Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude.
Probably the most intelligent conservative analysis I've read so far, in the sense that its core offensiveness is shrouded in clever deconstruction. Its a nasty echo of my posts in one of the other pre-election threads where I asked whether people were going to vote for Obama because of the symbology of it, rather than on his merits.
Does Obama grant whites "racial innocence"? I don't think so. His "A more perfect union" speech didn't dodge the bullet at all. Obama painted himself as "post-racial" in that speech, which is an interesting concept of itself, but that doesn't mean he didn't address the issue of race hatred on behalf of both blacks and whites. I didn't see any "manipulation of white guilt" in that speech. I read into it an effort to make amends on both sides, and build bridges to overcome a culture of bias.
This editorial you have posted posits that reconciliation is seductive and false. I agree that its seductive, fundamentally disagree that its false.
I personally was bothered that people were voting for Obama because:
1. "it is time" - a sense of making history (contrasted with "washing away white guilt")
2. he isn't George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the other members of the Secret Society of Supervillains
rather than voting on his economic policies, some of which I regard as protectionist and too heavy lip-service to special-interest groups (eg teachers) core to the Democratic movement.
