What Happened to Our Postracial President? Lose, Lose When You Talk About Race [Victor Davis Hanson]

NRO + Pajamas Media ^ | July 27, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

 

Obama has unwittingly made his real beliefs clear.

From time to time, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas have naturally talked about growing up African-American under far less tolerant conditions than those we take for granted today. Yet their biggest contributions to American race relations have been their admirable abilities to transcend such racial intolerance — to make being black incidental, not essential, at least in public, to their sterling characters and impressive achievements.

They all paid a price for emphasizing individuality rather than adhering to identity politics. Those on the left often criticized them as somehow inauthentic, or not fully representative of the “real” black experience. Indeed, one of weirdest paradoxes of contemporary culture has been the tendency of wealthy white liberals to adjudicate who really speaks for the so-called African-American community — based on an authenticity that is often, in ironic fashion, based on the degree of perceived hostility to whites themselves.

Then came Barack Obama, and the nation as a whole entered an even stranger racial landscape. Unlike Powell, Rice, or Thomas, Obama was not born into, but rather piggy-backed onto, the African-American experience. He came of age well after the South’s oppressive Jim Crow culture began to wane. He grew up in a multiracial Hawaii that was always somewhat more relaxed, and was exempt from the tensions inside the continental United States. Obama was of half-white ancestry, and raised by white grandparents. Finally, Obama’s father was a Kenyan national and Muslim, not a descendant of American slaves, and so he lacked an African-American pedigree altogether. In other words, as Obama himself often insisted, our new president was in a way reminiscent of Tiger Woods: postracial — black, white, a little bit of everything, but beyond divisive self-identification with any one particular group or tribe.

Yet somehow one Barry Dunham/Obama — after Occidental, Columbia, Harvard, Chicago organizing, and the Reverend Wright’s Trinity Church — morphed into an authentic voice of the African-American collective experience. The rest is history. A black politician who once struggled to establish African-American credentials has now become our collective arbiter of race in a way former African-American national figures could hardly imagine.

Whether due to the utility of identity politics or simply to his own comfort with racial emphases, Obama has highlighted, rather than downplayed, his own mixed heritage in efforts to accentuate an African-American identity. We saw that in the Democratic primary, when his support from the black community was not at a mere 60/40 majority, or 70/30, but more often an astounding 95/5. His continued apologies for the racist Reverend Wright were as sincere as they were suicidal — until Wright’s increasingly lunatic racism was too overt to be any longer defended by a serious candidate for the presidency. 

From time to time, a voice of near-antipathy in Obama erupted, as in his infamous “clingers” speech about the lower-middle-class supposed know-nothings of Pennsylvania, or in his dismissal of the grandmother who raised him as a “typical white person.” Before Michelle Obama grew silent, she managed to tell America that it was a “downright mean” country, where the bar was raised serially even on those as wealthy and privileged as the Obamas, and that, prior to her husband’s presidential campaign, she had not been especially proud of the United States — amplification of long-held views that can be seen as early as her Princeton undergraduate thesis.

No matter. The media and the liberal elite ignored these telltale signs, and instead were eager to accept the implicit pact that the soothing racial healer Barack Obama offered them. It was an unspoken understanding that might be paraphrased as something along the following lines: “Vote for me and I will offer you instant exemption from all prior racial guilt — and yet allow you to live your rather secluded lives as usual.”

In other words, the endowed professor, the corporate attorney, the green CEO, the endowment officer, and the high-school teacher could all continue to live in safe and separate neighborhoods, ensure their children went to mostly white and Asian schools (whether elite public or private), and through taxes for entitlements and abstract support for affirmative action still feel they were doing a great deal for race relations. As they saw it, they elected one comfortable and hip Barack Obama as their president — without living among, going to school with, or working alongside the Other.

But nemesis is not so understanding; it demands more of us than such cheap bromides. And Barack Obama’s prior racialism, as evidenced by two decades of attendance in, and subsidies to, the Reverend Wright’s racist church, leaves indelible scars. And so to paraphrase the reverend, the chickens are now coming home to roost for America.

