When Barack Obama Let the Cat Out of the Bag in Regard to Racial Discrimination
When Barack Obama ran for President, the press repeatedly noted that he had written a book entitled “Dreams from My Father.”
Liberal commentators predictably said that book was wonderful, sensitive, thoughtful and flawless. Conservator commentators consistently said that the book was wanting, tendentious and irredeemably bland and worthless. Most of the reviews were loaded with broad, general, empty adjectives that did not tell us what was great about the book or terrible about the book. I often think that most people skimmed the book and that liberal reviewers said the book was wonderful to keep their audience happy and that conservative reviewers panned the book to cater to the prejudices of their biased readers.
Actually, the book was immoderately amazing because it was honest to the point that it could have proved dangerous to Obama’s political future. Very simply, Obama said things, about the black community, which could have enfeebled his efforts to win the votes of blacks and liberal whites. Luckily for Obama, I think most people did not read the book carefully, if they read it at all.
His most shocking comments pertained to a talk he had with black preachers in Chicago during his stint as a “community organizer.” He said that a bunch of black preachers told him why they would not hire a black contractor to repair their churches. The black preachers said that if they were to hire a black contractor, they would have to pay “twice.” First, they would pay the black contractor to conduct repairs on their church. Then, they would have to pay a white contractor to remedy the mistakes made by the black contractor.
In short, Barack Obama plainly reported that black preachers discriminated against black people because the preachers said that they would not hire black contractors.
I found Obama’s comments unforgettable. Black preachers are in the forefront of the black struggle for civil rights, equality and social and economic advancement. As such, they tend to champion or at least support anti-discrimination statutes prohibiting whites from discriminating against blacks in the context of employment and other fields.
Nevertheless, these black preachers discriminate against their fellow blacks. If black preachers, people who are in the vanguard of the civil rights struggle, treat their fellow blacks so shabbily, then how can America, in good conscience, exact penalties against whites who discriminate. Obama did not ask this question. He simply reported the facts as he witnessed them. However, the facts speak for themselves.
Other facts also speak for themselves. Many black demands for civil rights seem to strive for the same thing: The liberation of blacks from their fellow blacks. In the field of education, they clamored for the right to go to school with whites. In the field of housing, they clamor for the right to live with whites. I suspect that this desire, to escape their fellow blacks, runs counter to the aspirations of many oppressed peoples who often don’t want to live with their oppressor. I wonder if to some extent the black desire to learn with whites and to live with whites evinces black antipathy for the behavior of their fellow blacks. If blacks want to avoid black people, how can we in good conscience say that whites are impermissibly bigoted in wanting to avoid black people.
(I must hasten to concede that in part blacks want to leave black schools and black neighborhoods because the education and living conditions in predominantly black environs are deficient as the schools are often poor and the neighborhoods are often slums. However, to what extent are the schools and neighborhoods noxious not because of insufficient governmental services but because of the character of the people in these slums and schools.)
Of course, black people have discriminated against other black people throughout American history. For example, black parties at one time employed the “paper bag” test, i.e., one could not enter a Friday night party if one’s skin was darker that a brown paper bag. I have known black people who are ardent advocates for civil rights who are livid if their noses, lips, hair or skin are considered black.
In part, this black self-hate is the manifestation of an ubiquitous psychological defense mechanism: Identification with the Aggressor. In this defense mechanism, the persecuted person identifies with the party who persecutes him, and adopts the views and ideology of the persecutor, so he will be able to enjoy the delusion that he is on the team that torments him. Gordon Allport, in “The ABC’s of Prejudice” (published in 1945 or 1946 by the Yivo Research Institute), noted a pitiful case of a Jewish child in a DP (displaced persons) camp for victims of the holocaust who furiously contended that he was a Nazi as he was ashamed to be a victimized Jew. In my own case, I recall that when I was young my relatives praised me for having light-colored hair as that made me look more like a “goy,” or Christian, and could augment my chances of gaining entry to the plush and posh Christian kingdom of America.
So perhaps I must arrive at a conclusion which diverges from what I thought I had believed at the outset of my essay. When I started writing this, I was filled with neo conservative spleen toward civil rights advocates. However, as I wrote this, I began to think a bit more deeply, and I remembered the perniciousness of the defense mechanism which impels people to adopt the views and prejudices of the very people who victimize them.
The reader may think that I am vacillating or indecisive or that my political ideas are unfortunately freighted with ideas culled from psychoanalysis. However, grant me this: I am not writing the sort of predictable, derivative drivel that constitutes so much of what passes for political commentary. Since I have few readers, I don’t have an audience I must please. Consequently, unlike the writers of National Review or the Nation, I can dare to be honest and to write the truth as I see it and not as ideological conventions may dictate.