Why did Obama do such a stupid thing?

Janet Daley in the Telegraph addresses what seems like the ultimate unforced error in American politics: how could Obama, who had so much going for him, have trapped himself in the political dead end of Trinity United Church, joined at the hip with an America-hating pastor? Or, as a correspondent has said to me, “How could he have been so stupid?” Here’s Daley’s interesting answer, which I then expand on:

[His speech] was an ingenious, masterfully drafted attempt to square a circle that he had hoped never to address. But for all of its nuance and its rhetorical force, it was a surrender.

Mr Obama has accepted the mantle of black resentment: the bitterness of slavery and segregation, the triumphs of the civil rights movement, the continuing struggle for equal opportunity and achievement. They are all his now, an intrinsic part of the package in which he offers himself to the electorate, even though, ironically, they have little to do with his own life experience.

He is not descended from slaves, nor was his childhood marked by poverty, segregated schooling or social deprivation. His father was not African-American but entirely African and his mother, as we all know, was white. He did not grow up in the midst of the ugly hatreds and divisions of the American South, or even with the more subtle, disguised discrimination of the North.

So how has he come to find himself trapped in this political ghetto? More mystifyingly, why did he choose to cleave to a spiritual mentor whose church was dedicated to the perpetuation of black anger? Why did he identify himself, in what must have been a quite conscious act of personal reinvention, with a pastor and congregation whose collective memory was so utterly different from his own?

Daley speculates that Obama, a rootless man in the rootless, immigration-derived country of America, had a genuine need for community and belonging. “[Y]ou just have to be able to plant your feet on solid ground somewhere and find people to holds hands with, so as not to be swept away in the endless, terrifyingly anonymous void.” He found this community at Wright’s church. And that is what has sunk him.

It seems a plausible theory. But Daley does not address why Obama could not find a less toxic black church.

Here’s my theory. Being half and half, Obama needed to create an identity for himself. He could not be white—the One Drop Rule rules. Nor could he be “biracial”—it’s not clear that such an identity is even available in modern America. In order to be something, he had to be black. Having decided to be black, and wanting to become fully black, he gravitated to the most “authentic” type of black community, which in America tends to be connected with Afro-centrism, anti-whiteness, and anti-Americanism.

While the explanation makes sense, on further thought it doesn’t seem right to see Obama’s search for identity as being purely about race. As he makes clear in the eloquent passage in Dreams from my Father that he quoted in his Philadelphia speech, he was looking for a deeper meaning, and he found it at Trinity United Church:

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note—hope!—I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories—of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish—and with which we could start to rebuild.”

What Obama is saying here is something with which traditionalists ought to be in sympathy: it is a joining of Christianity with a sense of peoplehood. That in itself is a good thing, and is in keeping with many biblical passages (as I show in part two of my article, “How liberal Christianity promotes open borders and one-worldism”), and also in keeping with the existence of the various national churches. But at Trinity, it seems, as well as in much of black America, it goes too far. The biblically steeped sense of peoplehood has too much of the people, too much of the race, too much of the black uniqueness, and not enough of the universal. This biblical peoplehood has racist elements, including at least the implication that the people of the Bible were literally Negro, along with a permanent identification of white America with the principle of evil. Thus the experience of a Christian-based, racial peoplehood at Trinity and other black congregations is bound up with paranoid hatred and suspicion of whites, the readiness to believe the most insane conspiracy theories about them.

Ironically, the man who had no roots in black America, and who had grown up having nothing to do with black America, made his home in black America, and in so doing, connected himself at the hip to its pathologies. The rootless man had found roots, but the roots he had found separated him from the larger American society, ultimately disqualifying him from the presidency in the minds of many voters. In the end, the magical, race-transcending Obama was bound so tightly by race, that even Houdini could not free him.

* * *

By coincidence, just after posting the above entry, I came upon this, by Thomas Sowell, which closely matches my own theory:

In Shelby Steele’s brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama—“A Bound Man”—it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were—and, like many converts, he went overboard.

When I wrote, “Obama was bound so tightly by race, that even Houdini could not free him,” I was not aware of the title of Steele’s book, “A Bound Man.”

- end of initial entry -

Laura W. writes:

Janet Daley’s comments are brilliantly perceptive. She has not only put her finger on Obama and his ill-fated associations, but on the strange and unprecedented growth of other American subcultures, especially the homosexual community. She writes:

“Of course, it doesn’t have to be ethnicity any more. You can find your communal identity through gender, or sexual orientation: you just have to be able to plant your feet on solid ground somewhere and find people to holds hands with, so as not to be swept away in the endless, terrifyingly anonymous void.”