The president’s apologies abroad focused on supposed American felonies, from slavery to the conquest of Native America to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Since there were many such lamentations, and they were not balanced by citing the gallantry of Shiloh or Gettysburg in ending slavery, or Guadalcanal to stop Japanese brutality, or Chosin to save South Korea, the impression was left that Barack Obama sees America quite differently from many, if not most, of its citizens — who understand our own sins as those shared with mankind, but our singular efforts at correcting them as unmatched abroad.

The Cairo speech was full of historical falsehoods, and a textbook example of moral equivalence, as Islamic felonies were juxtaposed alongside American misdemeanors in the fashion of the Platonic “noble lie.” Time and time again, in both implicit and explicit fashion, our president has made it clear that he does not believe in American exceptionalism — despite assuming quite an exceptional pulpit to weigh in on global matters.

Then we learned that Obama was not terribly disturbed to hear that his attorney general had lambasted the American people as “cowards” for not engaging in yet more national conversations on race — which in the past have not proven to be honest and painful discussions that touched on black responsibilities as well as civil rights. He tsk-tsked Judge Sotomayor’s racialist comments about the innate superiority of Latina judges over their white counterparts — although the unfortunate remark occurred at least five times, in both written and oral contexts, and was part of a brief speech in which she managed to reference herself as a Latina/Latino dozens of times.

Now President Obama has passed judgment on the Professor Gates tragicomedy by deriding the Cambridge police force for acting “stupidly” in arresting and then releasing his friend. It mattered little that Obama, the Harvard Law graduate, knew nothing about the details of the case. A picture taken at the scene, and eyewitness accounts of bystanders — and who knows what the yet-unreleased transcript of the recorded exchange with Professor Gates could reveal — all seemed to suggest that Gates overreacted to a legitimate request for an ID. Americans, white and black, may lament someone being arrested in his own house, but they also do not think it a wise idea to insult and ridicule armed police arriving at their homes after being summoned to an apparent burglary in progress.

Indeed, if anyone evoked race and profiled one by race, it was more likely the professor of race studies than the police. And for all the president’s referencing of the old standby toss-off line that minorities are disproportionately stopped by police, the nation was hardly likely to think that Gates — as one of the country’s highest-paid professors in the humanities, and as a personal friend to the African-American mayor of Cambridge, governor of Massachusetts, and president of the United States — was being railroaded.

In the jargon of postmodernism, the president asserted one racial narrative as truth, while most of multiracial America accepted quite another: that Professor’s Gates’s contacts and friendships gave him privileged treatment not accorded to others who scream and blow up at policemen, and that minority males are indeed tragically disproportionately stopped by police because they also, tragically, are more likely to commit felonies. The president’s ossified remark ignored real efforts on the part of police departments to hire African-American officers and chiefs, engage community leaders, and train police in racial sensitivity — all the while dealing with the fact that African-American males commit violent felonies in numbers that vastly exceed their presence in the general population.

None of us gets a pass once we evoke racial identity, not even the president of the United States, not even one of mixed racial heritage. Once we go down that road of racial self-aggrandizement, of seeing each other not by the content of our characters, but by the color of our skins, we invite nemesis — and there will be retribution. Because Barack Obama has consistently emphasized racial identity to further his own advantage, I fear others, both black and white, will be emboldened to follow his polarizing lead — in ways both novel and far more pernicious. We once trusted our uniquely qualified president to help lead us out of our racial morass, but so far he has only pushed us far deeper into it.

