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Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win
New America Media, Q&A, Sandip Roy, Posted: Feb 06, 2008
Editor's Note: Barack Obama's impressive showing in the Super Tuesday primaries also highlights his biggest challenge. His strong support among African Americans might have helped him in states like Georgia but could trap him in the very paradigm he seeks to transcend. Shelby Steele is the author of 'A Bound Man - Why We are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win.' He spoke to UpFront host Sandip Roy.
SR: You say in your book that the buzz that he's fresh and new and unconventional -- that's the buzz. But in fact you say, he is utterly conventional. What do you mean by that?
Shelby Steele: He is what I call a 'bargainer'. Bargainers are blacks that enter the mainstream by basically making a bargain with white America. Saying, "I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I will not presume you are a racist, if you will not hold my race against me." Bill Cosby was a great bargainer; Oprah Winfrey is a great bargainer. Barack Obama is the first one to bring bargaining into politics. It is very effective because Whites like that bargain. They don't want to have race rubbed in their face every minute. They respond to bargainers with warm feelings, with support, with affection. We usually say bargainers have some special qualities. Oprah, again, is a good example.
SR:Would you say he was always a bargainer, or is that a mantle he's taken on more as he's become politically active?
SS: When Barack Obama was, I think in his junior year in high school, he said that he noticed that white people liked black people who weren't angry. He knew even then, in terms of bargaining, he was 'to the manor born'. Again, this is an old mast: Louis Armstrong was a great bargainer, so in that sense Obama represents an old paradigm, rather than a new one.
SR: But can he be anything but a bargainer?
SS: The other option is that he can be an individual-be himself. A good example of that was Harold Ford in Tennessee, and Michael Steele (no relation to me) in Maryland. These are two men who ran as individuals, and did very well, came very close and my guess is both of them will have a great political future.
SR: But the other traditional role is the challenger role.
SS: Right. Challengers are blacks that never give whites the benefit of the doubt. Who say, 'We're going to presume that you are racist until you prove otherwise'; Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson are challengers. They did not go far in their presidential bids, because America simply is not going to embrace or feel warm or feel gratitude toward challengers. So their campaigns were more symbolic than anything else.
SR: In this race, for example, would a woman like Hillary Clinton be a bargainer or would she be a challenger?
SS: I think this is a mask for the most part, that blacks wear. Hillary is so well known, and has been around for such a long time at this point, that she's primarily an individual.
SR: But with Barack Obama, you write that he has been embracing the African American side, the black side of him, more and more. Can you give some examples of how he has been doing that?
SS: I talk about this in the first half of the book that looks closely at Obama. This has been something of an obsession all his life; he comes from an interracial background, and his father abandoned the family, his African father, when Barack was only two years old. So, in one stroke he lost a father and a racial identity. He was raised in Hawaii in a largely white community by a white mother, white grandmother, white grandfather. Well, nothing wrong with that, they raised him very well, as we can see he is a fine young man. On the other hand, Obama always felt the need to belong, to establish his authentic 'blackness,' to feel a part of the black community. It was almost to the point of obsession. If you read his first book "Dreams from My Father" you see the arc of his life is pretty much devoted to establishing his bona fides as a black person. Most people look at Obama and say, 'Well, I like him because he seems to transcend race,' and on one level he does. But, on another level he's been pretty much obsessed with it, it's very important to him.
SR: Because, you say, people think of race as something to go home to at night. You yourself, like Obama, are a product of a bi-racial relationship. Did you not feel the need for race being something to go home to at night?
SS: I certainly did. But I'm older than Obama. I was raised in segregation, and my father raised me. I had an intact family, a blessing. My father was a hero of mine, still is. So I was not as insecure, probably, because I wasn't in the circumstance that Barack Obama was, nevertheless, I was to a degree. I talk about the fact that after college I went to work in East St. Louis, one of the poorest black cities in the country. Obama went to the South Side of Chicago and did community work and I worked in Great Society programs. I think we both wanted to do good things, but on another level we were trying to establish that authenticity and achieve that sense of belonging.
