Race, The “Great Alibi,” And The “Treasury Of Virtue”
Discussing The Speech this morning, Charles Krauthammer wrote that it played on “white guilt.”
Obama’s purpose in the speech was to put Wright’s outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, “We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country,” and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.Those comments reminded me of a wonderful, under-appreciated slim little volume by Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War, that I have occasion to cite a number of times: here, here, here, and here, where I wrote:This contextual analysis of Wright’s venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It’s the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That’s why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.
[According to Warren] “The War” bestowed two lasting legacies: it gave the North what he called “a treasury of virtue” — no matter what the U.S. did subsequently, the act of freeing the slaves (even if done as a by-product rather than a purpose of the war) provided such stockpiles of moral virtue that it could never be depleted.We are now (and have been for far too long) witnessing a similar dynamic where the history of racism and discrimination provides a “great alibi” to blacks, excusing whatever they say or do, and a “treasury of virtue” to liberals, whose moral superiority is guaranteed forever by their historic defense of minorities.The South, by contrast, was provided with “the Great Alibi.” All subsequent problems could be blamed on The War and the Yankees. Nothing was ever the South’s own fault.
Say What?
Posted by: CaptDMO | March 21, 2008 12:46 PM
Obama's speech was totally irrelevant to the situation in the Southwest U.S., where racial conflicts are primarily viewed as a Latino versus everyone else issue. California is only 6% black, but probably about 35% Latino. Texas figures are similar. California is rapidly approaching a situation where the majority is eligible for racial preferences (Prop. 209 is widely ignored) and the minority is so eligible.
In a speech by Steven Steinlight, a former director of the American Jewish Committee (expelled apparently because of his heresy in opposing open borders), he eloquently stated that Americans had a moral obligation to help Blacks. However, they had no obligation to help Mexicans (he was explicit on this point.)
Does Obama really think he will win by demanding that Californians or Texans who immigrated from country A give up places at Universities and employers to immigrants from country B, just because the latter are of the ethnicity du jour?
Many whites, as Obama somewhat acknowledged are first and second generation immigrants. To claim that they have a moral obligation to immigrants of one particular ethnicity is ridiculous and an untenable position.
To this immigrant, Obama seems to be saying that just because his father is from Nigeria, he has a particular moral authority to lecture to me. I don't buy it.
Posted by: revisionist | March 21, 2008 2:48 PM
Apologies for the carelessness on two points.
1. "California is rapidly approaching a situation where the majority is eligible for racial preferences (Prop. 209 is widely ignored) and the minority is so eligible.
"
Meant to say
"... and the minority is not so eligible."
2. Senator Obama's father was from Kenya, not Nigeria.
Posted by: revisionist | March 22, 2008 12:30 PM