YES WE CAN!!!....(elect a black man to the presidency.)

Originally, I picked up Dr. Shelby Steele’s book “A Bound Man; Why Are We Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win” to try and find some illogical criticisms. I assumed that the book would be written in a fashion similar to Dr. Michael Eric Dyson’s book criticizing comments Bill Cosby made about the black community. In reading the opening pages of Dr. Steele’s book, instead of finding arguments that were easy to counter, I found a sick and painful feeling growing in my stomach. In my reading, I found that I had, like the rest of America, fallen into the misconception that America was turning a new leaf; that the pertinence of racial politics in this country was fading away. This sick feeling grew in my stomach as I realized that if Barack Obama were a white man, we would not being having this discussion about his candidacy. There would not be a jubilant excitement about the possibility of a minority president, and I would not being writing this essay right now.
The irony is that Senator Obama has centralized his campaign around transcendence, a type of politics that looks beyond race. Yet in doing so, race has become the key facet of Senator Obama’s campaign. Looking to expunge itself from its ugly racial past, white America can claim racism dead with the emergence of a black president. After Obama announced he would seek the Democratic nomination, Senator Joseph Biden stated that senator Obama was “articulate, bright, and clean.” Senator Biden’s comments “showed surprise in the high ability of a black.” Furthermore Senator Biden’s statements “celebrated Obama at the expense of other blacks who were presumably inarticulate, not bright, and unclean.” If you find yourself questioning the legitimacy of my argument consider this, “When you can credibly run for the presidency only two years out of the Illinois state legislature and, upon announcing your campaign, immediately surge past all but one competitor, then something in society is drawing you forward.” For America, Barack Obama is a trophy if not a symbol that shouts “YES WE CAN!” and whispers “elect a black man to the presidency.”