At a lunch yesterday sponsored by the Hoover Institution, bestselling author and Emmy winner Shelby Steele talked about his latest book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win. When it comes to relations with whites, according to Steele, blacks can either be “bargainers” or “challengers.” The former include Louis Armstrong, Tiger Woods, and Bill Cosby. They presume the whites they are dealing with are not racist until proven otherwise. The latter include Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and much of the current civil rights leadership. To Steele, these blacks presume one is racist until proven otherwise. How to prove? Through policies like affirmative action. In any event, Steele considers Obama to be a bargainer, citing the candidate (from his first book, Dreams from My Father) as saying white people will like you so long as you do not get angry. “Bargainers cannot reveal who they are, what they believe, their ideological slant,” said Steele (who praises Obama’s first book as powerfully candid). “The moment that happens, the magic is gone . . . . He’ll lose his iconic status and lose votes.” Steele points to Bill Cosby, who was loved in both the white and black communities, until he spoke out on issues of race and responsibility. If Obama does that, it would be “political suicide.” Steele described the senator’s rhetoric as “stunning for its emptiness.” What do we really know about Obama’s position on when the country should go to war or not, or the specifics of racial preferences? What Barack Obama is doing is not new, says Steele. Instead, the popularity of his candidacy can be partly attributed to the “hunger of White America to be redeemed. What it says is a good thing–that we don’t want to be a racist society any longer…. His magic, his charisma comes from that hunger” more so than from the man himself. “The American people will want to know who he really is. He is caught in this paradox.”