This longing for lost connections lies at the heart of so much of liberalism. Any traditionalist who does not work to feed this longing fights a doomed cause.

Dimitri K. writes:

In connection with your post—it seems to me that currently gaining strength is the new branch of Christianity—the black Christianity. Just as Protestantism started with resentment of Catholicism, the black Christianity shows resentment to the white one. It is an inevitable feature of separation.

A reader writes:

Another question, why did it take this long for all this to come out? Do Democrats indulge this kind of thing, did they do so in this case, thereby removing any necessity for the moves that might have made Obama distance himself earlier if he was really serious about being president? Were they embarrassed to bring it up? Did they in their guilt-ridden liberal souls somehow agree with it? Did they expect the rest of America to accept it as they, the liberal Democrats, did? Will they now hate America for this, for possibly letting it stand in the way of the first plausible black presidential candidate? Could it be that they’ve learned nothing from all these years, from Clintonian centrism, the DLC trying to bring their party back more toward center, and all that?

It’s not only Obama who did such a stupid thing, it’s the Democratic party that has done this stupid thing, by not realizing earlier what a detriment this would be and doing something about it.

Irwin Graulich writes:

I like your comments.

Did you see the photo of Obama with his wife and Edward Said and his wife at a dinner praising Islamic groups? I heard Hamas and Hezbollah were praised at that dinner.

I think when this is all over, Obama is going to run for dog catcher!!!!

By the way, I think the white Obama ego hates the black Obama ego and vice versa. There is so much going on inside his head that Freud would have a ball with him.

Obama’s mother was a hippie weirdo chick who purposely sought out and married two non-white radical Muslim intellectuals. By the way, to show you how meshugah his mother and her family was, did you know that Obama’s mother’s father wanted a boy so much that he named his daughter (Obama’s mother) with a boy name—her name was Stanley!!!! Is that a sick family or what?

LA replies:

Yes, that business about Ann Dunham’s legal name being Stanley Ann Dunham is definitely weird.

Irwin Graulich replies:

Hey, if your mother’s name were Stanley, and she moved you as a kid from the United States to Indonesia after the first husband ran away from her, would you be normal? And the guy is running for president. Unbelievable.

E. writes:

Well, you also have to realize that neither Barack nor Michelle have probably ever met a white person who didn’t shrink away into the nothingness of white guilt when either of them started his/her incessant racial grievance monologue. Remember, Michelle got a total pass from the Princeton sociology department to write a senior thesis that was little more than an elongated essay on “what I feel about being black at Princeton.” For people who don’t look like Michelle, these theses are supposed to involve hard work and scholarship——not just your diary entries on how you personally experience all that oppression. Had she not looked as she does, her advisor would have vetoed the thesis topic and/or given her an F for providing no hint of actual scholarship. Both Barack and Michelle have received incessant advancement (Harvard Law, no less) by the system run by the white guilt crowd. I’m quite sure Barack has never, ever been exposed to the fact that not all white people are consumed by white guilt. Do you think you could find any such rarities on the Princeton or Harvard faculties? They’d never get tenure.

He is only now discovering that the white guilt system off of which he has advanced so slickly, does not necessarily represent the majority view of white people in America. Even the occasional mainstream journalist has his limits.

LA replies:

That’s a really intresting theory explaining Obama’s amazing naivite about his Pastor Wright problem. An example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. No one ‘splained to poor Oba that some of his views and associations might be seriously objectionable.

KPA writes:

I am bemused by all this hullabaloo regarding Obama.

The facts were clear a long time ago.

- Shelby Steele’s book on Obama came out in December 2007. Which means that he had enough information available from a while back to write those insightful words which Sowell quoted.

- Wright’s church had a mission statement (manifesto) clearly documented for all to read and realize how black-centric their church and community was, clearly antagonizing the rest of America (especially whites).

- Obama’s middle name went off into a red herring. The point wasn’t that he was “Muslim,” as he was not Muslim; the problem was that he kept an un-American, pro-Islam name for so many years.

- And Obama has appeared on TV with his wife where his behavior was clearly not the benign non-race mongering personality which so many ascribed to him. [KPA is referring Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s behavior during a 60 Minutes interview in Februrary 2007 which KPA discussed here; KPA noticed Michelle’s anti-white statement, and Barack’s silent, passive, acquisecent response to it.]

I think conservative writers are as at fault as the liberals. I thought journalism was about writing about facts, providing concrete information which then becomes the basis for analysis.

Conservative writers jumped this gun, and went for semi-hysteric adulation, based on wishful thinking and lax and mediocre research.

No wonder the public has no idea where to turn, and leaders have become scarce.

