Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win
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.
He 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 is what binds Obama, and his dilemma is that he achieved visibility more as a racial icon than as an individual.
Here’s a part of the Q&A interview he had with New America Media’s Sandip Roy, Posted: Feb 06, 2008.
SR: But with Barack Obama, you write that he has been embracing the African American side, the black side of him, more and more.
Can you give some examples of how he has been doing that?
SS: I talk about this in the first half of the book that looks closely at Obama.
This has been something of an obsession all his life; he comes from an interracial background, and his father abandoned the family, his African father, when Barack was only two years old.
So, in one stroke he lost a father and a racial identity. He was raised in Hawaii in a largely white community by a white mother, white grandmother, white grandfather.
Well, nothing wrong with that, they raised him very well, as we can see he is a fine young man.
On the other hand, Obama always felt the need to belong, to establish his authentic ‘blackness,’ to feel a part of the black community.
It was almost to the point of obsession. If you read his first book “Dreams from My Father” you see the arc of his life is pretty much devoted to establishing his bona fides as a black person.
Most people look at Obama and say, ‘Well, I like him because he seems to transcend race,’ and on one level he does. But, on another level he’s been pretty much obsessed with it, it’s very important to him.
Read the whole thing...
