in the title of his 1995 book:
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as the Basis of Social Policy
White self-congratulation is a dominant motif today since it's hard to congratulate African-American culture on Obama, at least with a straight face. Here we are, 43 years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the first black President turns out to have had a completely non-black upbringing sequestered out in the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from any black community.
Obama is exactly the kind of only nominally African-American beneficiary of affirmative action at Harvard, the kind who are either immigrants, outright foreigners (like Barack Sr.) or have a white parent or grandparent, of whom Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier and African Studies honcho Henry Louis Gates have been complaining for years:
Obama likely has more black ancestors who sold slaves to the (Arab) white man than black ancestors who were slaves under the (European) white man. (He also has white slaveowning ancestors in his white family tree.)
Guinier is, by her own standards, another phony African-American. Her mother is Jewish (that's why she looks so much like the late Gilda Radner) and her father was a famous Jamaican immigrant union leader for the Communist Party USA. But she retains enough of her paternal Marxism to feel guilty about this abuse of class in the name of race.
Of course, if you look at the Obamas, the authentic African-American, Michelle Robinson Obama, whose all-American slave ancestry would put her near the top of Guinier's list of most deserving of reparations due to ancestry, wasted her affirmative action sinecure at Guinier's Harvard Law School, giving up practicing law way back in 1993. In contrast, Mr. Obama, the ultimate phony in terms of eligibility for affirmative action reserved for African-Americans, seems to have done pretty well for himself.
Obama is exactly the kind of only nominally African-American beneficiary of affirmative action at Harvard, the kind who are either immigrants, outright foreigners (like Barack Sr.) or have a white parent or grandparent, of whom Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier and African Studies honcho Henry Louis Gates have been complaining for years:
Guinier, a Harvard law professor, was quoted in The Boston Globe at the time as saying that most minority students at elite colleges were “voluntary immigrants,” not descended from slaves. “If you look around Harvard College today, how many young people will you find who grew up in urban environments and went to public high schools and public junior high schools?” she said. “I don’t think, in the name of affirmative action, we should be admitting people because they look like us, but then they don’t identify with us.”
Obama likely has more black ancestors who sold slaves to the (Arab) white man than black ancestors who were slaves under the (European) white man. (He also has white slaveowning ancestors in his white family tree.)
Guinier is, by her own standards, another phony African-American. Her mother is Jewish (that's why she looks so much like the late Gilda Radner) and her father was a famous Jamaican immigrant union leader for the Communist Party USA. But she retains enough of her paternal Marxism to feel guilty about this abuse of class in the name of race.
Of course, if you look at the Obamas, the authentic African-American, Michelle Robinson Obama, whose all-American slave ancestry would put her near the top of Guinier's list of most deserving of reparations due to ancestry, wasted her affirmative action sinecure at Guinier's Harvard Law School, giving up practicing law way back in 1993. In contrast, Mr. Obama, the ultimate phony in terms of eligibility for affirmative action reserved for African-Americans, seems to have done pretty well for himself.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Anointed--with one N
ReplyDeleteSowell predicted the last 20, if not 40, years with "A Conflict of Visions". Yesterday, the Unconstraineds won. But it won't last.
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me... everyone is gabbing about race in analyzing this election, but no one has mentioned the other truly historic demographic victory: The Youth Cult.
The college crowd has gone mad for idiosyncratic candidates since at least Eugene McCarthy, providing most of their shoe leather. But until yesterday, that's been the kiss of death-- they annoy too many other people. This year a coalition with blacks put them over the top.
Question: What are they going to do with it?
I should add that while Youth Cult candidates are primarily on the left, or center-left-- McCarthy, McGovern, Anderson, Hart, Dean-- at times a similar phenomenon will show up on the right, e.g. Goldwater and Paul. ("E.g."? I meant "only".)
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that the rightist manifestation is self-correcting. Their men are not Messiahs.
They're Constrained.
Can we be honest with each other
ReplyDeleteIf you saw Obama(not famous) walking down the street, he would just be another light skinned blk man to you. There is no way you would know he is biracial until he told you so. Furthermore, a white person from France is still white when he steps into America. I don't hear white Americans denouncing governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s white “Americansnes” because he was born in Austria in the same way that people denounce Barack’s racial heritage.
I'm becoming such a cranky old man.
