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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Jack Kerwick
In a word, race promises to play at least as large a role in the next
election as it played in the last presidential race. Rest assured, it is on
this that Barack Obama and his cronies are counting.
For decades now, whites and non-whites have been engaged in a kind of racial
game with one another. Like any other game, when played long enough, it
becomes a ritual of a sort. But when it becomes ritualistic, there is an
imminent danger that it will be forgotten as play and be treated with a
deadly seriousness. This is what has happened in this case.
The players in this game are racial groups and each is assigned a role. The
white race is the Villain, the agent of Evil that is always on the hunt for
other races to "exploit." Non-white races, in contrast, are embodiments of
Virtue that long for nothing more than liberation from the tiresome history
of the "white ‘racist' oppression" that they've suffered. It isn't that
there aren't good whites and bad non-whites, but in this game, no individual
is just an individual: every individual is a "team player." What this
means is that each participant derives his identity from the "team" or group
to which he belongs, and what that in turn means is that the goodness and
badness of whites and non-whites, respectively, are defined by the rules of
the game.
Good whites, as you might imagine, are those who are continually "atoning"
for the sins of their forefathers. They decry "racism" -- by which they
mean white "racism" -- as the worst of evils, and can unfailingly be counted
on to support every and any policy that's purportedly aimed at benefitting
non-whites: "affirmative action," "bussing," "low-income housing," "
bilingual education," "comprehensive immigration reform," etc.
While non-whites are no less prone to the gamut of sins that plague the
whole human race, their shortcomings are due to "root causes," that is, to
the conditions to which whites have subjected them. Thus, to address "the
effects" of the horrors of their ancestors, it is necessary for whites to
atone for their "racism" by throwing their weight behind exactly those
policies that all "good" whites can be expected to endorse.
To put it simply, this racial game is rigged to insure that whites are
forever making restitution to non-whites.
Barack Obama knows precisely how this game is played, and he plays it as
well as anyone. We can rest assured that the president is the last person
who needs to be told that most white Americans long to be regarded, by both
themselves and others -- especially blacks -- as "color-blind." The threat
of being charged with "racism" has forever been hanging over the head of
white America. Obama presents himself to whites as just the kind of black
about whom they can feel good about themselves, just the person to guarantee
them that the ax will at long last be lifted.
Even though, biologically, he is only half black, and even though
practically everyone around whom he was raised was white, Obama chooses to
identify himself as black because he knows that in so doing, he is signing
up, so to speak, as a member of the winning team. Yet his designs are more
ambitious than this: Obama, you see, has exploited what melanin he has to
signify that the end of the racial game for which whites long is finally
within reach.
By styling himself in 2008 as an emblem of a "post-racial" era in which
America's history of inter-racial conflict will find resolution, Obama
succeeded in catapulting himself into the office of the presidency.
Although the last two years -- to say nothing of his life's history --
decisively demonstrate that he is anything but the "post-racial unifier"
that he positioned himself as, because Obama is keenly aware of the extent
to which white Americans have ingested the "white guilt" with which the
racial game has marked them. He also is as crafty a player of this game as
anyone, you can so take it to the bank that he will adopt this strategy once
more in 2012.
Only this time, paradoxically, he may actually have an easier go at it.
Things don't have to be such, but Republicans being who they are, and the
racial game being what it is, my thesis has more than a bit of plausibility.
It isn't just Obama who has his finger on the pulse of America's prevailing
racial sensibility. While they won't dare say as much, the Republicans are
constantly gauging it as well. But the Republicans are paralyzed with the
fear that their criticisms of Obama will be interpreted as "racist." So,
while they will not hesitate to raise objections against his "spending,"
they will not pursue him with the same relentlessness with which they would
feel free to pursue a white opponent. And while Obama has demonstrated his
partiality toward blacks and other racial minorities during his tenure in
office -- the same partiality to which we bear witness in his Dreams From My
Father as well as in his choice of friends and mentors, like John McCain in
2008, there is virtually no chance that they will so much as touch upon
this.
At least as importantly, however, is that with Republicans employing their
newly acquired power to frustrate his agenda, through the kinds of calls for
"bi-partisanship" and "civility" that we have been hearing from Obama since
the beating that Democrats suffered in November, Obama can slip nicely into
the role of the Victim that the racial game ascribes to blacks. By doing
so, he achieves the seemingly impossible: he depicts himself, simultaneously
, as just the sort of black who whites long to support, the sort of black
that refuses to charge them with "racism," and a victim of the "racism" of
the Republicans.
If the GOP wants to prevail in the election of 2012, it is imperative that
they muster the will to reckon with its racial subtext. |
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