Word: racistly
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...pocket-handkerchiefs!” Despite these efforts, however, enactments of “The Mikado” have on occasion roused controversy. At a recent protest at Occidental College in California, students complained of distortions that are impossible to separate from the imperialist and racist attitudes of the time in which the opera was written.The concern, of course, is a broader one of Orientalism—of the inaccuracies pervasive in Western treatments of Eastern cultures. Any such discussion necessitates the arguments of Edward Said, who observes that “The Orient was almost a European invention...
...Racist societies make race into a hard fate. So people who are the progeny of two races become curiosities not because they are particularly interesting, but because they are so unexpected. This must be an old and tiresome vulnerability in Barack Obama's life (as it is in mine), and all the more so because he has chosen a public life. One senses that his first book, Dreams from My Father, was meant to diffuse some of this vulnerability. In it he does not merely own up to his interracial background as if to a past indiscretion; he candidly explores...
...whites the benefit of the doubt: I will not rub America's history of racism in your face, if you will not hold my race against me. Especially in our era of political correctness, whites are inevitably grateful for this bargain that spares them the shame of America's racist past. They respond to bargainers with gratitude, warmth, and even affection. This "gratitude factor" can bring the black bargainer great popularity. Oprah Winfrey is the most visible bargainer in America today...
Challengers never give whites the benefit of the doubt. They assume whites are racist until they prove otherwise. And whites are never taken off the hook until they (institutions more than individuals) give some form of racial preference to the challenger. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are today's best known challengers. Of course, most blacks can and do go both ways, but generally we tend to lean one way or another...
Barack Obama is a plausible presidential candidate today because he is a natural born bargainer. Obama--like Oprah--is an opportunity for whites to think well of themselves, to give themselves one of the most self-flattering feelings a modern white can have: that they are not racist. He is the first to apply the bargainer's charms to presidential politics. Sharpton and Jackson were implausible presidential candidates because they suffered the charmlessness of challengers. Even given white guilt, no one wants to elect a scold...