Over at TNR, Michael Crowley argues on “The Stump” that Pastor Wright proves the “grim truth that even middle-class black American culture is more angry and alienated than most whites understand, and that our country is simply not yet at the point where even an ostensibly post-racial black candidate can escape that dynamic entirely… ‘It makes me think it’s going to be at least another generation before we see a black man elected president.’ If Obama can prove him wrong then he really may be a world-historical figure.”
Whoa. A couple of things need to be said here.
What this may actually prove is the old, pre-Obama conventional wisdom that the first black president will more likely be a conservative — someone who has already grappled with, and rejected, victim based politics. Can you picture Michael Steele, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Condoleezza Rice or any number of thoughtful black conservatives listening to Pastor Wright’s sermoninzing for one afternoon let alone years on end? Maybe for research purposes.
Barack Obama is not being tied in knots by black middle-class alienation. He’s being tied in knots by left-wing grievance politics with which he chose to align himself. Moreover, plenty of black voters have been willing to vote for Obama in primary after primary on the message of unity and racial reconciliation without any particular knowledge of Obama’s association with Pastor Wright and his extreme views.