...the merits of the issue, abandoning race-based affirmative action makes sense to the extent that we don't think present-day racism -- as opposed to economic issues that may in some cases reflect the legacy of racism -- is a substantial problem. But if racism really is a huge barrier to Obama's electoral prospects, that suggests that present-day racism really is a substantial problem and we should probably maintain some focus on race per se.
And Adam on Barack as racial miracle-worker:
It's not Barack Obama's job to help America deal with racism. It's America's job to help America deal with racism. But it certainly suggests there's something accurate about David Ehrenstein's argument (forever twisted by Rush Limbaugh into a simple racial epithet) that some people see Obama as the "Magic Negro" prevalent in films like The Green Mile and Bagger Vance, since people like Beinart clearly expect Obama to be the instrument of their redemption.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Yeah, I think Adam/David Ehrenstein capture something that's gone surprisingly untested. Without any evidence whatsoever: I've got a hunch that the number of white people who will actually vote for Obama because it's a way to tell themselves and their neighbors that they're not racist actually exceeds the number who are voting against Obama purely out of racial animus.
I can't decide what to think of that, if it's true. It's a little distasteful, because it's a kind of end-run around real racial reconciliation and understanding. To put it a little crudely, America's done more wrong to black people than can be paid back with a presidential vote. On the other hand, this is probably the process by which reconciliation happens. People fake it until they make it.
I was raised to desire racial harmony and have always supported affirmative action. I'm a product of what can be crudely defined as a white guilt mentality. I can tell you why white middle America has lost its zeal for affirmative action - and I'm not talking about people who didn't support it in the first place. When black rappers are on tv making fools out of themselves and using the "ghetto" as a selling device for their product, people who might be otherwise sympathetic to the fact that many blacks disproportionately occupy a permanent underclass in this country - look at these clowns and they ask themselves, 'why do I need to help out 50 Cent and Jay-Z - they seem to be doing just fine; they seem to actually enjoy the ghetto'. You may think that's unfair, but 50 Cent and Jay-Z - who act like characters from a Klu-Klux Klan newsletter comic - are killing white sympathy for poor blacks.
It is worth pointing out that Will Smith in "The Legend of Bagger Vance" is not just a Magic Negro but is Bhagavan Krishna himself. Bagger Vance is a retelling of the Bhagavad Gita--with a golf match on the Atlantic coast taking the place of the battle of Kurekshetra
First time I came across the Magical Negro idea was in an article by Christopher Farley (the writer, not Tommy Boy) If I remember correctly,he blamed it in part on Hollywood being completely clueless about black culture. While I can't say I possess any great insight into African Americans, but at least I am not advertising my ignorance to millions of people by turning out crap like Bagger Vance.
I have heard anecdotally(on NPR) about white people saying they are voting for Obama out of some type of white guilt, but the overwhelming majority of people I talk to in real life are voting for the same party they voted for in the previous election.
Chappelle did a great parody of this concept in his sketch about the janitor who did a "It's a Wonderful Life" type thing with a well-endowed jogger who dared to think her life would be better if she had a smaller cup size. (I apologize in advance if this is too far off topic, but I love this skit)
I think there are a lot of different layers to this. I say that as one of those immigrant white people who don't feel any racial guilt. You can argue all day about whether I should, but the fact is that I don't. What I do have is a sense of race relations in this country having shown signs of improving in my youth, then deteriorating, then starting to get better again. I prefer the periods when things are getting better, and Obama does seem like one sign of that.
I'll add that the "Keeping It Unreal" piece at the link on the right is another. I read it yesterday... very good! The period of deterioration I noticed in race relations did coincide with the crack epidemic and the rise of gangsta rap. Not sure what drove what, but there was a serious negative feedback loop in place for a while. (It wasn't just about the music, either. The actual crime wave was a concern too.) It's a very good thing that that period is winding down, and that all sides recognize the fact. It's not magic, any more than Obama is, but it reduces tensions and helps create the conditions in which progress is possible.
"But if racism really is a huge barrier to Obama's electoral prospects, that suggests that present-day racism really is a substantial problem and we should probably maintain some focus on race per se."
It does not follow, however, that affirmative action is the answer to racial inequality, especially when certain races benefit at the expense of other races. Obama's electoral prospects may be hurt by racism, but at least he has a very good chance, while asian americans have just about zero chance of being elected president. Yet affirmative action negatively impacts them (at least in college admissions). That's something that has never made sense to me.
I want to second what Nathan said above.
I was raised in a very liberal family. I'm the only one who eventually became a conservative (really a moderate, but I'm right-wing by their standards). My father took the lead in my hometown to desegregate public facilities in the 60's, attended the March on Washington, etc. He's what would be termed by some as an enlightened white liberal. And while I no longer share many of his views, I retained much of his perspective on racial issues.
But time and time again, I confront something ugly that I hate even mentioning, because it sounds so stereotypical (both me as the stereotype of the white racist in denial, and the people I observe as a stereotypes of inner-city blacks). Here are recent examples, which I swear are all true:
1) A young black boy waiting for the bus downtown, probably 12 or 13, wearing a T-shirt that says, "Of course I love you, my dick is hard isn't it?"
