing around with his “bamboozling” talk; Oprah’s phony speech; his crew waving his 4 page memo around.
And he repeated his little stage act in Mississippi.
He is the biggest fraud going and he is responsible through his opportunism, inexperience, and CRUMMY connections for most of this mess.
If he were an honest man, he’d admit it and drop out.
This is nonsense.
Americans know EXACTLY who played the race card, and it wasn’t the Clintons.
Obama has no chance to win in the general election now.
Blackmailing the DNC to pressure superdelegates by suggesting the AA’s will desert the party is manipulative and despicable.
Shelby clearly explains to you why Obama plays these cards, but Wright explains to you—and to America—-who Obama really is underneath his mask.
He is a man who trashes his own white grandmother for his own political gain. He is a man who purports to be a “uniter,” but who chooses that his own daughters will be exposed to, and taught within, the hateful, racist theories of Rev. Wright.
Americans do not like to be BAMBOOZLED.
I would have voted for Colin Powell in a heartbeat in 2000, seeing HIM as the “One” to bridge the racial divide. But I completely understand his wife’s wishes that he not run, and focus on his family instead.
THIS Black man? THIS “bargainer?” THIS manipulator? THIS race-baiter?
Not in a million years.
I would, however, vote for Shelby Steele.
The person that played the race card in SC was BO.
You’ve probably never set a foot in the South except to vacation. The reason and the only reason that BO won SC and MS and Alabama is because he got overwhelming AA support and a very large percentage of registered Dems are AA.
Anyone who has the intelligence to do a very simple analysis of the exit polls can see that. The reason that these voters voted for BO is because he is black and for many that is the one and only reason. If I wished to I could draw a parallel about that being racist. However, I don’t begrudge any AA the excitement they feel in voting for him, however I would ask that they respect my lack of enthusiasm as I view his color as distraction when it comes to issues on which he is like a chameleon always chang
NC is going to be a much harder state for him to win and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Hillary pull of a big surprise in this state picking up a very large amount of delegates. Especially considering the way districts are likely allocating delegates. The demographics are much, much different than AL, MS, and SC. And independents can and will vote in the primary and it won’t be pretty for BO.
Anyone who perceives that the Clinton campaign played “the race card” is in fact a racist themselves of the worst, psychologically pervasive kind.
Corrector:
Your chest may be swollen, but if you drink the Obama Kool-Aid more slowly, and take a dose of Maalox, you should be a very fit troll in no time. Now you take care of yourself, because the O man’s health care plan won’t take care of you.
It was Obama who played the race card — stop lying.
Obama is the one who played the race card and continues to do so.
First, Obama–through his national co-chair, Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.–accused Clinton of studied callousness toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina;
then his press supporters with a push from Obama’s campaign falsely ascribed her victory to racism among New Hampshire’s Democratic voters;
next, the Obama campaign seized upon non-controversial and historically accurate statements about LBJ…….then the fairy tale and Jesse Jackson comments by Bill Clinton taken all out of context, to list just a few
Of course Obama is not a racist. But he and his groupies sure do know how to play the racism card.
I saw Steele doing a discussion of his book at a Berkely bookstore on C-Span Book TV a few months ago. This was before the mass hysteria broke out about race. I posted a link to the video and summarized the discussion and survived the flames, which were just then beginning to escalate. I think Steele’s prediction that people would be very disappointed when they saw the real Obama show up was right on target.
He was prescient wasn’t he? Now will the Obama flame go out before the nomination, before the GE or just after the GE.
Corrector wrote:
Hmmm…Black activists maybe, but probably not “Black America” who are mostly voting for Obama not against Clinton.
However, if I’m wrong and you’re right and enough Independent/Republican women come out in the GE to counteract the effect of Black Americans sitting this one out, then guess what? Yeah, Black Americans can kiss their influence on the Democratic Party goodbye.
Wright makes Obama unelectable in the GE.
I’m guessing that Corrector doesn’t know that in the Rasmussen Poll after the Wright videos became public,
58% of African Americans found them just as offensive as White Democrats did.
And THAT, I believe, shows us we’re moving past racism , from either side, in America.
I understand why, at least here in the South, you just don’t curse, no matter what from the pulpit. I can’t imagine culture would be much different anywhere else.
My neighbor who is AA, left an AA church that she had enjoyed going to, and my son had also enjoyed when he attended with her family. The minister gave a sermon on Christmas, with small children in the audience about how there “was no Santa Claus”…probably got some children that are going to grow up having a resentment against the church on that one. I know for a fact that she would leave a church in a heartbeat if it exposed her kids to cursing - she is unequivocal and stridently anti-cursing with her kids. I can, in fact, picture her walking out the door the minute the fact that he had cursed from the pulpit sunk in.
I asked my son the other day if he had ever heard cursing or language like that when he attended with them, he said, never, passion, yes, cursing no. He also went on to say that most AAs really are not happy about the fact that BO supporters are trying to make it like all AA churches act in this manner. They know that’s bamboozling…
From Rezko Watch today on Obama running for US Senate: Obama’s ambitions for higher office were an open secret in Springfield, but trying to make the leap to the U.S. Senate seemed a long shot. He was an unknown to most Chicago voters, let alone to those in the rest of the state. His loss to Rush was so lopsided even Obama described it as “a spanking.”
