alternative hippopotamus

As you probably are aware, Politico did a straw poll that showed that 70% of the Take Back America attendees favored Obama in the upcoming election. On one hand, this doesn’t surprise me. The demographics of TBA are people like me, so it’s not surprising that I should identify with people like me. Still, 70% is a big number. That does surprise me.

Add to that, that bloggers who I also would describe as “people like me,” have not uniformly come out in support of Obama. I’d even say that there’s something about him they don’t like. Fair enough, I just don’t like the way some folks disrespect supporters of the dude.

Jerome Armstrong, for example, is out of line when he says:

But it’s even worse that, caught up in a presidential contest in which denouncing Wright has been seen only through the prism of supporting Obama, progressives have been silent about Wright’s wrong and divisive words. That’s a terrible precedent to have set.

Pull off the blinders that have you supporting a particular candidate, while being blind to the bigger issue. If progressives are not going to have the guts to call out those who foster divisive talk, and demand their renouncement, no matter where it comes from, it’s a bigger loss than an election.

Candidate love must be the blindest love of all- since 70% of progressives, at least the ones at Take Back America, would throw American society under the bus. This is a contemptuous view of his fellow progressives, and one that does Armstrong no credit. It’s certainly true that holding a minority view does not make you wrong. It may be reason, though, to take a moment and ask if there’s something that other people see in a candidate, and why they might see what they do.

Clearly, I don’t think I’m in the process of throwing American society under the bus. Why am I not bothered by Obama’s relationship with Wright? Because the two have completely different approaches to the issue of race in our culture. Perhaps you remember the Bill Moyers interview with Shelby Steele. Steele identified two approaches to race observed in our public discourse: that of bargainer, and that of challenger:

SHELBY STEELE: Well, the black American identity, certainly black American politics are grounded in what I call challenging. It’s basically, they look at white America and say we’re going to presume that you’re a racist until you prove otherwise. The whole concept is you keep whites on the hook. You keep the leverage. You keep the pressure. Here’s a guy who’s what I call a bargainer who’s giving whites the benefit of the doubt.

BILL MOYERS: Give me a simple definition of what you call a bargainer. And a simple definition of what you call a challenger.

SHELBY STEELE: A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Whites then respond with enormous gratitude. And bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the Sixties and so forth. Because they give whites this benefit of the doubt. That you can be with these people and not feel that you’re going to be charged with racism at any instant. And so they tend to be very successful, very popular.

Challengers on the other hand say, I presume that you, this institution, this society, is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference.

BILL MOYERS: Affirmative action.

SHELBY STEELE: Affirmative action. Diversity programs. Opportunities of one kind or another. And so, there is a much more concrete bargaining on the case of challengers. And you go into any American institution today and they’re all used to dealing with challengers. They all have a whole system of things that they can give to challengers, who then will offer absolution.

The two have taken different paths in their lives: Obama is a bargainer. Wright is a challenger. Has Obama rejected Wright’s divisiveness? I’d say Obama has so much rejected Wright’s divisiveness on the issue that he has taken the other path in approaching how he deals with race.