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Lose, Lose When You Talk About Race

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/lose-lose-when-you-talk-about-race/

Why the Gates Affair Bored Us

President Obama and the subject of race remind me of the proverbial camel’s back and straws: the American people shrugged off “typical white person”, then forgave  the clingers’ speech. They bristled a bit about “No more disown Rev. Wright than…” and started to become concerned about “downright mean country” and Michelle’s never before being proud of the good old U.S. Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” and self-referencing “as a Latina” ad nauseam did not help. Nor did Attorney General Holder’s slur that we were “cowards.” And now the Gates affair. Minor of course. But it is the proverbial straw that finally seems on this issue to really  be breaking the back of the American people, who are not only tired of racial evocation, but tired of Barack Obama and those elites around him using race for self-serving sermonizing—especially given their former confidence in Obama to lead us to racial transcendence. So read on…

Psychodramas

African-American professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested in his own home by a white policeman for disorderly conduct (I think mostly for insulting a cop) and then subsequently released. Such misunderstandings happen all the time. Many in the  Civil Rights community, however,  were outraged at the arrest. And they cited Gates’ treatment as proof that racism was still very much alive in the age of President Barack Obama.

 

America Snoozes

But as details emerged about the incident, the outrage of the African-American self-appointed leadership oddly failed to ignite even liberal America. And why it did not tells us much about a changing United States. So let us list the ways in which we did not much care whether or not Professor Gates had to go down to the station for screaming epithets at an investigating police officer.

Race is Not So Simple

1) America is no longer a white/black country. Due to liberal  policies, tens of millions of Asians and Hispanics have recently immigrated to the United States. And far from seeing themselves, along with blacks, as a unified “people of color”, they split along various class and racial lines on almost every issue.

Intermarriage has created millions of Americans who don’t consider themselves part of any race. Gates maybe a professor of white/black racial bias, but millions of nonwhite Americans have evolved beyond his easy dichotomies. Tens of thousands of Koreans, Filipinos, Mexicans, Hondurans, and Punjabis living in America are no doubt mystified by Gates’ furor. Most in their own lives perhaps instantly profile those on the streets of their neighborhoods not by race, but in rough accordance with their perceptions of prevailing crime statistics. From my travels in Hispanic, Arab, Asian, and European countries, I would speculate that those of African ancestry are treated most equitably (by far) in the United States.

 

No More Monolithic Poor

2) There is now not only a black middle class, but an elite one as well. Professor Gates is one of the highest paid professors in the United States. As soon as he was arrested, the African-American mayor of Cambridge, the African-American governor of Massachusetts, and the African-American president of the United States all weighed in on his behalf.

When he sneered at the arresting officer “You don’t know whom you are messing with”, Gates was quite right—and so was released almost immediately once the calls came pouring in. In contemporary America, the wealthy and influential Gates, and his close political friends, are part of the establishment—and Sgt. Crowley who arrested him a member of hoi polloi without capital or chums in high places.

America shrugs that when an elite like Gates, a zillionaire like white-faced Michael Jackson, or an Bruno-Magli shoed  O.J., gets caught in their own self-induced legal jams, they will too often immediately revert to racial victimization and try to convince America that they are living in Mississippi circa 1930. Good luck with that in the multiracial 21^st century.

Living is Stereotyping of some sort

3) Gates’ accusations of stereotyped racism, the President’s assertion that blacks are unfairly profiled by police, and Governor Patrick’s claim that the arrest was the nightmare of every black man—all failed to register with the American people.

Why? Because such allegations, even if they were true and some may well be, are only part of the complex 21-century story of race and the police. Attorney General Holder may call the American people cowards for not engaging in a national conversation on race. But the Gates incident, and the reaction of the Massachusetts governor and the president of the United States, reminded them why they don’t welcome these melodramatic  “conversations.” Such therapy sessions never involve questions of personal responsibility—specifically why African-American males commit crimes at rates both higher than the general population’s, and at levels higher than other minority groups that likewise struggle with poverty and unfairness.

I know a number of Punjabis in rural California. Most are much darker than Henry Louis Gates. They lack his money, influence, and contacts. English is not their first language. Their turbans and clothes set them apart from the Mexican-American majority establishment—and they are the objects of jokes and worse. But so far I have not heard a single one complain that as persons of color they either cannot make it in a racist America or they need affirmative action as remedy for our collective sins.

