Shelby Steele - Race and the Obama Campaign

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele discusses racial issues he sees behind the success of Illinois Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

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A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win

Shelby Steele examines the challenges that Barack Obama must overcome in his bid to become President of the United States in A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win. Having to cater to both black voters and white voters in what binds Obama, and his dilemma is that he achieved visibility more as a racial icon than as an individual. In his analysis, Shelby Steele discusses his own mixed race background, and he empathizes with Obama's inner conflicts even as he critiques him. He also identifies the two 'masks' that blacks wear in order to seek success and power in the American mainstream: bargaining and challenging, and he argues that Obama is too constrained by divisive racial politics to find his own true political voice - and proposes a way for him to break those bonds and find his own voice.

Shelby Steele is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of The Content of Our Character and White Guilt, and a contributing editor at Harper's; his work has also appeared in numerous other magazines and newspapers - Cody's Books

Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994.

Steele has written widely on race in American society and the consequences of contemporary social programs on race relations

In 2006, Steele received the Bradley Prize for his contributions to the study of race in America. In 2004, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. Steele is the author of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era and most recently A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win.

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[gracer99]

steele speaks the closest thing to the truth on race in america than any other figure. im an african-american woman and i cried when i first read his work.

[johnlorican]

As a white man, I try hard to treat everyone the same. I sincerely believe that, generally speaking, whites desire, and try, to treat blacks as they would themselves.

The 'lovefest' that people in America gave President Obama, particularly the media, showed condescension towards the man. They never challenged him with hard questions, they treated him as someone with as 'superhuman' qualities.

It was absurd; nobody can live up to those standards. As a result, he was NOT treated equally.

[NewYorkCityUSA7]

@gracer99 If you really cried at any of this man's writings I feel very sorry for you. This man is the biggest Uncle Tom of all time and he despises his own people and is a disgrace to black people everywhere.

[yetitracker]

I love listening to people smarter than me and I am an an arrogant ass! this guy blows me away with his insight,intellect and composure.

[ThunderheadNebula]

4 /4

From Obama’s speech in San Fransico:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," he said.

"And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,"

[ThunderheadNebula]

3 /4

From Obama’s Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the {Muslims} should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.' page 261.

[ThunderheadNebula]

2 /4

From Obama’s Dreams of My Father: ; 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

From Obama’s Dreams of My Father:

I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, Dubois and Mandela.'

[ThunderheadNebula]

1 /4 Obama’s Anti-American sentiment.

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From Obama’s Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating> myself to whites.'

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From Obama’s Dreams of My Father: 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mothers race.'

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From Obama’s Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'

[ashken79]

Racial trancendence...how did that work out?!

[freein2339]

@countertreason I merely state facts...the people that I mentioned are all well known racists...just like the Hitler youth was ...is...so what's your problemn with the truth..???..By the way...defending tacism like this useless uncle tom does is not a "different point of view"...It is the parrotting of a salve mentality....

[countertreason]

@freein2339 Odd... and I saw above that you called this man an Uncle Tom as if attacking a man for holding a different point of view dismisses his beliefs as irrelevant.

I don't know what to say to you. I realize now that I misread you. The inclusion of the reference to the Hitler Youth at the bottom indicates a level of paranoia or hyperbole that there is no serious reply to. You are either being frivolous or you are sick.

[freein2339]

@countertreason "Conservatives" are more racist right now then liberals...The KKK style tea party rallies are proof of that along with the racist GOP leadership of Beck , Limpballs, Palin , Bachman , Boenhner and the rest of the Hitler youth.