ReplyDeleteSmirky hipster wannabe Bill Maher said years ago on Politically Incorrect that the minimum voting age should be 25.
Looking at mindless Obamabots, I can't help but agree, and yearn for the good old days when it was 21 most places.
"White self-congratulation is a dominant motif since it's hard to congratulate African-American culture, at least with a straight face."
ReplyDeleteJeez Steve, congratulating African-American culture is pretty damn easy. With a straight face I give you Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Bobby Hutcherson. Or how about Alvin Ailey, Robert Moses, and Alonzo King? I think you need to get out a little more (I recommend the Jazz Bakery in Culver City).
But the larger point is that African-American and white American culture are so intertwined that the distinction and purity you seem to assume just doesn't exist. "Mainstream" American culture is entirely a product of cultural miscegenation.
Only a racist would believe that President-elect Barack Obama's ascendence can be credited to being mixed-race. He is a person of amazing ability, who, despite being handicapped by being of African descent, achieved an objective very few people do.
ReplyDeleteNor does an effort to deem Michelle Obama the 'real African-American,'" have any credence. Like most descendants of American slaves, she is also mixed-race.
However, the 'mixed-race' gambit is a diversion. Anyone who is recognizably of African descent is treated as a black person in this country.
The bottom line is that both Obamas are persons of talent who have managed to transcend the stumbling blocks placed in their way because they live in a society in which white privilege is still a norm.
The best man won this election. Today is a great day for meritocracy.
"If you saw Obama(not famous) walking down the street, he would just be another light skinned blk man to you. There is no way you would know he is biracial until he told you so."
ReplyDeleteNo, but I would definetly clock him as an East African and maybe as a Kenyan. I mean being British I probably raped his aunt's cousin's daughter or something...
"The best man won this election. Today is a great day for meritocracy."
You do realize that elections are a popularity contest? It's like describing the election of your homecoming King and Queen* as meritocratic.
* Could somebody please explain that to me? You don't vote for Kings...
Steve, I don't think "giving up practicing law" is evidence of wasting anything. It's a sign of sanity.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I only interviewed at two firms before I realized that there was no way in heck I wanted to be a law firm lawyer.
"Jazzscribe said...
ReplyDeleteJeez Steve, congratulating African-American culture is pretty damn easy. With a straight face I give you Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Bobby Hutcherson. Or how about Alvin Ailey, Robert Moses, and Alonzo King? I think you need to get out a little more (I recommend the Jazz Bakery in Culver City)."
Most of the people you mention are dead or old geezers by now. What have blacks done for us lately. art-wise?
Sadly, the public face of black culture today is a kind of anti-culture: Snoop Dogg, NWA, Fifty Cent - angry thugs, dressed like clowns, shouting obscenities into a microphone to the accompaniment of a drum machine.
The days when blacks had a huge impact on music - music mind you, i.e. when they were musicians, the kind that played instruments - the days of Motown, for example, are long gone.
And it seems to me that the appreciation of Jazz is now almost exclusively a white thing - and appreciation for Motown might be headed there too.
"But the larger point is that African-American and white American culture are so intertwined that the distinction and purity you seem to assume just doesn't exist. "Mainstream" American culture is entirely a product of cultural miscegenation."
I agree with you that this is true for American popular music, from ragtime, through jazz and swing, to rock and roll. There are however musical traditions in this country that have no black influence: Ives, Hanson, and Copland for example. Also bluegrass, tin-pan alley, and film music (Herrmann, Goldsmith, Williams, etc.).
And by the way, in your list of worthies, you forgot to mention Scott Joplin and Stevie Wonder. Great talents both.
Surely I am glad that Racey McRacerson and his wife, Blackey McBlackinPrinceton won!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful day for race relations, that these race-obsessed navel-gazers should be in power, and ready to impose their ignorant, hostile-to-science views on us all!
Hoooooorayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Not since the Middle Ages was such an ignorant, out-of-touch dogma admitted without question like this!
Hail victory!
Jazzscribe is quite correct. But the required post-script is that the culture is DEAD, and to the degree that memory of it survives, it survives among WHITES. Who have adopted it as it's own.
ReplyDeleteA few Blacks still play Jazz, but it's audience is all overwhelmingly WHITE.
Blacks created something great, perhaps the greatest music in the world. Then abandoned it as soon as Whites started really liking it too.
