If Obama wants us to deal with race like he said in his speech, then black folks are going to have to deal with it too amongst ourselves. All that degrading talk targeted at blacks like Magic Johnson because he supports Hillary, is also out of line.

I don’t care for Shelby Steele’s politics. And I’m in no position nor do I care to judge his scholarly credentials. But when he speaks about Obama his is speaking from his own experience as the product of an interracial marriage. Shelby, like Obama is biracial. Both have white mothers. Shelby, unlike Obama, was not abandoned by his father.

His particular insight into Obama’s psyche offers a perspective unavailable to people who are not biracial as well as for those who’ve never had intimate relationships with the offspring of such unions. My BFF is biracial and I can tell you, as an AA, having grown up with her and her family and watched her develop from childhood, I can say firsthand that the biracial person has a distinct and unique road to travel in this society. Obama having been abandoned by his black Kenyan father and raised by his white mother and her parents, was deprived of the ethnic identity that he must own in a society that views one drop of blood sullies Caucasaian identity. How exactly does a black man grow up without having forged any intimate or personal relationships within in the black community until he reaches adulthood when a large portion of attitudes, habits and opinions have already been formed?

We are looking at the result and he’s running for president. He runs as someone who has transcended race yet plays the race card at every turn, claiming Hillary and Bill Clinton have been trying to illegitimize his candidacy by pegging him as a black candidate. Then his minister is revealed to be a fiery rhetorical black militant and Obama is pulled down to earth and now must ask why if he had transcended race, why did he hang out in a church with a minister like this whose views offend many Americans? Steele very accurately explains the reason why.

You may not like Shelby Steele. I may not like him either. But that doesn’t make him wrong. In this case, his analysis is a home run.

My 1980 UCSD dissertation, “The Manichean Leitmotif,” cracked the racist code in the language; from this work I coined the term “subliminal racism.” Visit my website for article on the HRC-BO Race Card Event. RE “Shop Talk” by Jive Turkey at:
http://www.subliminalracism.com/G5SubscribersClub-JiveTurkey.html

“What makes an African American authentic?

This whole issue just shows how tied up in knots we still are over race. Shelby Steele makes his fame categorizing African Americans while rightly denouncing the use of categories for people. Obama attends a black nationalist church for 20 years then tries to run a race neutral campaign, then uses racist language against whites to explain his racial explanation. People on this blog use racist language to discuss Obama’s racial hypocrisy and explain their own racial tolerance while complaining about being called racist for leveling mostly legitimate and accurate criticism against Obama but with racist overtones and assumptions. I think you, Susan UnPC, and Larry J. should just leave the issue of race alone for now and concentrate on economic and international issues in the campaign.”

Maybe I should have added that if Obama can’t discuss race without referring to a “typical white person” then he needs to leave it alone, too.

Also, how do you defend Steele’s 2 categories for African Americans? I don’t put people of any race into categories like that? Do you have a category for yourself or Caucasian Americans or just African Americans?

One final irony in light of your statement:
“This is the usual Obama campaign tactic. Obama supporters can talk about race but no one else can because it is racist. It any one gets near the truth yell “racism” to shut everyone up. Manipulation through guilt eventually backfires. Some of us choose not to be manipulated any longer. The proprietor of this blog can discuss anything they bloody want to.”

I started reading this blog and was proudly recommending it to other African Americans supporting Obama and 2 Caucasian Americans (1 Clinton supporter and 1 unknown) because I was considering switching to Clinton and wanted to discuss the issues raised here with my friends. The issues raised are not any less potent, but there are racist attitudes and assumptions displayed here in presenting them. You can’t hide behind the fig leaf that somehow you are being accused of being racist just because you level justifiable criticism against Obama. That is not the case. Nor is any discussion of race or racism racist. The ultimate irony is that this blog was making good headway before turning to racist stereotyping - dividing blacks, per Shelby Steele’s world view, into 2 “types” like breeds of animals or inanimate objects - to attack Obama. As Simon says below, and as I said in a different way, it just shows how “dicey” the issue is. People on this blog went from being clear-headed, fact driven critics in a sea of drivel, to being actively racist, with new categories for their readers and supporters if, and only if, they are African American. What an unnecessary waste.

First, Obama–through his national co-chair, Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.–accused Clinton of studied callousness toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina;

then his press supporters with a push from Obama’s campaign falsely ascribed her victory to racism among New Hampshire’s Democratic voters;

next, the Obama campaign seized upon non-controversial and historically accurate statements about LBJ…….then the fairy tale and Jesse Jackson comments by Bill Clinton taken all out of context, to list just a few

Of course Obama is not a racist. But he and his groupies sure do know how to play the racism card.