A bound man
Subtitle: why we are excited about Obama and why he can't win
By: Shelby Steele
Edition: 1st Free Press hardcover ed.
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 143
ISBN-13: 9781416559177
Subjects: Politics and government; USA / Präsident; Race relations; African Americans; Rassenbeziehung; Presidents; Campagnes; Öffentliche Meinung; Kandidat; Präsidentenwahl; Public opinion; Election; Presidential candidates; Political aspects; Presidentskandidaten
Description: Award-winning author Steele attests that Senator Barack Obama's groundbreaking quest for the highest office in the land is fast becoming a galvanizing occasion beyond mere presidential politics, one that is forcing a national dialogue on the current state of race relations in America. Says Steele, poverty and inequality usually are the focus of such dialogues, but Obama's bid for so high an office pushes the conversation to a more abstract level where race is a politics of guilt and innocence generated by our painful racial history--a kind of morality play between (and within) the races in which innocence is power and guilt is impotence. Steele maintains that Obama is caught between the two classic postures that blacks have always used to make their way in the white American mainstream: bargaining and challenging; and proposes a way for him to break these bonds and find his own voice.--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: The high possibility; title: Plausibility; title: Search for the father; title: Becoming an authentic black; title: Belonging; title: Two Women; title: Masking; title: Bargaining and challenging; title: The iconic Negro; title: Born to bargain; title: Bind I : the discipline; title: Bind II : is he black enough?; title: "The visible man."