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Is It Going to Be Race and Resentment — All the Time? [Victor Davis Hanson]
NRO Corner ^ | June 04, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 06/04/2009 9:03:35 AM PDT by Tolik

Michelle Obama is now weighing in on the Sotomayor nomination, and I think it will prove a serious political mistake, since she is reverting back to her "me too" campaign mode, in that she emphasizes both race and the anonymous "they" who are not nice or not sufficiently accommodating to the Other.

So Michelle Obama describes the fear that Sotomayor felt at Princeton — and its lasting effects to this day — and then compares it, of course, to Michelle's own ambiguous feelings toward the same Princeton campus (cf. Michelle's thesis for the details), that one is willing to put up with for the education and prestige it gave, but does not really like for the presence of apparently so many stuck-up, rich, preppy kids and their ubiquitous exclusive campus culture. 

Three or four observations:

  1. Many Americans were terrified about our first year in college. Some left farms for sophisticated urban environments and were lost; others were the first in their families to go to colleges, and so on. The Ivy League is by definition snobbish to all outside its traditional insular orbit, whether white, black, brown, country folk, foreigners, etc. But by predicating such common discomfort on their own race and gender, Ms. Obama and Judge Sotomayor deprecate a universal human experience, and instead claim it as something unique to identity politics;
  2. Once more we see the schizophrenia of affirmative action, diversity, and identify politics — the university is both obliged to select students on the basis, at least in part, of race, class, and gender, but then almost immediately faulted for a climate that, in the eye of the recipient, stigmatizes those to whom it gives unusual consideration (what is the answer? — no race/class/gender consideration at all?; constant race/class/gender consideration that begins at admission and continues through graduation?; damned if you do, damned if you don't?);
  3. And the remedy for feeling separate at elite colleges is apparently to reemphasize separatism based on identification with the tribe (e.g., Justice Sotomayor's senior thesis, like that once written by Ms. Obama, is predicated on ethnic and racial grievance).
All this should disturb Democrats because it fuels a general and growing perception (cf. Sotomayor's white-male references, Eric Holder's "cowards" remark, the serial Obama apologies abroad, the confusion about America being an important Muslim nation, etc.) among the public that something very strange is going on — a sort of generic anger being expressed at the highest levels of government that seems fueled by long past resentments against a perceived establishment that at times apparently is to roughly characterized as white, or white male, or rich, or Christian, or something other than poor, of color, or of female?

One would have thought with the presidency, or nomination to the Supreme Court, or with the office of Attorney General, or First Lady, such hurt feelings and old grievances might wane; but instead the resentment seems to be ubiquious, and growing, and the lectures will be with us for the next four years in almost every imaginable circumstance. If the administration is not careful, millions of Americans are going to begin feeling that they are caricatured pretty much as those once were in rural Pennsylvania



TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: aliens; amnesty; bho44; immigration; michelleobama; race; sotomayor; vdh; victordavishanson
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To: Tolik
Is It Going to Be Race and Resentment — All the Time?

Of course it is. Why deviate from a winning formula?

21 posted on 06/04/2009 10:01:42 AM PDT by surely_you_jest
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To: wastoute

Absolutely. It’s a shame, but I don’t talk to my brother anymore...once a year at Christmas is all. And my racial-card-playing sis-in-law never spoke to me so that is no loss.


22 posted on 06/04/2009 11:55:43 AM PDT by fleagle ( An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -Winston Churchill)
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To: Tolik

24/7 until we have regime change..


23 posted on 06/04/2009 1:15:45 PM PDT by sheik yerbouty ( Make America and the world a jihad free zone!)
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To: Tolik
Is It Going to Be Race and Resentment — All the Time?

As long as it's politically expedient, at least.

24 posted on 06/04/2009 1:53:15 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: Sig Sauer P220

That was really a great vignette in that South Park episode.


25 posted on 06/04/2009 2:00:28 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Mr. Bernanke, have you started working on your book about the second GREATER depression?")
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To: fleagle

Thanks. Isn’t this all a shame? I think race relations are being set back 50 years by the Obamas and their snide remarks and their obvious prejudices. Just goes to prove that you can take the person out of the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the person. What a sorry situation that could have been so much better with someone above being spiteful and hateful in the WH.


26 posted on 06/04/2009 5:09:39 PM PDT by CitizenM ("An excuse is worse than an lie, because an excuse is a lie hidden." Pope John Paul, II)
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To: Tolik

bookmark
Please add me to the VDH ping list, thanks!


27 posted on 06/04/2009 8:51:23 PM PDT by FBD (My carbon footprint is bigger then yours)
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To: CitizenM

Once a person is invested in all things racial, there is so little (read: none) chance for them to ever get out of that mindset. The Obamas quite obviously have that negative, victim mentality. We’ve seen it from the very beginning and it’s excused; mostly by those harboring liberal white guilt.


28 posted on 06/05/2009 3:43:39 AM PDT by fleagle ( An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -Winston Churchill)
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To: fleagle
You are exactly right. Which is why the Obamas keep pushing that victim mentality down the throats of African/Americans and any Whites that are burdened by guilt. That is their strategy, so that they can maintain control. I refuse to feel guilty...I have never been racist, my family never owned slaves or was even here during the Civil War period. How can we be at fault for something that we had no part of or in, and to this day have never been prejudiced?

What I am angry about is that Obama and others like him who have grabbed that "make Americans feel guilty," cause are letting their own race become more frowned upon than ever.

Remember when Obama spoke to a crowd of blacks during the election and told them their brains were not as good as the brains of the white people because they did not have the same skill to handle information (or something like that)? He made fools of all of them, and they still never even realized it. He does the same when he claims how much help they need, how dependent they are on the govt. etc. He is belittling them, in essence saying they cannot do for themselves. It is an Obamanation!

If I were a Black person I would feel so insulted by him and his wife and those who use the Black people for their own political careers and egos.

29 posted on 06/05/2009 8:44:40 AM PDT by CitizenM ("An excuse is worse than an lie, because an excuse is a lie hidden." Pope John Paul, II)
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To: CitizenM

When the individual succeeds it does not serve the Democrat platform, which is built on sloth, bad choices, and dependency. What if every individual succeeded? The Dems would lose everything. How anyone could be a member of a party so invested in defeat; in war, in initiative, in decision-making...it boggles the mind.


30 posted on 06/05/2009 11:13:40 AM PDT by fleagle ( An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -Winston Churchill)
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To: Tolik

About the Michele Obama thesis —is it legal to print someone’s thesis and sell it as a book? I guess she would have to give her approval.


31 posted on 06/06/2009 5:45:17 PM PDT by cradle of freedom (Long live the Republic !)
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