Customer Reviews

A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Shelby Steele has travelled a path similar to that trod by Senator Obama. He, too, was the son of a interracial marraiage. He, too, was loved and well-educated by his parents. He, too, has become a prominent spokesperson on racial matters in the United States. And he is uniquely suited to write this book.

As opposed to an earlier reviewer who described the book as a "hit piece" against Obama's candidacy, the book is much more than that. It is an examination of the state of racial thought in this country and why - sadly - it is still perceived as necessary for both whites and blacks to assume "masks" to shield public perception of their true character. It examines the masquarade that we all attend in daily lives with our costumes and facades because we are too fearful and timid to expose the true nature of our beliefs - right or wrong, PC or not - for fear of repercussions.

He is correct in categorizing Oprah Winfrey (and Michael Jordan and, to some degree, Tiger Woods) as "bargainers" just as he is correct in calling Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Spike Lee as "challengers." It is clear to anyone who takes the time to examine the behaviors and the successes involved. The tragedy is not that Steele categorizes people of color with these artificial terms; the tragedy is that one behaves in these ways in order to achieve recognition and success. The abandonment of self and one's ideals is an immense price to pay for the chance at success.

The author turns a beautiful phrase when he writes:

"[Obama's candidacy]...asks the American democracy to complete itself, to achieve that almost perfect transparency in which color is, indeed, no veil over character - where a black, like a white, can put himself forward as the individual he truly is."

When we can reach this cultural chimera, we will be truly a nation of one people.

Shelby Steele's book The Bound Man does a convincing job of detailing the bind that Barack Obama finds himself in as he runs for president. Steele views Obama as the most promising black candidate to ever run for president in U.S. history, certainly someone with more winning potential than prior black candidates such as Jessie Jackson in 1984 and Al Sharpton in 2004. Indeed, Steele argues Obama is distinguished from other black candidates because he chooses not to capitalize on race but instead he runs as an everyman who represents the fervent hope of the greater American public that blacks and whites can finally come together.

Obama's biracial heritage also brands him as unique compared to prior black candidates running for president. His mother who raised him is a white woman from Kansas so Obama is intimately familiar and comfortable in the world of whites. Raised by his Midwestern mother, grandmother and grandfather - all white - he was essentially raised exclusively in a white family first in Hawaii and later in Indonesia. On the other hand, his black Kenyan father who separated from his mother when Obama was two (they later divorced) left Barack Obama with a feeling of disconnection that has motivated a life-long quest to come to terms with his black roots. Steele insists that Obama's choice to work in community agencies in East St. Louis out of college as well as his decision to do civil rights law on the south side of Chicago after graduating from Harvard Law School are both examples of his efforts to come to terms with his black past and black identity.

Steele also makes the point that Obama is not someone who has gotten where he is through Affirmative Action and other entitlement programs. From early on when living in Indonesia where he spent his adolescence, his mother would get him up at 4:30 to go over lesson plans so he had the best education possible. At Harvard Law School, Obama also headed up the Harvard Law Review which is considered the pinnacle of success at that school and this was achieved solely through his own efforts and ability. So Obama represents a biracial black man who has become eminently successful through his hard work, intelligence and obvious charisma.

The bind that Steele believes Obama finds himself in is twofold. As an individual he struggles with a biracial identity which makes it difficult for him to feel fully at home in the world of whites or in the world of blacks. He is always the consummate outsider - a role that Steele identifies with as he is also a man who also grew up with a white mother and black father and has been a senior researcher at the very conservative, largely white think tank, the Hoover Institute at Stanford University since 1994.

But this individual bind pales in comparison to the larger societal bind Obama finds himself in. Steele argues convincingly that all blacks who achieve visibility in our culture do so by wearing certain masks. Since the post sixties, many black leaders, particularly in the political realm have worn the challenger mask. Challengers forever keep reminders of the history of white racism alive in an effort to promote and maintain the policies and consciousness of the ideals of the civil rights movement. By raising the specter of white racism in the white public and capitalizing on white guilt and white fears of being racist, challengers hope that whites will continue to promote and support affirmative action and other entitlement programs that seek to level the playing field left by the long history of white supremacy in this country. Common examples of challengers are many national leaders such as Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson and rappers such as Kanye West. In Steele's mind challengers never let whites off the hook for their guilt and generally take the stance that whites are guilty of racism until they prove themselves otherwise. For this reason, challengers tend to make whites somewhat nervous and while these challengers are generally respected, they are not always popular with the greater public. Today many blacks wear the challenger's mask and expect blacks in leadership positions to do the same. Yet for Obama to wear the challenger mask he risks losing the votes of whites and if he fails to wear it, he risks losing the votes of many blacks.

