The colors of our skin & the content of our national character

New York Times Magazine ~ August 6, 2008

 

 

Excellent commentary by Victor Davis Hanson:

 

Barack the Healer

Barack Obama, both substantively and symbolically, ran in 2008 as a much-needed healer. He was to bring the nation together as never before — a vow taken to heart by millions of voters of all backgrounds who ensured Obama’s 2008 victory. His biracial background and his uncanny ability to navigate through both Harvard Law School and the politics of Chicago community organizing seemed to make him ideally suited to usher in a postracial era...

Yet quite the opposite development tragically has followed from Obama’s election. From the beginning of the 2008 campaign ... racial tensions have heightened, rather than lessened.

 

Read it ALL.

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

I wonder how much of the Roanoke Declaration ("You didn't build that ...") was a -- perhaps unconscious -- reference to a favorite Black Nationalist theme: that America was built on the backs of slaves -- and that America's blacks are therefore entitled to reparations. If Obama's re-elected, I wouldn't be surprised to see him push for reparations. That's not the kind of thing a president would do in his first term, but a second-termer -- with nothing to lose -- might be a very different story. One thing is certain: the Roanoke Declaration revealed a man with seething resentments -- and, at root, seething resentments is what VDH's column is all about.