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Shelby Steele on Why Barack Obama Cannot Win

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Shelby Steele on Racial Masking

07 min 21 sec

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Shelby Steele explains racial masking, a major premise behind his new book A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win. Steele references Louis Armstrong as an example.
Barack Obama's Achilles' Heel

04 min 17 sec

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Hoover Fellow and author Shelby Steele identifies what he believes to be Barack Obama's Achilles' heel.
The Obama Paradox

05 min 43 sec

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Shelby Steele identifies the racial transcendence paradox in the Obama campaign having more to do with the white voting base than with Obama himself. Steele asserts that while Barack Obama does not typically address race in his campaign, his candidacy is based entirely on it.
Is Obama Too General on the Issues?

04 min 05 sec

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Hoover Fellow and author Shelby Steele answers if Obama's generality on particular issues is a result of racial masking, or if Obama is simply a skilled politician.
Barack Obama's Mix-Raced Heritage

04 min 06 sec

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Hoover Fellow and author Shelby Steele discusses why he believes Barack Obama has betrayed himself by not publicizing his white heritage.
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01 hr 10 min 03 sec

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There are 15 comments on this program

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Previous FORAtv comments:

Page 1 of 2

shorshor

Posted: 09.05.09, 01:18 PM

> Why Barack Obama Cannot Win Yeah, right, that Obama guy couldn't win and we now enjoy the peaceful and wise rule of President McCain

danthemango

Posted: 01.18.09, 03:47 AM

he's right in the sense, that more white people voted for him than blacks, but it was not really relevant. I noticed hardly anybody knew he was black for the first year or so, then when his momentum grew, that's when people noticed

msharmanos

Posted: 12.17.08, 10:50 PM

Steele argued that "Obama is too constrained by divisive racial politics to find his own true political voice" in January 2008. He was proven wrong by the Philadelphia speech exactly two months later. After the campaign, Steele alluded to the subtitle of his book as "a marketing device." But he still maintains the argument that Obama won by donning the "bargainer's mask." I wonder what it takes for someone to be proven so thoroughly wrong to get it?

Morgan

Posted: 11.09.08, 04:48 PM

Seeing as Obama has been elected in a landslide; I've been having a lot of fun the last few days listening to and reading scholarly dissertation-esque lectures on why Obams couldn't possible win. Just one more reason why I don't automaticaly trust the word of authority. On any matter. You always have to question it.

Invictus_88

Posted: 11.08.08, 07:16 AM

Hohoho.

krystalkelley

Posted: 11.07.08, 11:17 AM

I wonder what Shelby Steele has to say now that Barak has been elected president of the United States?

bapyou

Posted: 11.06.08, 10:22 PM

I hate to gloat, but...what the hell. Hey Steele! Nya nya nyanya nya!

ruiz1707

Posted: 11.06.08, 09:30 PM

A constructive critique is a favor to the one who is beeing criticised. Steele´s prediction might have been wrong: this was a totally new campaign, on both sides red or blue. But there is substance in Steele´s observations and any smart person would take a good note of it to see beyond circumstances . That these circumstances are historical make it even more important.

sophtwarez

Posted: 11.06.08, 01:49 PM

It would be really interesting if Steele performed an act of intellectual honesty and wrote about what the victory of Obama means to his rigid framework for race relations in America. As George Will wrote not too long after the book came out, Steele's elaborate framework is based on a misunderstanding of Obama's identity which, unlike his, is not obsessed with a binary perspective (white/black) of race. I wonder if Steele, in his act of intellectual honesty, could track the steps of Obama in a multiracial Hawaii and the foreign diversity of Indonesia to see whether his fixation on black masking applies to the young people that grow up today without the torment of history. But I suspect, as his post election column in the LA Times reveals, a large part of this book (besides the "Obama" title which surely helped publicize and monetize) had to do with differences in political ideology - Steele's of course as a conservative. Honesty is difficult, especially when one has to admit they are wrong, but I'm hoping there are enough conservative values in Steele to make this more of a value than the royalty dollars from his book.

revokin

Posted: 10.25.08, 08:32 AM

Mr.Steele is fast becoming an anachronism.His agonizing over racism is not shared by new generations of Americans who have moved beyond black and white, masks, guilt, and anything else he identifies as being part of the separation of people because of color. Younger Americans are connecting on a human level that has no relevance to skin pigmentation.Their children of mixed race are just children and are not living with all the old labels Mr.Steele identifies for Oprah,Cosby,Jordan etc.These labels don't apply to Obama either and Americans don't see his race but se his face-his real face,the only face he has.He doesn't need anything else,doesn't want anything else and wouldn't know what to do with it if he had it. Mr.Steele hasn't caught up with any of this yet, and discusses Obama like he discusses Cosby. Americans are rapidly reaching a place where "uncle tom" means nothing anymore and kowtowing to whites by blacks doesn't happen because it belongs to a forgotten past.This is rapidly happening in an America being changed by so many racial ethnicities,color is just swept aside.

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