On the other hand, other successful blacks like Oprah Winfrey choose not to highlight race but instead wear the mask of the bargainer. Bargainers are blacks, according to Steele, who make a bargain with whites. By not highlighting race, they let whites off the hook for their guilt. As Steele describes this bargain it goes as follows: "I will not use America's horrible history of white racism against you if you will promise not to use my race against me." Other bargainers that Steele cites include Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Sidney Poitier - these are bargainers who the white public loves but Steele argues, they are loved because these men choose not to raise the issue of race in mixed company. Steele views Obama as the consummate bargainer but again, the bind Obama finds himself in is that he must be a bargainer to gain wide white support and yet he must appear to be a challenger in order to fully gain the trust of most blacks and win their votes.

In watching Obama in different contexts he addresses his audiences accordingly. When speaking to a group on the anniversary of the march on Selma, Obama dons the challenger's mask: "My very existence might not have been possible had it not been for some of the people here today. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama." On the other hand, addressing white audiences he dons the bargainer's mask as he talks generically of "change is coming" and of being the great "unifier." The tragedy, according to Steele, is that Obama is in an impossible bind which makes it difficult for him to authentically stand for anything. While all politicians are strategic, Steele argues that more than other candidates, Obama can never let you know who he really is and this could ultimately cost him the election. Other candidates may assume postures with certain audiences, but they can still reveal more of their inner beliefs and values. The difficulty for Obama is that he can never let his guard down.

Steele ends his book by summing up Barack Obama's predicament: "Obama's supporters do not look to him to DO something; they look to him primarily to BE something, to represent something. He is a bound man because he cannot BE two opposing worldviews at the same time - he cannot grant whites their racial innocence and simultaneously withhold it from them." In this dilemma, Obama has a Herculean task ahead of him and one that makes him far more vulnerable than a Hillary Clinton, a John Edwards, a John McCain or a Huckabee. For unlike his competitors, Obama has to carry the specter of race that whether he speaks of it or not, is with him every step of the way.

I admit that when I first saw this book at a bookstore, I was hooked by the title. Being an Obama supporter, I was curious to know why the author thought Obama "can't win" the presidency. I didn't buy the book, but I found it at a library and checked it out. It is interesting, well-written, and only takes a few hours to read. But I'm glad I didn't buy it.

The problem with this book is that the author never judges Obama on any grounds other than how he plays the racial game--unless you count a few offhand references to Obama being intelligent, talented, etc. So ironically, the "bound man" of the title turns out to be--as one reviewer here has already asserted--the author himself.

Steele does make a strong case for why Obama is walking such a fine line politically, as a black man who is trying to win over both blacks and whites in large enough numbers to win the presidency. He also provides some insight into why Obama chose Reverend Wright as his pastor, which is impressive considering that this book was written months before Reverend Wright was front page news. Steele's categorization of prominent black Americans as either "bargainers" or "challengers" also makes sense, and he is credible in spelling out the advantages and potential pitfalls of each of these approaches.

But unfortunately, the book is so limited in scope that it distorts Obama as well as those who support him. Has Steele even considered that some people may support Obama because he appears to be the most intelligent and the most level-headed of all the candidates? Some may even support him because his political views most closely match their own, which should not be so hard to believe considering that in the past few years the general public has turned against the Iraq War and has generally moved to the left. Like so many of Obama's detractors, Steele simultaneously accuses Obama of having a harmful political agenda and having no political agenda at all. These people would be more credible if they at least picked one or the other and stuck with it.

Meanwhile, Obama marches on, which makes me wonder if maybe he has figured something out that people like Steele have not. Or maybe Obama just happens to be a good enough candidate to win the election and to be an effective leader, regardless of the color of his skin. What a concept!

I've written a full-length review of A Bound Man which will be appearing online fairly soon so I obviously cannot reproduce any of it here; however, I wanted to recommend this book to amazon readers because it aptly describes the perspective many biracial Americans have towards themselves and their country. Shelby Steele is the perfect man to write such a book as he knows race and he also knows Barack Obama.

Yes, his central thesis--that Barack cannot win because he is forever bound by the need to appeal to blacks and whites simultaneously which thereby necessitates his not taking any real substantive positions--appears to be false. Even if my senator loses the nomination he has already proven his viability with the American electorate. Should Hillary pull off a miraculous comeback he'd be a winner anyway. He has demonstrated that there is a place in society for a prominent black leader as many Americans crave such a figure.

