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A longing in American life: trust in black, white

BY SHELBY STEELE | Shelby Steele is an author, columnist and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. This is excerpted from The Washington Post.

November 6, 2008

For the first time in human history, a largely white nation has elected a black man to be its leader. And the cultural meaning of this unprecedented convergence of dark skin and ultimate power will likely become - at least for a time - a national obsession. Already, we are as curious about the cultural significance of Barack Obama's victory as we are about its political significance.

Does his victory mean that America is now officially beyond racism? Does it finally complete the work of the civil rights movement? Will it dispel the twin stigmas that have tormented black and white Americans for so long - that blacks are inherently inferior and whites inherently racist? Does a black man in the Oval Office imply a "post-racial" America?

Answering no to such questions is like saying no to any idealism; it seems callow. And yet an element of Obama's success was always his use of the idealism implied in these questions as political muscle. His talent was to project an idealized vision of a post-racial America - and then to have that vision define political decency.

Obama's special charisma always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas. In fact, this was his only true political originality. On the level of public policy, he was quite unremarkable. But his policy boilerplate was freshened up by the dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch he dressed it in.

This worked for Obama because it tapped into a deep longing in American life - the longing on the part of whites to escape the stigma of racism. His post-racial idealism told whites the one thing they most wanted to hear: America had essentially contained the evil of racism to the point at which it was no longer a serious barrier to black advancement.

Thus, whites became enchanted enough with Obama to become his political base. It was Iowa - 95 percent white - that made him a contender. Blacks came his way only after he won enough white voters to be a plausible candidate.

Of course, it is true that white America has made great progress in curbing racism over the past 40 years. It is exactly because America has made such dramatic racial progress that whites today chafe under the racist stigma. So I don't think whites really want change from Obama as much as they want documentation of change that has already occurred. They want him in the White House first of all as evidence, certification and recognition.

There is nothing to suggest that Obama will lead America into true post-racialism. His campaign style revealed a tweaker of the status quo, not a revolutionary. Culturally and racially, he is likely to leave America pretty much where he found her.

But what about black Americans? Won't his presidency lead us across a centuries-old gulf of alienation into the recognition that America really is our country? Might this milestone not infuse black America with a new American nationalism?

Like most Americans, I would love to see an Obama presidency nudge things in this direction. But the larger reality is the profound disparity between black and white Americans that will persist even under the glow of an Obama presidency. The black illegitimacy rate remains at 70 percent. Blacks did worse on the SAT in 2000 than in 1990. Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black, though we are only 13 percent of the population. All this disparity will continue to accuse blacks of inferiority and whites of racism - thus refueling our racial politics - despite the level of melanin in the president's skin.

The torture of racial conflict in America periodically spits up a new faith that idealism can help us "overcome." If we can just have the right inspiration, a heroic role model, a symbolism of hope, a new sense of possibility. It is an American cultural habit to endure our racial tensions by periodically alighting on little islands of fresh hope and idealism. But true reform, like the civil rights victories of the '60s, never happens until people become exhausted with their suffering. Then they don't care who the president is.

Presidents follow the culture; they don't lead it. I hope for a competent president.