LA replies:

For the record, VFR wrote about the racial nature of the Trinity Church in early 2007. The statements are quoted in the recent entry, “Anti-Obamania.” On March 14, 2007, I wrote:

Obama belongs to a church with an anti-white racial ideology. In the absence of strong statements and actions by him to the contrary, possibly including his dissociation of himself from that church, it must assumed he shares that ideology, and therefore is unqualified to be president of the United States.

Greco writes:

I think Obama picked that church for more political than psychological reasons. If he wanted to run for office one day, and run from a black base, his white ancestry and lack of black American roots would liabilities. So he joined this church to establish his black-man credentials. And maybe also to learn up close about the rhetorical styles that move the black masses… He wouldn’t have picked that up at Harvard Law School!

But doesn’t it put you at ease that these resentments are NOT bred into Obama? At the end of the day he was raised by white people, and he was NOT raised around black people, so psychologically you can’t even lump him in with Sharpton and Jesse.

LA replies:

Your theory does not explain:

- the evident centrality of this church in his life

- his refusal to distance himself from it, even now.

If your theory were correct, and he was motivated solely by political considerations, surely he would have left this church quietly at the beginning of his presidential run.

I don’t understand the point of your second paragraph.

Greco replies:

By my second paragraph I only meant to say I can’t imagine that Obama has contempt for white people, as the average black American does. But I haven’t studies his writings so my opinion doesn’t count for much. Before all this controversy, when you wrote that Obama seemed very comfortable in his own skin, that struck me as true.

Sebastian writes:

Have you noticed the absurd commentary being posted over at Taki’s Magazine regarding Obama? Not only has Raimondo, in his myopic obsession with the war, endorsed Obama, but today Paul Gottfried is so worked up by Sean Hannity and the “neocons” smearing the Obamas that he declares open sympathy for the candidate. Truly, the enemy of their enemies is their friend—nothing else.

There seems to be a Frankfurt School-style critique of American politics behind some of their analysis. They are so sure America has fallen from Virtue, they no longer see important distinctions or subtle differences. It is an inversion of the thinking one often finds on the far Left. The more I read them, the more I intuit why they lost the war of ideas with the neocons, for their vision is purely negative and has some of the superior posture of ennui of existential hopelessness. Why bother trying to reform America in the first place when all one can offer is condescending negativity?

Sebastian writes:

Here are relevant links at Taki:

Gottfried
http://www.takimag. com/blogs/article/changing_course/

“Obamacons”
http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_rise_of_the_ obamacons_its_really_happening/

Raimondo
http://www. takimag.com/sniperstower/article/right_on_bacevich/
http://www. takimag.com/sni perstower/article/relativity/
http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/fyi_another_conservative _for_obama/

A reader writes:

Follow Condi who keeps referring to the Arab majority in the middle and bloody history of warfare vs. a minuscule minority of Jews who have a history of peace and victimization as reminding her of her “memories” of her “childhood” in Alabama.This is the secretary of State of the U.S. making life and death decisions. Now match her up with President Obama who sees only a world of black and white (can you blame him for looking at his parents.) I wish US luck if that is the future of the U.S. and western civilization thought we were supposed to be colorblind.

LA replies:

And no one ever tells her how ridiculous, stupid, irrelevant, offensive, and dangerous that comparison is. Talk about lowering standards for blacks! Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations!

Ron L. writes:

You are probably right about the psychological need of Obama that led him to TUCC. When he chose to be black, to identify himself with the foreign man who dumped him and his mother, Obama’s path was set.

However, there was also a political need. The rich Hawaiian Columbia grad needed authenticity and street cred for his work in Illinois. Obama was not one of them. He is not descended from slaves, but from an Arabized tribe, which engaged in the slave trade. In many respects, he is no more African American than Charlize Theron. He desperately needed to prove himself a “real” African American. Picking a radical “hate whitey” church provided political cover. To repudiate TUCC is to repudiate his entire career since he moved to Illinois.

Paul K. writes:

Pardon me if I can’t get enough of the Obama story. Some human dramas are parables, offering all sorts of fresh insights when closely examined. I feel the Obama story qualifies. Compared to the tawdry and familiar Eliot Spitzer drama, this is Shakespeare.

The fact that Obama wants to identify with the black experience in America though that does not reflect his background reminds me of the phenomenon of the phony vets who appeared after the Vietnam War.

When respect was belatedly accorded to the veterans in the 1980s, there were a number of parades organized, as well as events held at the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall. Many of these vets wore tattered uniforms, sported long hair and beards, and had a ravaged look about them. As time went on, though, it turned out that sizable numbers of them had never been in Vietnam. They were simply losers who longed to belong to a group that had a bond forged in suffering, was accorded a measure of public sympathy and respect, and had an aura of “drama.” Many of them found it useful to attribute the aimless course of their lives to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though they had never experienced combat.

