Shelby Steele, research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, wrote an insightful piece last week in the Wall Street Journal. Steele, who is black, does an outstanding job explaining Obama's appeal. Unlike Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton who are confrontational, Obama strikes a bargain with whites: if you don't hold race against me I won't make you feel guilty about slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc. Here is an important quote
"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. 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. This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage..."
Read the rest below:
The Obama Bargain - WSJ.com
1 comment:
This is a very insightful article...thanks for sharing.
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