I'd love to see Obama wait one more eight year term before he gets his feet wet - he's probably up as much as he ever will be on domestic issues but not on international issues..... he needs some "seasonin".... given that - I'd probably vote for him... oh wait...I don't have a vote..... hmmmmmm .
As to his ancestry - which like so many of mixed race - are immediately adopted as African descendents by the Black community as they love heros and role models.... I dug around and this
author gives a pretty complete background on the up-and coming "peoples' choice"....
(Keep in mind the article is on the still ever present "dark side" of racial prejudice)...
And before you start lobbing muffins at me..... race does not necessarily make anyone better or worse.... too many other factors in play.... it's who's behind the scenes making the public sing or sigh). As many Americans of African descent can testify - electing a Black representative does not always "represent" their wishes - and that folks is the same in any color, white, yellow, red or purple.
January 02, 2007
[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]White Guilt, Obamania, And The Reality Of Race[/FONT]
By Steve Sailer
Race is
so important in American politics that it has even propelled a
Chicago politician less than two years removed from the
corruption-plagued Illinois state senate into the limelight of the upcoming Presidential race.
Yet we still aren't supposed to engage in
honest public discussion about it.
VDARE.COM is not in the business of endorsing candidates. So let me note that
Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) strikes me as no less (and no more) credible a candidate for President than the
rest of the
usual suspects.
Still, VDARE.COM can play a useful educational role by mentioning some of the unmentionable reasons behind Obamania.
Obama is
constantly compared to
Tiger Woods. But he differs in two ways. First, his list of accomplishments in his chosen profession is a
lot shorter than the
golfer's. And, second, Woods rejected Nike's suggestion that he identify himself as solely black to maximize his marketability in America because he did not want to
reject his mother and more distant non-black ancestors. Woods declared himself "
Caublinasian," his childhood term for his Caucasian, black, American Indian, and Asian ancestry.
In contrast, like
Oscar-winner
Halle Berry, Obama identifies as black although that requires symbolically disowning his white mother and maternal grandparents—despite the fact that they did far more for him than the Kenyan father who abandoned him when he was two.
Obama
writes:
"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."
That sounds quite self-sacrificial…but, oddly enough, it sure hasn't hurt his popularity with whites.
The brutal truth: Obama is a
"wigger". He's a remarkably exotic variety of the faux African-American, but a wigger nonetheless. He has no ancestors who were
slaves in the U.S. Moreover, his upbringing by his white mother
and Indonesian stepfather in Indonesia and by his white grandparents in
Hawaii, where mixed-race children are
close to the norm, was almost wholly divorced from
African-American life … except for what he could see and aspire to on TV.
Even genetically, Obama, whose
East African descent is apparent in his
unusual features, has only a distant relationship to the
West Africans who are the ancestors of almost all African-Americans. (Here are photos of Obama with
Jesse Jackson and with the rapper
Ludacris, both of whom have conventional West African features.)
But details like these just seem to make this nominal African-American that much more attractive to whites.
So why are so many whites, especially in the media,
excited about promoting Obama for President in 2008?
The Barack Attack phenomenon is similar to the
Colin Craze of 1995. Of course, General Powell had better qualifications. He'd been intimately involved in managing a successful national enterprise, the
Gulf War of 1991. And he had articulated a thoughtful, cautious policy for when and how to conduct military operations, the
Powell Doctrine, the wisdom of which subsequent events have
only underlined.
Supporting Obama for President, like supporting Powell a decade ago, is seen by many whites as the ultimate in White Guilt Repellent.
It's important to understand, however, that White Guilt is very different from, say,
Catholic Guilt, which consists of
straightforward feelings of personal moral failure.
In comparison, I don't recall ever meeting any white person who
personally felt guilty for the troubles of African-Americans. But I've known
many whites who want to
loudly blame other whites for
black difficulties.
Some whites at least heap guilt upon
their own ancestors, but
many who publicly proclaim the reality of White Guilt aren't averse to noting that their own forefathers arrived at
Ellis Island long after slavery was over.
In other words, White Guilt is just another ploy in the
Great American White Status Struggle. Minorities are merely props for asserting moral superiority over other whites.
Finding and punishing Guilty Whites has become a national obsession. One notorious current example: the
framing of the
Duke lacrosse players by
Durham district attorney Mike Nifong (with the enthusiastic assistance of the
New York Times) in the endless hunt for what
Tom Wolfe called
"the Great White Defendant."
So, many whites want to be able to say,
"I'm not one of them, those bad whites, like that guy on Seinfeld. Hey, I voted for a black guy for President!"
Plus, I suspect there's an even more hidden reason many whites wish Obama is elected President: They hope that when a black finally moves into the White House, it will
prove to African-Americans, once and for all, that white animus isn't the
cause of their troubles. All blacks have to do is to act like President Obama—and their problems will be over!
It's a seductive vision. And it plays right into our national dream that
race is just skin deep, that it's all in our heads, that the solution for all racial conflict is simply
thinking right thoughts, etc. etc.
Of course, electing Obama President won't actually have that effect on black behavior—any more than electing
Tom Bradley mayor of Los Angeles for five terms in a row from 1973-1993 prevented
black rioters from burning down much of the city's commercial districts in 1992.
The unfortunate reality: there is no panacea for race. The roots of racial differences in America stretch far back into the history and
prehistory of
other continents. Symbolic gestures won't make them go away
After the complete failure of Bush, I would wish for the american people to see Obama, as the
"person" he is, like we could, here in Canada, well, maybe not, as there is many races here that
we wouldn't embrace, unless, of course, they looked almost white. I don't think that is unusual,
it is just "natural", as it is, what we are, and we are comfortable with what is "familiar", but after
that is said, I think Obama is "just" what the doctor ordered for the U.S., they should be hungry
for someone like him. Bush new nothing about foreign affairs, and anything outside of the U.S.,
I understand the "zillion" things that the u.s. will bring into the Obama "thing", and it is too bad,
as it will cloud the "simple" fact that, they "need" him.