Do As I Say, Not As I…

4) There is an official “truth” that our elites mouth, and a private one that 300 million live by. If Americans regret that a young African-American male might be unduly pulled over while innocently cruising Beverly Hills (and they bristle at such unfairness), they also regret that a white person who took a wrong turn and began biking or driving into Watts or South Central might well be assaulted–or worse. So profiling means different things to different people.

Yet these are private angsts that are never voiced. A John Edwards, Robert Kennedy, Jr. , Barrack Obama, or Al Gore may lecture us on our assorted racial, class and environmental sins, but we suspect that in the past they have chosen to live in rather aristocratic fashion, well away from the failing and often dangerous schools and neighborhoods that the objects of their disdain often struggle within. If Al Gore jets back and forth from his mansion to cash in on global warming, Rev. Wright leaves his white enclave and three-story new mansion to rail about white privilege. No wonder most Americans snored about Gates-gate as a tiny flare-up involving more  class than race.

Crying Wolf

5). Most Americans simply do not believe Gates or a Governor Patrick or a President Obama that they experience much racial discrimination in their lives. They may, but again most tend to think their class mitigates it. To the extent race is raised by the well-heeled, it is more likely by such African-American elites themselves, and proves to be of career advantage (as I can attest after serving on nearly a dozen hiring committees in the California State University system. One Dean once brazenly called to demand, “Just don’t dare send me up a white guy, period!”).

Most elite African-Americans I know are not worried so much that the police will profile their children (although many will publicly attest that), but privately are far more worried that their sons’ upper-middle class tastes, accents, and “acting white” assimilation will incur fury from the black underclass—and with such disdain real physical danger as well. That is a tragedy that remains unmentioned.

Postscript.

I talked to a number of people about the Gates mess. None were really sympathetic to his writ. And I noticed two other general reactions among friends. One, almost everyone had stories of being pulled over or visited by police in which a wrong word might well have earned them a trip to the pokey. (My own is being pulled over a few years ago by a young hot-shot highway patrolman on a motorcycle (flattop hair, bulging biceps, tough-guy persona) for going 65 in a 55 mile per hour zone. When I pointed out that the car ahead was going 80 mph, he said “So what if he was?” (good point). And when he snarled that I had presented him the insurance form rather than the registration (I had not), I suggested that he read it more closely before speaking. The result was that I waited 20 minutes in the sun while he sat smiling behind my car, oh-so-slowly writing out a ticket. Moral: you just smile and do what the cop says).

Two: almost everyone (minorities included) I talked with could recall one or two personal incidents of some criminal action committed by a minority male against their person or property. Call that profiling or stereotyping. I could attest at least four (other than the near yearly crash into my vineyard and fleeing driver and  abandoned vehicle): 1976, walking to the 7/11 in East Palo Alto and being attacked by an African-American male; 1978  riding down university avenue in Palo Alto near 101, and having two black males ride by in  a truck, get out and try to steal my bike with me on it; 1990 having three Mexican nationals burst into our home intent on robbery; 1998 having three police cars rush into my driveway in pursuit of fleeing Mexican national local drug lords, 2006 having an African-American burglar  break into my house, waking my daughter as he ran out with her purse. And so on–all incidents of no statistical import, but the sort of anecdotal remembrance that millions share and which unfairly or not make them at least understandable of why individuals make choices in where they drive, live, and work.

Is such recitation  racism? Were not, after all, those who depleted my AIG 401(k) account probably wealthy whites on Wall Street? Was not the broker who took my fruit and shorted me $1000 most likely a white professional? Perhaps.

But my point is only the public’s perception (born out by crime statistics) is that while financial and business elites may rob more from one, minority males in urban contexts engage in violent crime at higher than national averages and are more likely to use violence against one than the suspicious fruit trader or stock broker. That is an empirical fact, not a racist slur. Again, like it or not, crime soared in the 1970s-1990s and millions of Americans were the victims of robberies, break-ins, and assaults, and they have made the necessary adjustments in the way they shop, walk, visit, and drive–often all concealed beneath a veneer of denial.