What is readily apparent, however, is that this man stands in complete opposition to the change he champions. An Obama presidency promises more statism, more taxation, more regulations, and no end to affirmative action--a foul practice which clearly is in violation of 1964 Civil Rights Act. It'll be more of the same...but worse. Like the views of Nancy Pelosi? Then you'll love Barack Obama.

Steele's discussion of Obama the man is incredibly interesting. He illustrates the way in which black Americans always wear a mask in society; a mask which takes one of two forms. First is the disguise of a "challenger" while the second is the beard of a "bargainer." Miles Davis wore the former while Obama wore the latter (as did Louie Armstrong). Bargainers trade their moral authority for success in society. They assure whites that they are not racist while whites in turn favor them with their patronage. Blacks sell off some of their moral authority in exchange for white largesse. They give whites the benefit of the doubt and do not accuse them of being racist. In turn, white guiltists are flattered and pleased to associate with them. Bill Cosby was a perfect example of such a bargainer. He treated his audience as his equals. He did not put America's racial history in their face and in exchange they became his fans. Later, when he made comments critical about urban blacks and the choices they make he lost his popularity. Whites were afraid to stand by him as they might be called racist as a result. Really, A Bound Man is a magnificent--but all too short--book. With the exception of his flattering depiction of Oprah, I can't say a bad thing about it.

Shelby Steele is a very clear thinker. He can cut through complex issues and recast them with a paragraph. He can also be very vague. Vague to a fault, I would argue, when it suits him. Exhibit A is the title of his 134 page dissection and diagnosis of both the man and political phenomenon that is Barack Obama. He calls it "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win." What he really means to say, however, is "Why We SHOULD'T Be Excited About Obama And Why He SHOULDN'T Win."

To be fair, Steele does offer brief, albeit sloppy, analysis on why he can't win. Blacks want a leader who challenges whites. Whites, even liberals, need a leader that, in Steele's words, "gives them the benefit of the doubt." Unable to be all things to all races, Steele predicts that Obama will eventually lose the backing of one or both of the races and no longer be viable. Really? John Kerry, hardly a "challenger" on issues of race, garnered nearly unanimous black support in 2004. There is nothing to suggest that Obama, even an Obama in "bargainer" mode (another of Steele's pet terms), won't enjoy unprecedented support and turnout among African Americans in a general presidential election. And, by the way, who did Bill Clinton ever challenge other than Sister Souljah?

No, Barack can win. And maybe that is why Steele wrote this book: to get a head start in the debate on his presidency. Or maybe it was because "White Guilt," Steele's 2004 book, was so underappreciated and under the radar. The ideas, the motivation and the thesis, behind "Guilt" are identical to those in the Obama book. In observing Obama, Steele has not found new inspiration or new insight, only a new foil.

Steele believes that African Americans spend too much energy on manipulating whites and not enough on issues of personal responsibility. For their part, whites are complicit in the distraction, burdened by the stigma of their history of racism, desiring moral legitimacy and innocence, and thus eager to shoulder the blame for the "achievement gap" between the races. Obama, in Steele's eyes, is not a revolutionary or even evolutionary figure, but rather the latest expression of the Faustian pact between the races in America, which has whites trading their guilt to blacks in exchange for their souls.

Little wonder that Steele has been cast as a polarizing figure in the ongoing racial dialogue, such as it is, in this country. But that is both unfair to Steele, who is a far more nuanced thinker than he is given credit for, and to the country, which is far more savvy than Steele realizes. I suspect few African Americans would disagree with his emphasis on personal responsibility. Most African Americans see little of value in white guilt. For his part, Steele never, not for a second, denies or downplays that the challenges facing blacks are the legacy of racism and centuries of brutal white supremacy. Nor does he deny that racism still exists. Steele does not break rank in his diagnosis, but rather in his prescription.

Steele is monomaniacal in his faith that anything but a focus on personal responsibility is a deadly distraction to the African American community. He tolerates no other form of remedy or redress. No Affirmative Action. No flirtations with black nationalism. No welfare. No black-themed dorms. Nothing but Bill Cosby on a stage lambasting the use of hip hop slang and the purchasing of expensive footwear.

I am not being facetious. It is Bill Cosby who Steele trots out in the waning chapters of "Bound," proclaiming him to be the most responsibility-focused black leader since Malcolm X. Steele argues that Cosby has been martyred by his focus on responsibility, stripped of his iconic status, by both blacks and whites. I am not sure I would go that far. But I do know that I would much rather have someone like Barack Obama as president. You can keep your visionaries with their master plans. I will take someone burdened by contradictions, bound by the past, but at the same time interested in new ways of looking at things. I guess I am conservative in that way.