2) Two teenage black men watching women (white and black) walk by, then occasionally following them strutting to impress each other, making obscene comments, calling the woman they're stalking "ho" and "bitch," etc.
3) Two young black boys, probably both 15, butting their way into a fast-food line, shouting high-pitched noises (I don't really know how to describe it); gold teeth, lots of jewelry. They scowled threateningly at anyone who dared look at them, as if asking for a fight.
4) Two young black boys, probably 12 or 13, biking down the road I live on, shouting rap lyrics to each other. When they see me and a (white) friend, they shout louder while glaring at us. The lyrics are entirely obscene, about using one woman after another, as if it's a joke.
5) A city bus I'm on stops for an older black man. The man is dressed reasonably well, but says he has no money and asks the driver for a favor. The driver says he can't let the man on if he can't pay. The man starts shouting and cursing, "This ain't Selma no more! You can't treat us this way!" He expected a free ride.
6) Times too numerous to mention: Black boys and young black men walking down the street with their pants hanging loose and low all around them. Sometimes their hands are on their crotch(es).
I'm very, very tired of this kind of thing. I know all the caveats, but I am sick of seeing ugly behavior glorified this way. I honestly think that there's a kind of sick pathology involved. And I have simply lost any sympathy for people who act this way. I would feel the same way if they were white, Hispanic, or Asian. But again and again, it's young black males acting like idiots. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think it's "society's" fault anymore.
I'm going to third Nathan's comment. My parents marched for Civil Rights locally, and the town they raised me in was one of the first in the Northeast to integrate. They chose to bus me to the 80% black elementary school in the poorer part of town instead of sending me to the 50% black one within walking distance.
I did grow up with some impressive black adult role models, e.g., an M.D./Ph.D. (from the Caribbean, originally) who was a friend of my parents. Nevertheless, the vast majority of blacks I came in contact with growing up (particularly the younger ones) exhibited the same negative behaviors mentioned above. It's tough to maintain an egalitarian ideal in the face of everyday experience continually showing something different.
Go read Andrew Sullivan's endorsement of Obama in the Atlantic in late 2007. AS clearly is suffering from the same 'magic negro' stereotype that Beinart is suffering from. Obama isn't running for president so people like Beinart and Sullivan can feel better about themselves.
I read AS's endorsement of Obama as having less to do with race, at least domestically, than with generation. The title "goodbye to all that" wasn't talking about overcoming racism, but about overcoming the cultural wars of the 60s between members of the boomer generation. When he talks about the effect of Obama's race he does so in the context of international views (accurate or otherwise) of the issue of race in America, which doesn't really have anything to do with "healing" of racial wounds here in the US domestically.
To Mr. Chang. If you think any of the things that have happened in this campaign have implicit negative racism, then AS's over-the-top 'magic negro' endorsement last fall is implicit racism too (I happen to believe we've seen some of both).
For instance, here are some of the 'magic negro' gems from AS's endorsement: "The logic behind the candidacy of Barack Obama is not, in the end, about Barack Obama. It has little to do with his policy proposals.... At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq.... It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce."
Sounds like Obama's youth and race combine for some sort of x-factor that Sullivan is into. But it isn't about policy? Well, then what is it? Putting the burden of race on Obama for him to 'fix' and to excuse white people's past deeds.
Here's another one. Not only will Obama's blackness, according to AS, magically re-make the U.S., but it will magically remake the world. Again, from AS's piece: "Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy." A 'brown-skinned man,' son of an "African"? C'mon. His magical half-black, Indonesian, and Hawai'ian presence will solve all ills. Give me a break.
Don't vote for Obama because of some (on its face) positive racial bias that you have projected onto him as an 'exceptional' or 'particularly articulate' black candidate. Vote for him if you agree with him, or if you think he would be the best candidate in terms of competence, vision, and so on.
No. "about culture and about religion and about race" is talking about the culture wars of the 60s. Race is certainly a part of that, but it's most definitely not dominating in Sullivan's argument to the extent of painting Obama as some kind of "magic negro." The second quote is what I was talking about regarding international views of race in America, true or otherwise, which don't really affect actual race relations here.
Mr. Chang, I guess we just disagree. In my view, race was central to the 'culture wars' of the 1960s. The 'culture wars' that remain today are still about race as well, even if it isn't as obvious. People like Jesse Helms in the 1950s and 60s (and later) put themselves as opposed to "hippies," "freaks", "negroes", and "communists" (his words, though these used in public. So today when self-selected pundits are trying to categorize people into categories like "French" or "American." Or "Indonesian" vs. "American" (no one is questioning McCain's American-ness because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone). Or against "red China" vs. "real Americans," there is a racial and ethnic component.
Further, those on the front lines of the civil rights movement in the 1960s turned towards movements against poverty and against the Vietnam war in the late 60s and early 70s. Those most likely to get killed in Vietnam were black and Hispanic, and this is the case today still in Iraq.
Also today, when culture warrior Pat Buchanan talks about "taking back America," it isn't just about from overseas imports.
"Saying goodbye to all that" as Andrew Sullivan suggested in his column last year endorsing Obama implicitly suggested Obama could 'magically' move us in a 'post-racial' direction. The endorsement was more about Sullivan's guilt than any thing substantive about Obama for at least the first 2/3 of the article.