Is Obama is really opposed to white-blaming, victimological blacks?

Clark Coleman writes:

The most concise rebuttal to African Lady’s optimism about Barack Obama’s opposition to the kind of American blacks who cling to perpetual victimhood and seek to blame their troubles on Whitey is this: He is married to one of these very same people.

I agree with Mr. Coleman that African Lady is seeing Obama through somewhat misty eyes. But she’s not the only one. Read Peggy Noonan’s column in the New York Post in which she basically dismisses all the concerns about Obama and Jeremiah Wright, not on the basis of the truth of what these men have said and done, but purely on the basis of Noonan’s feelings, her feelings, which she references repeatedly in the article. Her feelings are her authority; her feelings are her guide.

Which reminds me of certain lachrymose hit song from (I think) the Seventies.

- end of initial entry -

African Lady replies:

Yes, but look at Mitchelle Obama now! This once “angry black woman” is now proud of her country because she saw how so many whites throughout America have come out in support of her black husband. This kind of transformation is exactly what Obama has planned for black Americans as I had commented in an earlier post:

“Barack sees himself as the savior of his people (his name means blessed one in Swahili), a leader who will elevate black people from their despair…. Barack wanted to show and teach black Americans that white racism can indeed be defeated, and that black and white reconciliation is possible.”

While we are on the topic of Mitchelle Obama, I thought too many pundits had missed the bigger point about her comment that she was proud of her country “for the first time in her life.” You all missed the fact that she was genuinely touched to see how whites are not as hostile to blacks as she had been led to believe all her life. Her comments were expressed with innocent and genuine wonder and they should have been greeted with applause and not outrage. By the way, it wasn’t just she who has a different understanding of America. Even Farrakhan is amazed by what Obama has accomplished for race relations. In this youtube video (if you can make yourself watch it), he asks in reference to the Obama phenomenon “What’s going on?! Who is this young man?!”

This video is actually quite fascinating for a whole lot of reasons if you watch it to the end. Farrakhan says that neither he nor the Nation of Islam will do or say anything controversial that the media will use to hurt Obama. In other words, Farrakhan has more sense and acts more responsibly than Barack’s own cherished pastor.

LA replies:

African Lady has inadvertently confirmed what the critics of Michelle’s statement including myself said from the start: that in Michelle’s experience America is a racist country unworthy of her love and pride, and that the only thing that in her whole life made America seem decent to her was her own husband’s success and popularity as a presidential candidate. African Lady does not see the profound inappropriateness and offensiveness of Michelle’s remark, because she shares Michelle’s premises.

Indeed, when I first realized what a bad number Michelle is, on the weekend before the New Hampshire primary in early January, it was precisely because of her message, which African Lady seems to agree with: that (white) voters were living in fear, isolation, suspicion, and racism, and that the only thing that would get them out of this terrible state into the new and wonderful condition of unity was voting for her husband. It was personal and racial narcissism, raised to the nth degree. America is a rotten, no-good country—so long as people don’t vote for her husband. And America becomes a good and worthy country—if it votes for her husband.

What the Obamas and the Wrights really believe in is not equality but black dominance. What they want is an America in whites accept the black view of America—a view that cancels America out of existence. So there can be no equality between the black view and the white view, because they are mutually incompatible. Either the white view or the black view must dominate.

Joseph C. writes:

If Michelle Obama thinks her husband is “ready to blow his top” over the questions about his character, just wait until he actually has the job! Does she think the press will lay off for four years?

The larger problem is the Obamas’ barely-hidden resentment at America for its culture, and this is manifest by the remarks in the Obama autobiography as much as the fiery rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright. In his Dreams From My Father, Obama spoke of his struggles becoming part of the culture at Harvard and beyond because he had to learn to live by “the white man’s rules.” Wright fumes about the fact that America is run by “rich white people.” They are both correct, and the shame is that nobody (especially McCain and other small c conservatives) has told them there is nothing wrong with this. The Anglo Saxons built this country—flaws and all. Everyone that followed—immigrant as well as slave—has had to live by the “white man’s rules,” which are really nothing more than the Anglo Saxon rules.

