Steeped In Obama-Hype

Elizabeth Wright comments on conservative commentator Shelby Steele's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed about President Obama and post-modern race problem in America. The paleo-conservative blogger in New York City opines: "In Obama and Our Post-Modern Race Problem, Shelby Steele once again hits some nails solidly on their heads. He continues with his observations on Barack Obama's role as the important cultural symbol so desired by whites. Eager to display their 'sophistication' on the race front, whites joined themselves, writes Steele, 'to an obvious falsehood in order to achieve social acceptance.' The election of Barack Obama, he claims, was essentially 'a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there.' These blinders were purposely worn by whites 'to escape the stigma, not of stupidity, but of racism.' A year before the 2008 election, Steele did not believe that whites would allow their propensity for what he terms 'guilt' (but what I call cowardice and fear), to compel them into electing a colored to the White House. This was because whites would probably come to perceive the 'dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch' in which Obama dressed his evangelism of 'hope and change.'"

She continues her commentary: "In this current article, Steele claims that Obama was an 'invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down.' He calls this tendency on the part of whites 'sophistication.' I call it vacuousness. Nothing has pleased the typical race-indoctrinated white more than being able to claim that he 'made history' with his vote that helped to put a black man on the ascendance. Look, says this white man, thanks to me, there's goes a black man coming out of the White House, heading for the Presidential helicopter ... Thanks to me, the world is calling a black woman 'The First Lady'...Thanks to me, all those white men sitting around that conference table are subject to that black man...Thanks to me, that black man gets to vacation not only in Martha's Vineyard, but also at Camp David! And, thanks to me, that black man's portrait will hang alongside the portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Aren't I a wonderful person? Look what I've accomplished, exults the white man. You can never again call me a 'racist.'"

After wondering if Americans are expected to get all excited over the first female president, first Hispanic president, the first Hmong group, another white president, and if the White House is owed to any distinctive group, Ms. Wright states: "Shelby Steele is right when he concludes that Barack Obama is 'a president come to us out of our national insecurities.' And, perhaps, out of our national childishness?"