Like these wannabe vets, I think Obama wants to associate himself with a dramatic and “authentic” black identity that doesn’t reflect his own experience. He even justifies Wright’s racial hatred as a sort of PTSD, when in fact Wright never experienced the sort of racism that would justify it.

LA replies:

I disagree and agree.

I disagree with you in that I don’t think his adoption of a black identity was wrong or illegitimate. As I explain in the initial entry, as a young person of mixed race, not fitting here or there, he needed to forge an identity he could live with. Since a person with Negro features is not considered white, he had no choice but to be black. I don’t think it’s fair to blame him for identifying himself as black.

I agree with you in that he did not merely identify himself as black, but identified with the more extreme and radical forms of blackness. And this is blameworthy.

I also agree that the Obama situation is of great interest. I hope readers have not minded that I’ve had so much on it over the last couple of weeks, but it’s an important and uniquely American drama.

From: James M.
Subject: Wright stuff

Wright could almost pass for white and has obviously benefitted from his white schooling. Are he and Obama like the Jewish conversos in medieval Spain, who were often more anti-Semitic than “old” Christians, because they felt they had something to prove? Torquemada is said to have been Jewish and Reinhard Heydrich is said to have been driven by rumours that he was Jewish.

LA replies:

Yes. In the most commonly seen photo of the two of them together, Wright is lighter than Oba and his features are less Negroid.

Jack S. writes:

BHO has actually been upfront about his beliefs. I’ve gotten about halfway through Dreams from My Father and he is clear about where he’s coming from. He started calling himself Barack instead of Barry while at Punahou soon after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He started hanging and identifying with radical blacks rather than with the people who raised him. After leaving Columbia he had some brief jobs on Wall Street. He writes that he felt like a spy behind enemy lines. He applied for jobs as community organizer in Chicago. Turned down by several, he was finally accepted by Marty, a Jewish leftist who put him to work organizing blacks to push for more social programs. He describes going inside a church for perhaps the first time in his life to speak about the need for blacks to agitate for more benefits. He describes a visit to a black barbershop where the older patrons bitterly discuss politics in Reverend Wright terms. After his haircut the barber asks his name. He answers and the barber says, “so, you’re a Muslim?” No, Barack says, my grandfather was.

The book was written in 1995. The book was the result of attention he’d had as the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. It’s clear that he is not a crypto-Muslim, at least consciously. I would say he probably he started as an atheist or agnostic. He started attending Wright’s church as a political move. Educated people like him scoff as faith: “the opiate of the masses.” He did, however, passionately agree with Wright’s black liberation theology, hate-whitey view. This view appears be very widely held among politically aware blacks. Having read his book, I now think of BHO as Jesse Jackson without a speech impediment.

LA replies:

Is there any sign in the book that these are attitudes he had when he was younger and no longer has? Does he criticize his youthful adoption of leftism and black radicalism?

Since he had presumably become somewhat more mainstream by the time he wrote the book, I would assume he would want to distance himself from some of these things.

Jack S. writes:

I’ve only gotten about halfway through (page 180 or so.) It is well written and it’s clear he’s intelligent. There is much material along the lines of what he wrote about his grandmother: complete identification with blacks, alienation from whites. His point of view is that of a deeply committed socialist activist. Like a young Hillary but with black radicalism. No indication that he’s changed his mind. As I understand it he was a young law school graduate with no public standing, no inkling that he would one day be famous. He was telling it like is without self-censorship.

LA replies:

Then it would be interesting to know when in his life, if ever, he has explicitly distanced himself from the black radicalism he embraced in his youth.

John B. writes:

I think KPA had it right when she said that Barack Obama’s reaction to his wife’s statement on 60 Minutes was one of “resigned acceptance of this ‘predicament.’” Rather than a “silent, passive, acquiescent response,” as you have termed it, it was self-glamorizing self-pity, of the sort that wouldn’t get him into a mediocre drama school: “Ain’t it the truth—but what’s a courageous man to do.”

What a bore.

African Lady writes:

I really appreciate how you understand that Obama’s adoption of a black identity was neither wrong nor illegitimate given that he has black skin and features. I don’t understand why some of your white readers can’t understand his obvious need to forge a racial identity that is consistent with how others see him.

