Barack Obama's caginess on race

I find it interesting, and ironic, that our goal has been a color-blind society and now all we can focus on is this candidate's race.
It is doubly ironic since he is no more an African-American than he is an Irish-American (or whatever ethnic background his mother had), yet all we hear over and over is that he is African-American.

Hmmm. Maybe I have a heart of stone, but given his extremist views on abortion, the fact that Obama is black matters to me not a jot.

The fact that I'm Australian might also have something to do with it, I suppose.

Mr. Obama is nowhere man when it comes time to speak out on reforming big city public schools, with their criminally high dropout rates for minority children.

Isn't that properly a local or state issue?

Rod Dreher writes:

>>>"My point is that Obama is trying to benefit politically from his race without having to take the hard positions that could shatter the feelgood aura many whites have about him as a racial healer. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel good -- not to feel great -- about tonight's historical moment: 45 years to the day after MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, a black man accepts the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. It's a great moment for America. But after the glow fades, where does Obama stand on controversial issues that are inextricably linked to racial politics -- the issues Juan Williams raises? Right-mindedness will only go so far this fall."

It is important to understand the context of what you just said, put it context, and be real.

Reality #1: Most white conservatives and most White conservative religious leaders did NOT support Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was called everything but a child of God by them.

Reality #2: Most White conservatives and most White conservative religious leaders do NOT support Sen. Barack Obama. He is called everything but a child of God by them.

For anyone to suggest, particularly a paid Rupert Murdoch owned Fox News Contributor like Juan Williams, that most White conservatives and White conservative religious leaders will "come around" to Obama if he attacks some of the very same support systems and tools that African-Americans have used to climb up in a system inarguably controlled and historically dominated by Whites, with discriminatory legislation for the vast majority of the nation's history...it's NOT Barack Obama who has to address these "race problems".

America has to look itself in the mirror about racism.

--Cobra

Rod: IOW, I think Obama will follow the same policies [regarding racial issues] as any other liberal Democrat

So what policies would a conservative Republican follow? I guess the beginning would be to end affirmative action. But eleven years after Proposition 209 in California, black college enrollment has declined. Another would be touting charter schools and vouchers. But first, the research on the long-term effectiveness of these is mixed, and second, it is debatable whether there are enough slots in such schools to absorb the requisite number of children if there were wide-spread implementation of such policies. Remember also that many private schools are successful because the are selective. Many of the students who would be purportedly helped by vouchers might not be let in anyway, even if they had vouchers, on academic grounds. And then, as RJohnson points out, the Republicans contradict themselves on this anyway, since they've always argued that the government has no business in education. And let's not forget the off-the-cuff remark by Bill Bennett a few years ago to the effect that he'd like to see private and charter schools increase in order to hasten the demise of public schools altogether. If that's what the GOP really believes, they should say it outright.

As to the completely alien culture of the underclass vis-a-vis the middle class: what does a liberal or conservative do about that? Really?

I guess what I'm getting at is this: It's easy to say that Obama would have the same old "liberal ideas" for race-related issues. As far as I know, though, the Republicans have no ideas for these issues. The ones they do have (e.g. end affirmative action) have had negative effects where they have been implemented. Do the Republicans have the guts to say to the nation, "We should end affirmative action because it's the fair thing to do, even if many minority groups drop in school enrollment and certain business opportunities, since that is a price worth paying for fairness"?

In a nutshell, if Obama's ideas are the same ol' same ol', what do you suggest?

How about he ignores you all and concentrates of the economy.

As for Republican ideas to fix education, that has consisted mainly of abolish the Department of Education and privatize the schools. I certainly remember what integration looked like to me as a teenager: all white "Christian" schools springing up all over the place.

Obama is cagey about race issues because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Fof those who may be against him because of race, he supports a color-blind society. For those who support him because of race, he wants to be the first African-American President. 'He sort of wants to be the first affirmative action president.

For Sen. Obama's positions on race, the thoughtful voter is encouraged to read his writings in The Hyde Park Herald and The Chicago Defender when he was in the Illinois House of Representatives. The Senator was a HYde Park liberal determined to exploit racial division in order to increase benefits for his constituency and to gain power himself.

An article called Barack Obama's Lost Years has been written as something of a digest of Sen. Obama's newspaper writing and voting record on racial issues way back when.

Sen. Obama, a UChicago adjunct law professor who taught courses on laws pertaining to race, and Mrs. Obama, a UChicago "diversity" official making >$300,000 in that post, have made their careers on racial problems and division. They're hardly mysterious on this point.

But he HAS spoken about race, you mentioned in this very blog his comments on fatherhood and the breakdown of the Black American family. I don't think the man really needs to pontificate on the subject.

Nothing new or substantive has come to light as far as race policy is concerned. Racism is not something you can fix by edict. As a society, we are slowly absorbing racism. Each new cohort of American kids is slightly more mixed, slightly more open-minded to admixture. I don't believe that societal progress is inevitable, or really entirely possible. But human beings, and human societies, can overcome specific issues, to a certain extent. As long as the nativist paranoids don't succeed in labeling anyone Hispanic or Muslim as automatically disloyal and suspicious, we might very well get over some of our societal racism.

The hourglass is running, once a particular generation and a half has passed, and the torch is passed on to the more racially mixed ones, once a majority of us are touched by, or products of, racially mixed parentage, we will quite literally become the change Obama touts. He is the future, whether he gets elected or not. Standing behind him are many many more people like him, and like me and my brothers and cousins.

Never fear, there's always religion, politics, social class, gender, and immigration to fall back on. Sigh...