Obama's Choice

Something quoted by Instapundit from TalkLeft

One understands why [the problem with Wright's rhetoric] might not seem obvious to black people of a certain age: Condi Rice, for example, has childhood memories of a segregated south and racial violence. But that's what makes Obama's association with Wright so significant. He's not from Alabama. He's a biracial middle-class Kenyan-Kansan Hawaiian-born Indonesian-raised Columbia and Harvard graduate who chose to immerse himself in the most corrosive and paranoid end of a racial-grievance ghetto mentality that is nothing to do with him, his family or his upbringing. He doesn't have the same excuse as a Jackson, Sharpton or Farrakhan.

His excuse is political calculation gone awry. A highly ambitious Obama took what he judged to be his best path to political power and higher office: As a black politician with a base in the black community of South Chicago. It was a matter of political expediency, but now that path is devouring him from behind.

In a better world, having a white mother and a black father would make it equally possible to function in either community. In fact, Obama, like Condi Rice and Colin Powell, has the credentials and personal presence to have succeeded in a race-neutral way, given sufficient time and effort. He decided instead to take the easier, quicker road of riding on black identity and pandering to that "racial-grievance ghetto mentality." That's an excellent way to become the black senator from Chicago's southside, but that's all. At least that would be the prediction if one could have assumed anything close to due diligence by our national media.

Byron