For Obama and Wright, the fact that America ended slavery via the Thirteenth Amendment, ended legal discrimination by the Civil Rights Act, and instituted misguided affirmative action policies counts for little, because these were laws passed by the “white man.” Leaving aside the fact that no minority has any rights not granted by a majority—in any culture—Obama and Wright resent the fact that these were gifts of the majority culture. They do not want an America where the laws are enforced, even those benefiting minorities. They really want a country where we start over again with laws written by the minority. Of course, this is impossible, even in a representative republic. Some group had to put the structure in place, and you can no more have a constitution written by varying groups that you can start a sentence in one language, switch to another language, and finish in a third.

George Bush talks about how the US education system ignores minority students because of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Obama and Wright see themselves as victims of the soft bigotry of high expectations. Things like speaking correct English, acknowledging the institutions that make progress possible, dressing appropriately, not consorting with racists, and having to answer tough questions when seeking office are burdens imposed on them by the standards of the white society. They want to play by their own rules, and they believe that to expect them to play by the same rules as everyone else (everyone else who has ever run for President) is just “institutional racism.” Well, too bad. If Barack Obama finds he is at his boiling point, then he obviously can’t stand the heat. He is set for a long four years in the kitchen.

LA replies:

This observation of Joseph’s is key:

For Obama and Wright, the fact that America ended slavery via the Thirteenth Amendment, ended legal discrimination by the Civil Rights Act, and instituted misguided affirmative action policies counts for little, because these were laws passed by the “white man.”

Leaving aside any moral judgment about the matter, but just looking at the facts, the fact is that blacks can never affirm anything about America so long as it is an America with a white majority, an America predominantly led and represented by whites. For them to do this would be to recognize the racial other, the oppressor, and they cannot do this. Blacks don’t care at all what whites went through in the Civil War for example. That was a white man’s war. It had nothing to do with them. To make a big deal out of it, would be to make a big deal about white men, which racial pride prohibits.

Whites don’t understand this about blacks. They expect blacks to be grateful for what whites have done for them (just as they expect Muslims to be grateful for all the things we’ve done for Muslim countries). They don’t understand that blacks (like Muslims) are thoroughly tribal in their outlook, meaning that they are unable to affirm anything done by whites.

The upshot is that the unity and equality that liberals believe in, and that Obama sells, is a big lie. As I said in my previous comment, either the blacks will dominate with their black ways, or we will dominate with our white ways. There is no middle ground.

LA writes:

Michelle is still giving The Speech, and Yuval Levin at NRO discusses it:

By her husband’s logic, Michelle Obama must be a heavily armed xenophobic religious zealot, because boy is she bitter. This C-SPAN video of a speech delivered by Mrs. Obama in North Carolina last Friday is characteristic of her peculiar recent performances on the stump. It is an hour-long talk to supporters who just want something to cheer about, and who get some opportunities at the outset, but then find themselves treated to a profoundly and relentlessly negative vision of American life….

In Michelle Obama’s America, everybody’s suffering, no one has time to make any friends, no one earns enough to eke out a living anymore, and the bar of success is always being moved just out of reach. “Folks are struggling like never before,” she says, and in a nation struggling like never before, society cannot stand the strain.

Levin quotes her speech:

What happens in that nation is that people do become isolated, they do live in a level of division, because see when you’re that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, see you don’t have time to get to know your neighbors, you don’t have time to reach out and have conversations to share stories, in fact you feel very alone in your struggle because you feel somehow it must be your fault that you’re struggling that hard, everybody else must be doing ok, I must be doing something wrong, so you hide … What happens in that kind of nation is that people are afraid. Because when your world’s not right no matter how hard you work, then you become afraid of everyone and everything, because you don’t know whose fault it is, why you can’t get a handle on life, why you can’t secure a better future for your kids.

I repeat what I said on January 7. The fact that Obama’s wife says these things, and, more ominously, the fact that he has allowed her to continue saying these things as his spokeswoman and partner in his presidential candidacy, shows—by itself, even if we knew nothing else about him—that he is part of a left-wing universe totally alienated from this country, and that his claim to be a unifier is a vast lie. He means by unity what Wright and Michelle mean by unity: that everyone in America yield to the black, leftist, hostile view of America.