Interloper: Here's the deal -- Obama, a guy who ran on being Black, and nothing else, is President. Elected by ... Whites. NOW Blacks have to grab a big tall glass of shut the hell up about "White Privilege" ... or we can "take it back" by impeaching Teleprompter Jesus.
No one CARES about Black whining about "the Man." They are ... the man. So shut up.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteWhatever you need to get past the fact that 8 years of almost total GOP rule has led to your party being labeled with the "worst ever" monniker. Dems, blacks, brown people, liberals, foreigners didn't do it to you.
You did it to yourselves.
"Sadly, the public face of black culture today is a kind of anti-culture: Snoop Dogg, NWA, Fifty Cent - angry thugs, dressed like clowns, shouting obscenities into a microphone to the accompaniment of a drum machine."
ReplyDeleteOnly to a person who has no real grasp of the riches of our cultural landscape. Those of us who appreciate America's cultural offerings find no shortage of musicians, dancers, artists, playwrights and writers of various racial and ethnic backgrounds who produce admirable works. (Indeed, in hip hop music alone, there are plenty of talented artists. That you claim familiarity with the field but do not know that is telling.)
As I have had to tell several other white supremacists, American music is an amalgam. For example, country music is also influenced by West African music, including the use of the banjo, arrangements and some rhythms. European genres have been influenced by the participation of non-whites. There is no 'white' music here.
Frankly, it is impossible to be American and not be part of a multiracial and multicultural society.
A quirk, a quibble and a question. The quirk is how you somehow (suddenly!) managed to have gained a large readership of commenting non-race-realists. The quibble is with your repeated mention of Obama's slave-selling ancestors. The issue of slavery vis a vis African Americans is not one of genes but one of the simple history of where today's blacks came from culturally (even among many reparationists), Obama's supposed ancient slave-selling ancestors are therefor quite irrelevant to his story in EVERY way. All of which isn't to mention the fact that you really need some evidence vis a vis your claim. I'm no expert on the tribe of people from whom Obama's father descends (if indeed he did descend almost entirely from one clearly defined ethnic group) but you have yet to present me with copious evidence of your expertise either.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally, The Question.
how is it that IN ALL THAT I HAVE READ, HEARD OR WATCHED on the subject of Barack Obama (and it's a whole hell of a lot more than I would have liked it to be) nobody, but nobody, has referenced his lifestory as fitting in with the Biblical story of Moses? The abolitionists and the slaves interested in gaining freedom were quite into the whole Moses story (what with the songs, the Grandma Moses n' all), yet here we have the real thing! He's a member of the Oppressed People who is raised in the Pharaoh's palace (Hawaii then Harvard) yet who goes out unto his people (Chicago) to partake in their suffering and who then stomps toward the halls of power to save his people? If ever there was a Moses correlation with the Black Experience (real or imagined) this is it! How Biblically illiterate do we have to be as a people for this not to have become common currency by now?
mnuez
Jazzscribe said..Jeez Steve, congratulating African-American culture is pretty damn easy.
ReplyDeleteJazzscribe, try a little harder.
White self-congratulation is a dominant motif today since it's hard to congratulate African-American culture on Obama, at least with a straight face.
I think Steve's point is Obama was born of a White woman and raised and schooled by White folks before he joined some black racist lunatic's church.
Black "cultural" reasons for his success are nonexistent.
Steve wasn't talking about your fascination with Jazz. A musical art form which today is almost completely ignored by American blacks.
"Mainstream" American culture is entirely a product of cultural miscegenation.
American popular culture is essentially White. EuroAmerican domination defines American culture which is why the black cultural ghettoization within music is so noticeable.
Other than music black so called culture is only found in the form of blacks playing White originated sports.
Interloper said...Only a racist would believe that President-elect Barack Obama's ascendence can be credited to being mixed-race.
When someone who looks and sounds like Kwame Kilpatrick gets elected president you will have won the argument.
Obama's relative Whiteness gives him a huge advantage over non mixed race black males. Despite the freaky name.
This is hardly a debatable point.
Indeed, in hip hop music alone, there are plenty of talented artists. That you claim familiarity with the field but do not know that is telling.
ReplyDeleteFo shizzle my nizzle. Dead Prez/Roots/Mos Def/Twaleb Kwali/Michael Franti are the hotness.
