Will Barack Obama’s Raceless Race Be Erased by Race?

Wright man for the job?

Bravo to Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford for his smart analysis of the Obama-Wright debacle. Titled, “Obama’s ‘Race Neutral’ Strategy Unravels of its Own Contradictions,” the piece argues that, in the wake of pastor Jeremiah Wright’s three-day, “televised Black Liberation Theology tour de force,” Obama is withering, not from what Wright hath wrought, but from a fundamental disconnect built into Obama ’08.

Barack Obama’s strategy to win the White House was to run a “race-neutral” campaign in a society that is anything but neutral on race. The very premise – that race neutrality is possible in a nation built on white supremacy – demanded the systematic practice of the most profound race-factual denial, which is ultimately indistinguishable from rank dishonesty. From the moment Obama told the 2004 Democratic National Convention that “there is no white America, there is no Black America,” it was inevitable that the candidate would one day declare the vast body of Black opinion illegitimate.

Then, it just takes off from there. The weekly is, as they, themselves, say, like nothing else out there. A must-read.

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2 comments ↓

#1 breiona on 09.14.08 at 12:26 am

HOPE U WIN!!!!!!!

#2 Jan Boudart on 10.22.08 at 12:41 am

Do you think it’s important at this time to have a mixed race president? If so, how do you expect him to win? If not, then you should take the position that Obama should not be running at all. He has said he wants to unite the country. Maybe that is not what you want. Where will you go if the country is not united. Do you think it would have been better for the country to have been allowed to break up in the Civil War? Where would black people be now if that had happened?

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