African Lady writes:

I don’t share Michelle’s premises about America, but I think I can see why you might think I do, as I did not criticize her negative outlook of America as a racist country. What I approved of in my comment was the fact that her outlook changed for the positive. I understand why you find it offensive that her outlook changed only once she saw whites supporting her husband. I am suggesting that if it took for whites to support Obama to prove to black Americans that whites are not as hostile to blacks as they thought, well why is that so bad?! The point is many people, not just black Americans, but also people throughout the entire world including Europe are amazed with the white support for half-African Obama for the American PRESIDENCY—the most powerful position in the world. Does that mean we are all anti-white and anti-America?

Why not understand the Obama phenomenon as follows using some of your own words but applying it differently:

Black voters were living in fear, isolation, suspicion, and racism, and the wonderful condition of unity they experienced as whites and blacks voted for Obama will help get them out of this terrible state.

LA replies:

Well, it’s an interesting argument, but it still is based on the premise that America is a deeply (and uniquely) racist, immoral, and guilty country, which must “prove” itself to be non-racist.

My point is that as long as that premise is in operation in the minds of people, there is NO event in the world, there is NOTHING that America can do, that can clean America of that stain. Each new step of “racial progress” will be seen as a mere downpayment toward what America owes blacks but has still not paid. What America owes blacks is a complete racial equality of outcome that cannot be achieved. Therefore America remains always guilty.

Ask yourself this simple question: would the election of Obama remove racial inequality in America—inequality in income, academic achievement, rates of violent crime and incarceration, illegitimacy, and the entire range of factors that define socio-economic status? No, it would not. His election would not reduce racial inequality by one iota. In fact it would only make America look more guilty: “Look at America, it elected a black president but most blacks are still being held down by white racism! That shows how truly racist America is!” The most it would accomplish would be to show that whites guiltily want to “do the right thing” toward blacks by electing a black as president. But of course whites have been desperately trying to “do the right thing” toward blacks for 45 years. yet none of that, according to African Lady, has removed the stain of racism. Only electing a black president can do that. But if America’s turning itself on its head for the last half century and spending how many trillians in transfer payments to blacks in an effort to end “racism” and produce black equality and also to raise blacks symbolically to the center of America has not removed the premise of white racism, why would electing a black president do that? It would only make the whites look more desperate than ever to gain moral approval by the lights of liberalism—a moral approval they can never gain, so long as actual racial differences in outcome still exist.

And, indeed, what I just said is Obama’s own point of view, as I definitively established in my “Final summing up of the meaning of Obama’s speech.” Here is the key passage of my article:

Obama, while criticizing individual (though mostly unspecified) statements by Jeremiah Wright, nevertheless excuses Wright’s hatred as a product of white discrimination. Further, Obama says, with maximum clarity, that it is whites’ responsibility to close the racial divide, which they must do by acknowledging that white discrimination is the past and present cause of black inequality and black anger, and by taking all steps that are needed to equalize the races. Underneath the uplifting tone and folderol, underneath the warm patriotic sounds, underneath the genuine sensitivity to human complexity, the speech represents a cartoonish, leftist-black assault on America. We are a racist country, and we deserve the demented accusations of the Rev. Wrights of the world, until, through the socialist reconstruction of our country, true racial equality is achieved.

To which I add: but since such racial equality cannot be achieved, we are a racist guilty country forever.

LA continues:

Also, African Lady in talking about the need for whites to demonstrate that they are not “hostile” to blacks by electing Obama is using an argument that has been defunct for decades, even on the left. The most vociferous liberals have long since dropped the idea that conscious white animus is the reason for blacks’ problems. Conscious white animus has long since been replaced by unconscious factors such as “institutional racism,” “cultural stereotypes,” and so on. So if whites now have to elect Obama in order to demonstrate their lack of hostility to blacks, we’re back where we started, aren’t we? Not an iota of progress from the days of lynchings and Jim Crow has ever occurred! Which proves my idea that from the point of view of liberalism, there is NEVER any mitigation or cure of white racism. And neither will the spectacle of Barack and his lovely helpmate in the White House mitigate or cure white racism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 05, 2008 02:57 PM | Send