So here's me in The Nation speaking on Shelby Steele and Obama. The Essence:
At night the cable talk shows are filled with trifling gibberish that either extols Obama's "postracialism" or cautions him against being branded the "black presidential candidate." Usually it's both. These pronouncements are almost always made by men who would most likely be hard-pressed to recall the last time they sat down to dinner with a black family. Their viewpoints are shaped by focus groups, polls and warmed-over bromides like "defense moms" and "NASCAR dads." I can't think of a group more ill equipped to bear witness to humanity, much less a phenomenon as intricate and complicated as race in America.
Meanwhile, African-American voters have broken for Obama in margins that make Hillary Clinton look about as popular in the neighborhood as Rudy Giuliani. In this, the hamfisted and befuddled intellects of the world see the "advantages" of being black: chief among them a mindless mass of zombies willing to stumble into poll booths and press a button for the black guy. But what the African-American Obama voter sees is so much more than just the first black President. Indeed, she sees the blackest man to take the public stage ever. Forget about reparations, welfare and white guilt. Forget about 400 years, forty acres and a mule. Forget about the Confederate flag, marching through Jena and Duke lacrosse. Barack Obama is black in the Zen-like way in which white people are white--without explanation. Without self-consciousness. Without permission.
Do check it out.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/05/barack-obama-is-the-blackest-man-ever/5240/