And that unspoken fact too was in the background, when the President lectured us on the injustice of police supposedly profiling by race. (I think the President took one look at the Washington DC public school system, and made the necessary profiling and generalizations to put his kids in the exclusive Sidwell-Friends prep school, as do many of the DC liberal elites.) All in all, a sensitive issue, made worse by the sort of uninformed presidential grandstanding that we have witnessed all too much in these last six months. (Since assuming office, the president has managed to slur in generic fashion those in the Special Olympics, surgeons, the elderly, vacationeers to Las Vegas, and the police (more no doubt as well), building on his campaign stereotyping of “typical white people” and the middling classes of Pennsylvania–is there not a sensitivity trainer somewhere?)

Next postings will be more observations on Europe and the past, as I leave today overseas to give some lectures on Mediterranean history.

 

[GOPJ]

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Henry-Gates-has-50-Per-Cent-Irish-Roots—51568452.html

fyi:

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots.

Bizarrely, he and the Cambridge, MA, officer who arrested him, James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages, a famous Irish chieftain.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and James Crowley

In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. There he found that he shared 10 of the 11 DNA matches with offspring of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the 4th century warlord who created one of the dominant strains of Irish genealogy because he had so many offspring.

Ironically, James Crowley, whose name in Gaelic means “hardy warrior,” is also descended from the same line as Gates, having very close links to Niall of the Nine Hostages.

[maica]

More and more African-Americans are becoming involved in tracing their ancestry, as more and more record databases become available. I hope this will help our country to become more cohesive as we discover how ‘alike’ we are - genetically-speaking, (not in the disparate ways of treatment of past generations).

Just as I felt a connection to the black American tourists in Europe, I feel a bond to black genealogy researchers when I meet them in libraries. We have to do more to acknowledge our ‘alikeness’ rather than do what Prof Gates did last week.

[GOPJ]

Prof Gates was getting his Irish up...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Get%20someone%27s%20Irish%20up

1. Get someone's Irish up

Being severely pissed off. Please don't get my Irish up.

2. Get someone's Irish up

To cause them to go into a blinding, seething, often-homicidal rage. See also: Infuriate.

[maica]

I guess along with Christians and white males in general it is still ok to ‘denigrate’ Irish people - to stereotype them as being irrational fighters!!! LOL!

PS: I am severely Irish!

[maica]

An oft-quoted description that gets the English in a crowd to smile smugly. (That is until the last line):

The British Isles are composed of four races of man

. . . the Scottish, who keep the sabbath—and everything else they can get their hands on.

. . . the Welsh, who pray on their knees—and on their neighbours.

. . . the Irish, who don’t know what they want, but are willing to fight for it anyway.

. . . and the English, who consider themselves a race of self-made men, thereby relieving the almighty of a terrible burden.

[Clemenza]

One of life’s small’s pleasure is telling an Irishman that he has more in common with the English than any other group of people in Europe. Love to use that when I hear Irish AMERICANS saying that they have alot in common with Italians, Poles, etc.

[maica]

That would really stir up my father, for example!!

[Clemenza]

Yep. Of course, there is now so much Irish blood in England thanks to centuries of migration, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Let’s not forget that England’s greatest songwriting team (Lennon/McCarthy) were both descended from 19th Century Irish immigrants.

[GOPJ]

LOL - you got me on three of seven - no “Welsh” in me... (that I know of...)

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 7/27/2009. Thanks Tolik.

[GOPJ]

Two: almost everyone (minorities included) I talked with could recall one or two personal incidents of some criminal action committed by a minority male against their person or property. Call that profiling or stereotyping. I could attest at least four (other than the near yearly crash into my vineyard and fleeing driver and abandoned vehicle)...

It's true... I can do the same.