What is most notable about the Sotomayor nomination is its almost perfect predictability. Somehow we all simply know -- like it or not -- that Hispanics are now overdue for the gravitas of high office. And our new post-racialist president is especially attuned to this chance to have a "first" under his belt, not to mention the chance to further secure the Hispanic vote. And yet it was precisely the American longing for post-racialism -- relief from this sort of racial calculating -- that lifted Mr. Obama into office.
The Sotomayor nomination commits the cardinal sin of identity politics: It seeks to elevate people more for the political currency of their gender and ethnicity than for their individual merit. (Here, too, is the ugly faithlessness in minority merit that always underlies such maneuverings.) Mr. Obama is promising one thing and practicing another, using his interracial background to suggest an America delivered from racial corruption even as he practices a crude form of racial patronage. From America's first black president, and a man promising the "new," we get a Supreme Court nomination that is both unoriginal and hackneyed.
This contradiction has always been at the heart of the Obama story. On the one hand there was the 2004 Democratic Convention speech proclaiming "only one America." And on the other hand there was the race-baiting of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Does this most powerful man on earth know himself well enough to resolve this contradiction and point the way to a genuinely post-racial America?
If I may be allowed to disagree with Dr. Steele on one of his points; I don’t believe that he was elected because he promised to transcend race. He received the black vote because he identified himself as the Democrat’s “black” candidate, not as a person who was half white and half black. He may not have been the child or grandchild of slaves, but he was the black guy from the Chicago “hood” who made good. That’s what got him Colin Powell’s vote along with the vote of every black man, woman and child who could get to the polls.
He received the white Liberal and liberal leaning moderate vote because he was a clean, articulate, non-threatening “black guy” (thanks Joe Biden) and they could feel virtuous by giving him a chance to run the country after it had been run for centuries by old white guys. He was not elected because he transcended race, but because of his race. He was the embodiment of the sacrificial lamb who would wash away the sins of slavery. By appearing to be the cool, blank slate offering an undefined “hope” and “change” he used black to get elected. If you were a liberal and did not vote for this cool black guy, you convicted yourself of racism.
And since his opponent in the election was an old white guy with a deathly fear of being accused of racism, and who ruled out, not just any references to his middle name, but any discussion of the factors that molded Obama’s worldview: Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, his other youthful mentors, the self-described racial chip on his shoulder, the man who we see now is not the man who campaigned.
Hope and change are no longer abstract concepts. They are nationalized car companies, nationalized banks, nationalized health care, and millions of unemployed even as the national debt balloons, public and private pension systems go bankrupt, protectionism leads to Smoot-Hawley 2, and the Chinese stop buying our debt.
Meanwhile the sacrificial lamb is having the time of his life, taking his wife on jaunts to New York and Paris on the taxpayer’s dime, letting Air Force One buzz Manhattan and being hailed by a sycophantic press corps as a God.
Shelby, it was always a scam. Obama learned how to manipulate his mother and grandmother, his friends and the world around him at an early age. He’s only gotten better at it. I don’t think he’s torn at all. At his core he knows who he is. It’s the American people who are being played.
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