The End Of Post-Racialism

by Bruce S. Thornton
FrontPageMagazine.com

So much for Obama striking a new tone on race.

President Obama’s response during his press conference to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates — that the Cambridge police officer “acted stupidly,” despite Obama’s confession that he didn’t know what really had happened — should lay to rest the illusion that Obama somehow represents the transcendence of racial politics.

From the moment he first stepped onto the national scene, it was obvious that Obama is not “transracial” but in fact a creature of identity/grievance politics. His whole career has been fueled by the perception that he is “black,” that is, a victim of endemic white racism, and thus deserving of various entitlements designed both to compensate for that victimization and to alleviate the guilt of whites who have bought into a demeaning definition of blackness that reduces blacks to being passive victims in need of special consideration.

In other words, the essence of Obama’s public identity is that he serves as a symbol of black grievance and white guilt. The reality of his life is not really an issue. The facts that he is not “black” by any criterion other than the Jim Crow “one-drop” rule, that his perceived blackness has been an advantage in his career rather than a handicap, that the exaggeration of his talents and achievements reflects the “soft” racism of liberal low expectations — all these mean nothing. What is important is that Obama is just black enough to serve as a racial symbol, but not so black that he frightens white people. This disconnect between reality and symbol is most obvious when Obama speaks to a black audience, as in his recent address to the NAACP, and attempts the rhythms and inflections of black oratory. After five minutes it becomes clear that this is not Obama’s normal speaking style, but rather an affectation redolent of nerdy white women warbling “You go girl!” Just imagine Jesse Jackson making that same speech, or even Jeremiah Wright, and you can see the difference between authentic black oratory and the imitation.

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