A Bound Man, by Shelby Steele: on Principles & Values

Rooted in African-American community but also more than that

He was “rooted,” he said, in the African- American community, but he was also “more than that.” This is the formulation of a man with a complex identity trying to make himself more recognizable to a society not used to pondering his like. Yet, this is also a formulation that reduces Obama’s identity to a banality. What could “rooted” or “more than that” mean? For that matter, what could “African-American community” really mean? A culture? A politics?

To become recognizable, he processes himself through the same dumb racial math-- he is one thing plus something else--that has been the source of his vulnerability. He collaborates with the racial conventions that made him an odd man out. Yet a great part of Obama’s appeal in broader America can be chalked up to his complex identity.

Embodies smothering racial power in individual democracy

It doesn’t matter that he sometimes goes along with race-based policies, or that he made his own Faustian bargain with affirmative action. No one is excited because Obama nods to identity politics; people are excited because he represents an idealism that opposes such politics. Any black who takes on the near-absolute visibility that goes with seeking such high office will function as both a man and a symbol, and sometimes the two will be at odds. So it is not surprising that Obama the man may vary a bit from Obama the symbol.

More influenced by his race than public perceives

But Obama is not such a person. His books show a man driven by a determination to be black, as if blackness were more an achievement than a birthright. And this need within him puts Obama at odds with himself. His plausibility as a candidate comes, in part, from the perception that he is not driven to be black, that he is rather lightly tethered to his race. But the very arc of his life has been greatly influenced by an often conscious resolve to belong irrefutably to the black identity.

“Dreams From My Father” is an archetypal search

Archetypal themes, if only metaphorically, point to eternal truths. Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father” chronicles his search for his father [who was mostly absent]. He necessarily becomes an obsession in ways that real and present fathers never do.

Intertwined search for father and racial identity

A Bound Man: inner turmoil of 1960s black nationalism

In college, rejected multiracialism for black identity

Joyce opposes blackness out of the same determination to claim an identity that drives Obama to embrace blackness. Obama is determined to distance himself from her & his own mainstream American past. Joyce represents a remarkable new option in American life. Joyce says that whites are “willing to treat me like a person.” Blacks are “the ones who are telling me I can’t be who I am.”

Joyce is Obama’s troublesome doppelganger as he grinds through the self-betrayals that help him belong to blackness. What you want, she murmurs--the chance to be yourself, self-acceptance--is not with blackness; it is in the same mainstream you came from.

Joined church that emphasized a “Black Value System”

How can Obama sit every week in a church preaching blackness & not object that he was raised quite well, thank you, by three white Midwesterners? Obama is the kind of man who can close down the best part of himself to belong to this black church and, more broadly, to the black identity.

Whites sense that Barack grants them “benefit of the doubt”

“White folks” is a term that shames Obama. It is bigotry because it paints all whites with the same brush. He has to give whites their innocence until they prove unworthy of it. That is what white Americans sense in Barack Obama. On pain of his own integrity, he cannot be challenger.

Challengers, like Obama’s black friend Ray, deprive whites of their racial innocence until they do something to earn it.

Challengers [like Al Sharpton] have come to play an unexpected role in the Obama saga. It is precisely against the specter of an Al Sharpton that a Barack Obama looks so “fresh” and “appealing.” Sharpton makes the point--better than Obama’s most savvy speechwriter could--that Obama is a black man for all people, a black man who gives whites “the benefit of the doubt.

Fans see Obama as opportunity to vote for redemption

Obama is bound to the antiresponsibility political left because his fate depends on his ability to offer innocence to whites--this despite the fact that he clearly seems to accept the importance of individual responsibility in social reform. Yet he offers no thinking on how to build incentives to responsibility into actual social policy.

Balancing “challenger” for blacks & “bargainer” for whites

No black before Obama has employed the bargainer’s charms in pursuit of so high an office. We are used to black challengers, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Life-long protesters are not likely to have developed an easy reciprocity with white voters. On the other hand, no one ever asks them if they are black enough.

If, to please blacks, Obama does more challenging, he loses his iconic status with whites. He loses white votes because whites don’t want a challenging Al Sharpton; they want the iconic Negro. If, to please whites, Obama bargains more, he loses votes among blacks--a vital constituency in the Democratic party.

Obama REPRESENTS something; doesn’t have to DO anything

What gave Obama the idea that he could run for president? Was it that he had evolved a compelling vision for the nation grounded in deeply held personal convictions? Or was it that he had simply become aware of his power to enthrall whites?

Obama is not a conviction politician. His supporters do not look to him to do something; they loo to him to be something, to represent something.

Obama emerged into a political culture that needed him more as an icon than as a man. But this easy appeal has also been his downfall. It is a seduction away from character and conviction.

The challenge is to achieve visibility an individual, to become an individual rather than a cipher. Unless we get to know who he is--what beliefs he would risk his life for--he could become a cautionary tale, an iconic figure who neglected to become himself.