'Obama and the Shifting Ground of Race'

Jonah Goldberg spots two prominent leftists “bitterly clinging, as Obama might say, to ideologically racial views:”

Here are [Princeton’s Cornel West and Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC)], two of the most influential black people in America, bitterly clinging, as Obama might say, to ideologically racial views — He’s not black enough! He’s too black for racist Americans! — that have less and less relevance. This is not to say that there is no racial animus against Obama. Of course, there is. But is it significant, as Clyburn suggests? Well, certainly not enough to keep him from being elected president of the United States (!) or being the establishment favorite to be reelected.

Clyburn’s take strikes me as the left-wing version of the right-wing theory — popularized by Dinesh D’Souza — that everything Obama does can be explained by his allegedly “post-colonial” worldview. Simpler explanations are available. Obama’s a liberal Democrat. He does things a white liberal Democrat would do, and he receives mostly the same opposition a white liberal Democrat would receive. If a President John Edwards (shudder) had rammed through the economic stimulus or “Edwardscare” the same way Obama did, Republicans wouldn’t say, “Well, since he’s white, it’s OK.”

Take the “tea parties,” which have been accused of racism by the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, mainstream media outlets and such entertainer-activists as Janeane Garofalo, who proclaimed they are “about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.” So, after nearly two years of “experts” telling us that the typical tea party member is two holes in a white sheet shy of being a Klansman, guess who is arguably the most popular tea party candidate for president? Herman Cain, a black businessman.

Naturally, that just confuses the MSM: “NPR Discusses How Tea Party Appeals ‘Very Fundamentally’ to Racists:”

Ellis Cose was a liberal Newsweek columnist on black issues from 1993 to 2010, and now has a book out on improving racial attitudes called The End of Anger. Naturally, the book was plugged on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation on Tuesday afternoon. Even as Cose argued he was pleased that racism isn’t accepted in any mainstream political group, and tried to insist not every Tea Party activist is a racist, he insisted “let’s be adult here” and acknowledge the Tea Party “appeals to an older, conservative, in many cases racially prejudiced group of people.”

Did you spot the “yes-but” tell there? As James Taranto noted a month ago, when “David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and author of the Obama hagiography The Bridge, [was interviewed by NPR] about Donald Trump’s birtherian antics:”

Baselessly accusing their political foes of racism is a way in which today’s liberals attempt to incite fear and loathing of “the other.” As we argued last year, this serves a political purpose in that it helps persuade blacks not to consider voting Republican. But it serves a psychological purpose as well. It reinforces white liberals’ sense of their own superiority.

Yet that sense of superiority is not as secure as it once was. Here is Remnick’s most telling quote from that interview: “Really, I’m not in the habit of screaming racist at every turn. I don’t think you [interviewer Michele Norris] are and I don’t think most people are.”

It used to be that people expressing politically incorrect views about race felt compelled to preface their statements with a defensive denial: “I’m not a racist, but . . .” The editor of The New Yorker, speaking to an NPR audience, now has a similar compulsion to deny that he is “in the habit of screaming racist.”

The tables have turned. Now it is the left that is on the defensive over “racism.” Their outdated attitudes about race put them in the absurd position of arguing that the most powerful man in the world is a victim of oppression because of the color of his skin. Men like David Remnick turn out to be the ones who aren’t ready for a black president.

And speaking of NPR and MSM racer-ism, “NBC News to Hire Embattled Former NPR Chief Vivian Schiller.”

For Schiller, it’s a lateral move from one state-run media outfit to another.

Related: As Victor Davis Hanson writes, “Memo to GOP: Obama will campaign against Bush (again) and play the race card. Don’t let him get away with it.”