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03/25/2008: "The racial pacification bargain"

But whatever [Geraldine Ferraro’s] motives, she was right: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But it does not detract from his merit to say that his race is also a large part of his prominence. And it is undeniable that something extremely powerful in the body politic, a force quite apart from the man himself, has pulled Obama forward. This force is about race and nothing else.

How to turn one’s blackness to advantage?

The answer is that one “bargains.” Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love this bargain—and feel affection for the bargainer—because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.

[ Whites are trying to buy off blacks with guilt, and that's why Obama is popular. ]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120579535818243439.html?mod=googlenews_wsj