SR: Because, you say, a white parent is a stain of inauthenticity?
SS: That is the way it is often interpreted. I saw in South Carolina, a young black teenager being interviewed, calling Obama a "Halfrican." When you come from an interracial family, in that way, the implication is that there's something phony about you.
So, your interracial background is often perceived that way, by people who don't take the time to stop and think.
SR: But what option does he have? Is it really about Barack Obama, or is it about us, (and by us, I mean people in the media), because we say things like, if blacks vote for Hillary Clinton, Obama is obviously not black enough to attract his natural constituency. But if they vote for him we'll say, it's not so much as they did in Nevada, it's taken not so much as a sign of Obama the candidate as opposed to voting for a racial brother. So, it's kind of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
SS: That's right. It's a tough one. He's a bound man. Bound, I think on many levels. If Obama has made a mistake, it is that, I think he never should have bargained in the first place. He should have presented himself as an individual. I think back to the nineties; '96- Colin Powell had an opportunity to run. He came very close to running against a weak Bill Clinton in '96. My sense is that he would've won, and he would've won as an individual, not as a bargainer. He would've (said), "This is what I stand for, these are my convictions, these are my principles, take me or leave me, but I'm not offering a bargain one way or another, I'm not challenging, I'm just an individual.
SR: But is that realistic in politics? You are trying to create a tribe, a constituency. As an individual, that seems even harder a challenge.
SS: If you play the race game in politics, it's going to come back to bite you in some way. In the subtitle of the book I talk about why Obama can't win. That's one of the problems I think he's going to have. This is the one thing bargainers never do: bargainers never tell you what they really and truly think, what their deepest convictions are. Obama has yet to do that. We don't really yet know who he is, and what his deep principles are. So he's, in that sense, not giving us a reason to support him for the presidency. We need to know: when will you take this country to war, when would you not take this country to war. What is your feeling about equality under the law and racial preferences - where do you stand on all of these? What principles are guiding you as you confront these issues? So, he's saying: 'Give me power without me telling you what I'm going to do with it'. That is something that's got to catch up with him at some point.
SR:What do you think he represents to all the people, because the other part of your title is "Why we are excited about Obama"? Why are we excited?
SS: This is what interests me. We are excited about Obama because of what he represents, rather than because of who he is. We don't know, really, who he is. You go to the Republican side, pick any one of those candidates, John McCain seems to be ahead at the moment. Well, you know who John McCain is. You know what his convictions are, you can take them, you can leave them. With Obama you don't know that, you don't know what his convictions are. He never articulates them. So he basically, again, is using bargaining to get this basic excitement going, to give himself a certain kind of charisma. But how far can he go with that? At some point you've got to do more.
SR: But, what does make people excited about him? Obama seems to have something special.
SS: I have thought all along that the Obama phenomena is much more about white America than it is about just one single man. No man can just, on the basis of his talents alone, generate that kind of excitement. Obama is a very talented politician, but what excites us, what excites white America especially, and has all along about Obama, is that here is an opportunity, at last, to vote for and support a black man for the presidency of the United States. To achieve this convergence of a black skin in the White House. This would prove, at least as their thinking goes, that America is no longer a racist society, that we have gotten beyond that ugly past that we had, that we've been redeemed in some way. When that kind of mantle sits on your shoulders, you are going to be a rock star. People are going to see a certain charisma there, that goes way beyond your abilities and talents.
SR: So whether he wins the nomination or not, what do you think the Obama candidacy has achieved in America?
SS: It could've achieved more, but Obama has made the point that this is a society, that America is now in 2008, a largely white society, that is quite willing and able to consider a black man for the presidency of that nation -- to put a black man in the most powerful office in the world. That is a profound statement about American society. Again, I grew up in segregation and I can tell you, that was not the case back then. So, America's come a long, long way in a relatively short time in the scope of history. Obama, because he is a plausible candidate, verifies that this change has occurred, and that is, I think the underlying significance.
SR: Thank you