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Althouse: Half Right

I?m a big fan of Ann Althouse?s blog, even when I disagree with her, which is about half the time.

This post is a good example, both of her strengths and my reaction to them. Regarding the current ?look like? controversy over ?playing the race card,? she effectively ridicules the Obamanaut arguments that the Obama campaign is ?fighting back? against the Republicans injecting race into the campaign.

Fighting back? He brought it up. He can?t use his race as a factor and disqualify it simultaneously. Pick a position and stick to it. Obviously, the better position for Obama is transcending race, and obviously, if he thinks he can dip gracefully into the subject whenever it works for him, he?s wrong.

In fact, this one paragraph, in my view, is emblematic not only of the whole half-right post but of much of what she rights. She?s absolutely right to dismiss Obama?s ?fighting back? defense, but she?s wrong to say ?he can?t use his race as a factor and disqualify it simultaneously.?

Really? How is his doing that different from what civil rights leaders and activists, virtually all elected Democratic officials, and nearly all liberals do every day: proclaim their devotion to civil rights, equal treatment, etc., even as they defend the state and its agencies using ?race as a factor? (for them, often the deciding factor) in awarding preferential treatment based on skin color or ethnicity?

In the same vein she concludes:

He needs to stay race-transcendent. Lefties tend to revile race transcendence ? to regard it as a kind of racism. I?ve heard that point of view many times, from very intelligent individuals who express themselves quite rationally and persuasively. They don?t shout and point and interrupt. Obama has to resist them too.

Stay race-transcendant? How can Obama, the candidate who strongly opposes state initiatives to require non-discriminatory, color-blind equal treatment; who boasts on his current campaign website about having ?registered 150,000 African-American voters (not just voters) in his state senate campaign; and who said only a few days ago that that he supports affirmative action so long as ?it is properly structured, so that it is not just a quota (emphasis added),? ... how can such a candidate possibly ?resist? those ?Lefties? who oppose race-transcendance when he agrees with them and indeed may be one of them?

Full post as published by Discriminations on August 03, 2008 (boomark / email).