Dan

Calabrese

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March 20, 2008

Barack Obama: Racial Healer, Class Warrior

It’s too bad the man who could very well transcend racial strife in this nation is so determined to foment class resentment. That would render the former achievement awfully hollow.

Barack Obama did a good thing on Tuesday by not throwing Jeremiah Wright, his controversial pastor, under the bus. We are far too willing in this country to tar and feather people who say controversial things – or as is the case here, downright ridiculous things.

Obama is one of the most gifted orators this nation has seen in a long time, and much of what makes him so good is that you can see he means what he says. If we must have liberals in this country (and I suppose we must), let’s have liberals like Obama – who not only tell you what they think, but do so proudly.

Of course, the things he believes and proudly states are the very reasons he should never be president.

Obama’s take on race and the black experience in this country are not objectionable. Nor, for that matter, is his association with Jeremiah Wright. Everyone who attends church has had occasion to shake their heads at something we heard come down from the pulpit.

Granted, my own such experiences have never included hearing the words “God damn America,” and I’d likely be looking for another church if they did. But it’s not hard to believe Obama when he talks about knowing the full measure of Wright, and not just the most outrageous things he has said.

We all know people who can get a little out of hand in what they say and do. This is part of who we are. It’s not so bad if a presidential candidate can be real enough to proudly maintain such an association, because that’s part of who he is.

But there’s another part of who Obama is – and that’s the part that apparently sees America as a little more than an amalgam of aggrieved groups, victimized by a group of evil predators. Follow his logic, first with this passage:

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything. They've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

Obama discourages whites and blacks from blaming each other for such problems, which is well and good, until you realize this is only because he’s chosen a juicier scapegoat:

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

Not long ago, Obama complained that America’s current economic policies reward wealth, when he says they should reward work. In the real world, wealth and work are not at war with each other. They depend on each other. But in Obama’s worldview, wealth is the enemy of those who work hard – as if the hardest worker could obtain handsome compensation from a beggar.

If America reaches racial harmony, only to see working-class whites and blacks united in greater resentment toward the wealthy and corporations, what will we have achieved? Obama may well transcend racial conflict, but he can’t seem to get enough of class conflict.

If Obama were to tell poor blacks and whites alike that America abounds with opportunity, and that they would serve themselves well by learning how to access it, he would offer a hope that is not only audacious but potentially transformational to millions of lives.

But there is no reason to think a President Obama would do this. His track record and his rhetoric are those of a man who sees capital as something to confiscate, and achievers as people to berate as victimizers. He may be offering a less sympathetic scapegoat, but that’s not going to improve the lives of those who are looking for a reason to hope.

Good speech, but really bad ideas. Maybe the next super-dynamic political messiah figure will actually know something about how America creates wealth and opportunity, and will share that information with his supporters. Now that would be change we could believe in.

This is Column # DC160.  Request permission to publish here.