The trouble with making race the defining attribute of a candidate is that is what the whole race becomes. Obama has no one to blame but his campaign.
We might very well have a President who happens to be black but we will never have an African American President.
By defining himself as African American when he is half white makes people believe Obama thinks that you have to choose between being White or Black. He chose to be African American 20 years ago and chose to marry a woman who is very angry at the white Community.
White people are afraid to say it but they will vote it - either by staying home or voting against him. The fear is Obama is making this a Race based nation giving special rights to Blacks only. They will have a special status not enjoyed by any other minority or majority.
From Dreams of My Father, “ I FOUND A SOLACE IN NURSING A PERVASIVE SENSE OF GRIEVANCE AND ANIMOSITY AGAINST MY MOTHER’S RACE”.
From ‘Dreams of my Father’, “THE EMOTION BETWEEN THE RACES COULD NEVER BE PURE...THE OTHER RACE WOULD ALWAYS REMAIN JUST THAT; MENACING, ALIEN AND APART.”
From ‘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.”
From Dreams Of My Father, “NEVER EMULATE THE 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”.
From Dreams Of My Father:
“THAT HATE HADN’T GONE AWAY,” he wrote, BLAMING “WHITE PEOPLE— some cruel, some IGNORANT, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”
From Dreams Of My Father;
“There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs,” he wrote. “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 Dreams Of My Father, “I HAD GROWN ACCUSTOMED , everywhere, TO SUSPICIONS BETWEEN THE RACES.”
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