You're right readytoblowagasket I didn't watch the clip. I watched the entire podcast online last month from his late arrival to the end of the question and answer period. I believe he was speaking at Cody's books right across the Bay from me in Berkeley. In any case, I've read Content of His Character and a number of his essays. As I said, I liked his rendering of the "Iconic Negro", although the concept is hardly new. Do I have your permission now to debate "how wrong Steele is"?

You go right ahead and call him a "scholar" if you like. I think the more accurate term would be somewhere in the pundit-essayist range. But maybe he's churning out mountains of peer reviewed scholarship that no one but his scholarly colleagues and you knows or cares about.

The trap that Steele sets for Obama (and for any potential Black candidate) is just a variation of the one that Geraldine Ferraro sets for him: Obama is Black. He has enthusiastic support especially and unexpectedly from white people. He's not qualified or experienced enough (because I say so) and hasn't articulated anything specific (that I've heard). Therefore people must be supporting him because he's Black -- and non threatening like all Iconic Negroes.

Your elision of Obama's time in the Senate with that well placed "almost" is within the same vein.

And of course you can construct the same trap for any woman running for president such as the one I voted for in the California Democratic Primary.

Posted at March 14, 2008 10:38 PM in response to Ferraro is right-Ask Whoopi Goldberg

This is the best summation of this topic I've read anywhere.

Posted at March 14, 2008 6:10 AM in response to Ferraro and Olbermann and Wright. And Hill and Bill. (Oh my.)

Shelby Steele is hardly a "scholar" of race relations. He has opinions, some of them interesting, like the idea of the Iconic Negro. He is a Black Conservative with a position at the Hoover Institution, a Conservative think tank located on Stanford University's campus. Some might speculate that he had gotten his position there not because he was the most qualified candidate for the chair he occupies, but because he's Black and Conservative. Steele shares the view that Obama has no substance (his appeal is 100% race based as you put it) and that therefore people are voting for him only because he's Black. If that were true, he'd be right. The question is whether its true.

Ferraro too thinks Obama's candidacy is 100 percent about race. If he weren't Black we wouldn't be talking about him, or something to that effect. Then after the racist statement is made, they put a Black face on it by trotting out Maggie Smith who accuses Obama of raising the issue because he has responded to it!!! It is EXACTLY like blaming the victim for the crime. The Republicans have been practicing this strategy to enormous success for 40 years. It's appalling to see Hillary Clinton adopt it and her supporters turn a blind eye.

Posted at March 14, 2008 5:59 AM in response to Ferraro is right-Ask Whoopi Goldberg

I and most of the Black people I know were early Clinton supporters for precisely the reasons you enumerated. We weren't going to vote for someone just because he was Black. And in fact we were disposed not to vote for him because it was hard to believe that this nation had gotten to the point that a majority of the electorate would vote for a Black person, any Black person. As I've stated elsewhere on this site, I voted for her in the California primary thinking there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the two of them and she seemed marginally more electable. But then she decided that playing on 200 year old racial antagonisms was the path to victory (the Texas ad mostly and Ferraro's oddly timed comments). Why is it so difficult for people to understand the depth of the betrayal and why some Black people are simply through with the Clintons?

Posted at March 14, 2008 5:33 AM in response to Damning the Black Vote

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Much better said than I have tried to say it. To turn on Black people the way she has is unconscionable. Black people had Clinton's back like no other constituency when he had his personal life dragged in front of the world, as you said making all kinds of lame excuses for him (Well, some of them weren't so lame: really, why should we know or care about anyone's consensual sex). And a perfect execution of the Southern Strategy is what the Clinton's offer in turn. Lovely.

Posted at March 14, 2008 5:18 AM in response to She got our antipathy the old fashioned way: She earned it.

An astute post. I know its hard for the likes of Billy to understand or believe that there is a very good possibility that Black people will finally leave the Democratic Party Plantation (or that not all Black people are "poor" ---- that notion that seems to comfort more than a few white liberals.) This is especially true of marginal, young or first time voters, Blacks who who don't have any memory of the Party's sacrifice of its southern hegemony in exchange for desegregation. Not to speak of Blacks -- again especially young people -- who consider themselves Independents.

All of this is predicated on McCain not picking some nutbag racist for the VP slot. I'm not holding my breath, but this could be the biggest opportunity for Republican small government, social liberal moderates and even principled conservatives to make some inroads into the Black community which they have written off for the last forty years.

Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton with his ease around Black people and his genuine familiarity with the community. I mean no insult to white women here or anywhere else, but in Black social networks, Hillary Clinton is not nearly the object of Black affection and fondness that her husband is, to put not too fine a point on it. When she speaks with Black audiences she comes off as stiff, disingenuous, uncomfortable. The vibe is that she is speaking to "the other", which her husband never gave off.

And now she has sunk to using the lowest, most vile racist tactics to scare white people into voting for her. Tactics which Black people have assumed they would never under any circumstances see coming from a candidate from "their" party. As some of my older relatives say she's "torn her drawers" with a lot of Black people. In other words, we're done with her.

Of course there is going to eventually be a realignment of some sort. That's the history of American politics. Democrats were the party of working class people including working class southerners. State sanctioned discrimination was abolished in 64 and in the south at least, whites left the party in droves as Blacks entered.

Billy has yanked some 70% of Black voters "still like the Clintons" from god knows where. Even if you except it on its face, that is a good deal less than the 90% of Blacks that typically vote for the Democratic candidate in national elections. The difference is much more than enough to hand this election to the Republicans. A lot of Black people will sit this one out if she wins after the depths she has sunk to if for no other reason than McCain just doesn't elicit the same degree of hatred that Bush does.

And by the way Billy I'm really Black and you're really patronizing.

Posted at March 13, 2008 3:23 PM in response to If Clinton Is the Nominee, Political Realignment Will Occur

Its great watching the contortions racists go through to justify their racism, including Geraldine Ferraro and some of the folks on this site who blather about their liberal bonafides out of one side of their mouths while insisting that the only reason Obama is winning such large support from Black voters is that he's Black out of the other. Thankfully someone has pointed out that Blacks have given lopsided support to one or the other candidate in internal party primaries in the past much less the relentless loyalty Blacks have shown the Democratic party -- for better or worse -- since passage of the 64 Civil Rights Act.

Its inconceivable to these folks that Black people are supporting Barack Obama because he best represents in their view the core values of their party. And that these values do not include stoking the fear and resentment of their white neighbors. That was supposedly left to the Republicans and their Southern Strategy. People who have forgotten this, like Ferarro have simply become so comfortable with their racism that they just don't recognize it anymore, and that is exactly the crowd that the Clinton's campaign latest pitch is aimed at, as was the case for Nixon and Reagan (remember Philadelphia, Mississipi?) and countless local and state Republican Party candidates.

And Why has everyone forgotten how skeptical many Black people were of Obama initially - for the wrong reasons (He's not Black enough) -- and for political expediency (This country is not going to elect a Black man; The Clinton's did right by us, let's stick with them).

I've been a supporter of both Clintons since their first run for the White House. I voted for Hillary in the California Primary. I've never thought it was a good idea to vote for someone just becauase he or she is Black. But I now know that there is more than a kernal of truth to what critics of te Clintons have said all along. They are a pathological power couple, whose only real interest is self agrandizement and power. The Democratic Party has been a mere vehicle to those ends. This is why she so easily jettisons Black support.

There are no mistakes emanating from her campaign. Her campaign vetted every word and image used in the Texas red phone ad. Ferraro's comments were aimed squarely at white middle income Reagan democrats in the hinterlands. Clinton has obviously decided to run a "Southern Strategy" Republican style campaign where she thinks trading on white fear and resentment will motivate white voters to respond to their basest instincts using the same racist code that the Republicans have used against Democrats since Lyndon Johnson backeddesegregation and knowingly consigned the South to Republican control.

What's really crazy making is that if you dare point out the obvious, they send out Maggie Smith, the house slave, to accuse you of playing the race card. Hence when questioned, Obama can't state the obvious and say yes it was a racist comment. He has to be the "Iconic" non threatening Negro, calm white fears and pretend she's being silly.

Geraldine Ferraro, who ran for Vice President essentially as a novelty act, accuses Obama of having an advantage because he's Black. you've got to be kidding. It would be funny if it weren't so craven and despicable.

Hillary Clinton is a carpet bagger who gets a Senate Seat on the basis of being married to a former President and now we're supposed to think She's General Patton and infinitely more qualified to lead and defend us than Barack Obama.

For better or worse, Black people are the Democratic Party's ONLY remaining loyal constituency, but when it comes time for Clinton to run against a Black candidate, she borrows a page right out of the Republican election strategy manual. I have never supported a candidate just because he or she is Black, and I hadn't intended to start with Obama. But I'll be damned if I'm going to support someone who stoops to the kind of treachery that Clinton has demonstrated.

Posted at March 12, 2008 7:23 PM in response to Ferraro's Latest: "They're Attacking Me Because I'm White"