Black power requires white guilt.
The old Manichean, neo-Platonic, pseudo-Christian narrative of”Evil White Oppressors” and “Virtuous Black Victims” is now officiallyexhausted. Barack Hussein Obama is now the 44th president of theUnited States of America. His election and inauguration have beenwidely hailed as earth-shattering moments, events that have elicitedrapturous reactions from millions of all races, religions, andpolitical persuasions, both here at home and abroad.
The “historic” character of his ascension to the presidency derives,of course, from the fact that Obama is the first black person to everoccupy this office. As we set sail into “the Age of Obama,” I urgethat we bear in mind the following considerations.
(1) Contrary to the virtually axiomatic manner in which theseexpressions have been bandied about in connection to Obama’s election,the latter did not “break” any “barriers” or “shatter” any “glassceilings.” For all of my lifetime, and most of Obama’s, we have beenliving in an “affirmative action” era. Obama didn’t win this election in spite of his race, but because ofit. This, obviously, is not to assert that his race was the only thingObama had going for him; rather, it is to say only that his racialidentity was not the liability that the foregoing phrases imply itwas. Far from it: his race was an asset.
(2) This last brings us to the next point: Obama did not win the election in spite of whites, but because of them. Although nearly all blacks eligible to vote did indeed vote for Obama,he stood not a chance of winning the race against his opponent(regardless of how horrible a candidate the latter undeniably was) hadit not been for his white supporters. Furthermore, even had theeligible voters of every other racial minority group endorsed Obama along with blacks, he still would have lost had whites not backed him.
I’ve noticed that as of late some left-leaning publications like Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly haveattempted to suggest that Obama’s victory both reflects and portendsthe demise of “White America.” This is simply untrue. It is correctthat whites compose a smaller — significantly smaller — percentage ofthe overall American population than they did some decades ago, but thefact remains that they continue to constitute the vast majority of thiscountry’s citizens.