"Only a racist would believe that President-elect Barack Obama's ascendence can be credited to being mixed-race. He is a person of amazing ability, who, despite being handicapped by being of African descent, achieved an objective very few people do."
ReplyDeleteWould he have gotten upwards of 95% of the black vote if he had been white? No, they were voting for Hillary. And SWPL zeal to embrace the Other put him over the top.
And "handicapped?" Obama had an upbringing unattainable by 99.5% of all Americans.
Now this,
"Indeed, in hip hop music alone, there are plenty of talented artists."
Hip hop ain't music, jack. It's dumbed-down chant. The fact that someone does it who can also play the piano doesn't make it so.
--Senor Doug
I get what you say about Obama's dad. And as you informed us Sadat was half Sudanese. How about a post on the pivotal leaders of a nations who were half foreign, (eg Churchill). If there aren't enough; leaders from a distict area like Corsica.
ReplyDeleteMany of these were great orators.
Michelle wasted her law degree? Why, cuz she didnt practice law--sitting around filling out deathly dull forms for some deathly boring case she didnt understand? She got herself positioned at a place where,if there were any black males there,they would have to be the Affrimative action prize winners,and she got herself a beaut!! At the beginning of this campaign,I felt michelle didnt LIKE Obama,she seemed angry and a bit contemptuous. Was that because of his mistress? Probably,but I also feel she is bored by him,( and she prob feels he patronizes her;she may feel "race discrimination"--and we all know how sensitive she is bout that!!--in her own marriage.) And they have little in common,except kids and Black Liberation. When Obama-wan-Kenobi is jamming out on the Boss,the whitest artist there is, (and did you see the smile when he was with Bruce??) Michelle has got to be rolling her eyes;"Why I got to put up with this sh*t??"
ReplyDeleteIf you look at a list of famous "blacks" from the 19th century on, a huge proportion of them are mulattoes or mixed whites. The black elite will still demand affirmative action and "one drop" hypodescent propaganda for their poor "oppressed" selves. In the case of Obama, white relatives, white culture (and white DNA?) did nearly all the work and black culture and DNA get all the credit.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Passing-Who-You-Really-Are/dp/0939479222/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product
Chic Noir said...
ReplyDelete"If you saw Obama(not famous) walking down the street, he would just be another light skinned blk man to you."
And if they saw Anatole Broyard, they would see just another white man. Therfore, Anatole Broyard was white. Wait, you people don't want to admit that! Double standard here!
"When someone who looks and sounds like Kwame Kilpatrick..."
ReplyDeleteObama looks and sounds like Kilpatrick?
"Would he have gotten upwards of 95% of the black vote if he had been white?"
No, probably 90-93%
"Hip hop ain't music, jack. It's dumbed-down chant. "
I guess you didn't like Hot Rod Lincoln:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
tQA9HdmKeoo
Truth said..."When someone who looks and sounds like Kwame Kilpatrick..."
ReplyDeleteObama looks and sounds like Kilpatrick?
Work on your reading comprehension.
"Would he have gotten upwards of 95% of the black vote if he had been white?"
No, probably 90-93%
Not in the Democratic party primary against Hillary Clinton.
A White Obama means he splits the Edwards vote and Hillary gets 80+% of the black vote and wins the nomination.
No, I think a white man who married Michelle Obama and spent 20 years at Trinity Baptist would win more than 10-20% of the democratic primary vote.
ReplyDeleteAs I have had to tell several other white supremacists, American music is an amalgam. For example, country music is also influenced by West African music, including the use of the banjo, arrangements and some rhythms. European genres have been influenced by the participation of non..."
ReplyDeleteAnd I can't believe those "white supremists" did not inform you that jazz was begun by mulattos (mostly) who had been trained in European classical music, sometimes in France. After the Civil War they had a hard time finding work--the mulattos of the Gulf area lost their special status and got grouped with blacks. So they gradually developed jazz.
I have listend to African music and black American music sounds little like it, though I am no expert.
In any case, they are using European instruments. A black musical historian found that spirituals derived more from Scottish hymn styles than anything African.
So you are right. Music history in America is an amalgamation.
But if you want to raise IQs, according to research in Superlearning2000, don't reach for your Jazz CDs, and don't reach for the Big Band, Stones or gospel.
Play Bach and Mozart. The high frequencies are equal to no other sound in increasing brain power and mental equilibrium.