He couldn’t count on the support of some prominent Black Caucus members, including Hendon. In a recent interview, he said Obama was so ambitious that if the position were up for a vote, Obama would run for “king of the world.”
What is totally disgusting is Obama all along has used his race to get him along, maybe the time has come for Hillary to use Sexism to shame voters in a stronger light!
The speech of Obama monday was completely sexist, and needs to be called out on! His own words need turning against him! Discrimination against women has gone on longer in America that the plight of the Black has, it has gone on in the world history far longer!
To use his excuses monday is like those who made excuses for Atlanta QB Mike Vick on his dog fighting as being “cultural conditioning”!
Fact is Obama made a choice of what church to be a member of for 20 yrs, same choice he made bringing his children to that church week in and week out, fueling racial hatred in them to continue the preachings of Rev Wright!
Obama try’s shaming America for his actions is dispicable, shameful and down right disgusting that Obama has proven to draw a line in the sand that many will not cross over, furthering his own selfish cause in the process!
Fact of the matter is, Obama is a self driven and self absorbed person with a self need of enpowerment he believes he is entitled too and will destroy anything in his path to obtain his own personal objective, without any substance within him to back up his desires!
Examples are the two events of the Black ministers and the Black Caucus’s in Atlanta and New Orleans which Obama did not attend, because he had fulfilled his needs of the black community in SC prior to these events, that is the kind of examples of self needs over those of his words on Monday!
Actions speak where words do not!
We just had eight years of a narcissist in the White House who thinks his feces is odorless. Will we never learn?
Mr. Steele’s article is absolutely brilliant. This is truly the most psychologically, sophisticated op-ed written on Obama’s speech that I’ve read thus far.
from obama and wrights church : A CONGREGATION WITH A NON-NEGOTIABLE COMMITMENT TO AFRICA. does obama agree or disagree with this doctrine of the trinity united church of christ ? as a sitting u.s. senator does obama swear alligence to america or africa ? fair question ? could be a disturbing answear if anybody had the guts to ask that slippery eel, obama…..impeach obama 08. obama practices in un-american activities in that church…
Here is a “new name” for Mr. Shelby Steele: “Race Card Pimp.” He is top “hound dog” catcher in the “white supremacist” chase: “Run, Nigger, Run!” Who is “pimpologist” Shelby, really? The original Newfoundland “bargianer,” you say? Whatever this dunce is got him on your youTube and you all walking to the bank with your news and information “tricknology.” What a joke. Shelby. One more name for “The Laughing Race Card Policeman,” if you may.
This so-called “public intellectual” is a public disgrace and should be an insult to one’s decency and intellectual integrity. To reach such a “studied opinion” stage of development and awareness, you all need scholarship and not Shelby’s asinine, “black conservative” rant; so, please, do a google search by entering exactly:
subliminal racism … manichean letmotif
My 1980 UCSD dissertation, “The Manichean Leitmotif,” cracked the racist code in the language; from this work I coined the term “subliminal racism.” Visit my website for article on the HRC-BO Race Card Event. RE “Shop Talk” by Jive Turkey at:
http://www.subliminalracism.com/G5SubscribersClub-JiveTurkey.html
HUH???????
I don’t care for Shelby Steele’s politics. And I’m in no position nor do I care to judge his scholarly credentials. But when he speaks about Obama his is speaking from his own experience as the product of an interracial marriage. Shelby, like Obama is biracial. Both have white mothers. Shelby, unlike Obama, was not abandoned by his father.
His particular insight into Obama’s psyche offers a perspective unavailable to people who are not biracial as well as for those who’ve never had intimate relationships with the offspring of such unions. My BFF is biracial and I can tell you, as an AA, having grown up with her and her family and watched her develop from childhood, I can say firsthand that the biracial person has a distinct and unique road to travel in this society. Obama having been abandoned by his black Kenyan father and raised by his white mother and her parents, was deprived of the ethnic identity that he must own in a society that views one drop of blood sullies Caucasaian identity. How exactly does a black man grow up without having forged any intimate or personal relationships within in the black community until he reaches adulthood when a large portion of attitudes, habits and opinions have already been formed?
We are looking at the result and he’s running for president. He runs as someone who has transcended race yet plays the race card at every turn, claiming Hillary and Bill Clinton have been trying to illegitimize his candidacy by pegging him as a black candidate. Then his minister is revealed to be a fiery rhetorical black militant and Obama is pulled down to earth and now must ask why if he had transcended race, why did he hang out in a church with a minister like this whose views offend many Americans? Steele very accurately explains the reason why.
You may not like Shelby Steele. I may not like him either. But that doesn’t make him wrong. In this case, his analysis is a home run.
BTW, I went to your link.
If Obama wants us to deal with race like he said in his speech, then black folks are going to have to deal with it too amongst ourselves. All that degrading talk targeted at blacks like Magic Johnson because he supports Hillary, is also out of line.
[...] when the guy can’t shut up about how much he loves America. Again, I thought the conservative talking point was that Obama was a “bargainer” [...]
I look at this now after the election and am glad that the points were raised. Steele gave Obama a chance to address these better by the time the election came. He was more specific than he had been initially. Sometimes our critics can be our best allies.