Mr. Steele probably wrote this book two years ago. It was published a year ago. It is fascinating to see how the political landscape changed over that period of time. With hindsight we know that Mr. Steele's premise was wrong but it might be insightful to see how he came to the wrong conclusion with a certain number of facts and opinions. It would be if he had written a better book. The book is wordy and annoying. Mr. Steele clearly feels an affinity for Obama's background but was clueless about the team with which Obama surrounded himself, not to mention Obama's sensibilities and unique charisma. The result is a book that is now a historic relic.

Once again, Shelby Steele has written an embarrassingly honest book, one certain to alienate those dunces of our age, black, white, or mixed race, who find themselves, in fact, comfortably at home with the current, sad state of racial affairs in America. Steele tears away the veils of "polite" convention, exposing the leftover 60's postures of grievance industry blacks who thrive on separatist group thinking and reassuring, if exaggerated, ideas of continuing victimization; the questionable hunger of whites who value affirmations of their own racial innocence more than they do the integrity of individual character or institutions; and the oscillations of mixed race persons, now eager to demonstrate their "blackness," just as an earlier generation of masochistic screen heroines of mixed race sought "to pass as white."

Steele charges that none of these wholly conventional persons will admit an obvious truth, a truth by common consent never even mentioned, that - given the removal since the Civil Rights Movement of the major impediments to black success erected in earlier eras - black personal responsibility is today the principal key to black uplift and a new future for all Americans. Mentioning such a truth would be political suicide for any candidate like Obama, heavily dependent as he is on both black and white votes. Blacks would interpret his words as those, according to current standards, of someone "not black enough." Whites would resent his failure to play the expected, ingratiating reassurer granting them desired freedom from the stigma of the racist past. Further, Steele sees the attractive Obama himself as just one more wholly conventional man rather than in any sense "a revolutionary or a genuine reformer," one unfortunately "bound" by seeking merely to appease through words the expectations of both of his equally smug, conventional constituencies, and thus destined not to adequately please either. Were Obama to choose the honorable way out, the path of honest directness and authenticity of character, in the recent fashion of, say, Bill Cosby, he'd surely advance the cause of the Good, though he'd be even more certain to lose favor with today's close-minded electorate. Either way, he becomes the titular "bound man" of Steele's latest eye-opening volume.

Steele is a genuine disturber of complacency, and, as such, I expect he will receive no friendlier a welcome than his type is historically accorded. While it's true that today he wouldn't be offered a cup of hemlock, his views, following our current fashion, will most likely just be wholly ignored by those movers and shakers who need most to take them seriously and put them into action.

Although Shelby Steele's substantial intellect is on display in this book, read it as an example of a viewpoint about race and politics, and not as insight into Barack Obama specifically. Much of his views are valid for a biracial intellectual conservative growing up in the racial tension of Chicago in the 1950's like Shelby Steele did, and not valid for a biracial intellectual liberal growing up in the racial diversity of Honolulu and Indonesia in the late 60's & the 70's like Barack Obama. This is a book explaining why Shelby Stelle feels he is a bound man.

Obviously, Mr. Steele was more interested in selling his book than producing an objective and factual story line on Obama's chances of winning. Mr Steel was clearly more interested in giving red meat to the far right and gaining a seat at the neocon table with Limbaugh and Hannity than thoroughly researching the character and inspiration of Obama before rushing to publish a book that is NOW CLEALY DEBUNKED AND IRRELEVANT!

Steele wants this to be about blackness because that is Steele's intellectual raison d'ętre. Steele knows that Obama will never give voice to Steele's correct assessment that the solution for the black underclass lies in the awakening of personal responsibility, the progenitor of cultural change. No one could be elected president with this message and no one should run for president on a platform to fix the problems of the black underclass. Obama has wisely skirted this issue. What Steele misses is the fact that Obama is the epitome and symbol of personal responsibility. What Steele misses is that Obama has the potential to demonstrate the power of personal responsibility and the sea-change in white attitudes in the most significant way possible. Steele is missing history on this front. But this is a minor front when it comes to Obama's appeal. Steele so bound by the concepts he has created that he misses why Obama appeals to ALL VOTERS... his message is a break from the last 16 years of the Clinton and Bush machine, their antagonists and heir apparents. If John Edwards were black and Barak Obama were white, non-blacks would still be voting for Barak Obama. His message is powerful. Steele cannot admit this for this would pull the soapbox from beneath his feet.