You have been, however, misled to think that he has identified with the more extreme and radical forms of blackness in his past. He never has. In fact he expresses his low view of black nationalism in his book “Dreams From My Father.” While working as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago, he encounters Rafiq, a black activist and member of the Nation of Islam. Obama was hired by a Jewish man called Marty to organize low income blacks as part of an effort to build a coalition with working class whites to secure jobs and benefits (this in itself shows how Barack was no black nationalist!)

Excerpts from page 198-203:

Ever since the first time I’d picked up Malcom X’s autobiography, I have tried to untangle the twin strands of black nationalism, arguing that nationalism’s affirmation message-of solidarity and self reliance, discipline and communal responsibility-need not depend on hatred of whites anymore that it depended on white munificence.

In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential nationalists. The anger was there, bottled up and often turned inward. I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage towards whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyalty above all else, was politics inadequate to the task. (my comment: the task of uplifting black people).

It was a painful thought to consider, as painful now as it has been years ago. It contradicted the morality my mother has taught me, a morality of subtle distinctions—between individuals of goodwill and those who wished me ill, between active malice and ignorance or indifference. I have a personal stake in the moral framework; I discovered that I couldn’t escape if I tried. And yet perhaps it was a framework that blacks in this country could no longer afford; perhaps it weakened black resolve, encouraged confusion in the ranks. Desperate times called for desperate measures….

If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on promises of self-respect, than the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.

If nationalism could deliver. As it turns out, questions of effectiveness, and not sentiment caused many of my quarrels with Rafiq.

What in the hands of Malcolm had been a call for arms, a declaration that we could no longer tolerate the intolerable, came to the very thing Malcolm had sought to root out: one more feeder of fantasy, one more mask of hypocrisy, one more excuse for inaction. Black politicians discovered that white politicians have known … that race baiting could make up for a host of limitations. Younger leaders eager to make a name for themselves, upped up the ante peddling conspiracy theories all over town—the Koreans were funding the Klan, Jewish doctors were injecting black babies with the AIDS virus. It was as shortcut for fame, if not always for fortune….

Just talk. Yet what concerned me wasn’t just the damage loose talk caused efforts in coalition building, or the emotional pain it caused others. It was the distance between our talk and action, the effect … it was having on us as individuals and as a people. That gap corrupted both language and thought … it eventually eroded our ability to hold either .

So you can see from his early writings, that Obama thought that black nationalism was ineffective, immoral, and corrupting.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

While only Barack Obama truly knows why he joined Reverend Wright’s church and remained a strong supporter of the church for so many years, the comments on this thread offer many valuable insights and explanations for his “stupid” decision (which was “stupid” only insofar as it has derailed any chance he had of becoming president—although it may have been critical to his becoming a U.S. Senator from Illinois). However, I disagree somewhat with one of LA’s comments, to the effect that Obama was searching for an identity and could not become part of “white” American society due to his black features: “As I explain in the initial entry, as a young person of mixed race, not fitting here or there, he needed to forge an identity he could live with. Since a person with Negro features is not considered white, he had no choice but to be black. I don’t think it’s fair to blame him for identifying himself as black.”

The point is that “being black” could mean different things. It certainly did not have to mean joining a staunchly Afrocentric church with a rabidly anti-American pastor. One of the (many) tragedies of contemporary black culture is that it seemingly forces ordinary black folks either to become “Uncle Toms” (by adopting the social and economic mores of the white majority, for which they are castigated) or to “keep it real” and embrace the pathologies of the urban ghetto, along with the intellectual, political, and religious rationalizations that go along with them. It is becoming more and more clear that Obama, like the Al Sharptons of our country, and like his wife, has chosen the second route. White liberals have been complicit in this destructive dynamic. IMO, white conservatives need to be even more outspoken in their opposition to this either-or choice that so often is forced on blacks.

There is no denying that it is difficult to be a “minority” in any society. But, at least in a country as open, just, and non-oppressive as the United States, it is an act of choice to embrace a hostile, alienated point of view versus a trusting, accommodationist point of view. While in some sense it may be impossible for a black person to be 100% part of white society, clearly it does not follow that a black person cannot be a patriotic American committed to the same basic values and ideals as the rest of us. The same may be said of any non-white or non-Christian person in this country. However, it does require some flexibility and forbearance on the part of the minority, to respect the rightful claims of the majority. “Black power” in all its guises—including in Rev. Wright’s church—is a rejection of this accommodationist spirit.

LA replies:

To repeat, when I said it was natural and inevitable for him to adopt a black identitity, I did not mean that he needed to adopt an oppositionalist black identity. I meant it in the ordinary sense of his needing to answer the questions that his fate had thrust upon him: “What am I? What race am I? How do I describe myself?”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 25, 2008 02:02 AM | Send