Bill Moyers Journal

by Bill Moyers

  Suppose Thomas Cahill is reincarnated a thousand years from now and decides to resume writing the Hinges of History series. What would be, as of now, the defining characteristic of the American society you would write about in the twentieth and twenty-first century?

  That all societies have a dream and a nightmare. And our nightmare has been our racism. We practically committed genocide on the people who already were here, the Native Americans. We enslaved another race of people, the Africans. And then we dropped the atom bomb on Asians. We would have never dropped that bomb in Europe, in my view. That’s the nightmare of America.

  The dream of America is enunciated by the great speech by Martin Luther King. The dream is that there is no country on earth that has tried to embrace all the people that we have tried to embrace. All you have to do is walk through New York City to see that, or any of our cities and not a few of our countrysides. We could be called the most racist. Or we could be called the least. We are both. And it always remains a tension and a question as to which side of us, the good side or the bad side, will win out in the end.

  SHELBY STEFLE

  No one saw Barack Obama’s quandary more clearly than Shelby Steele. Like Obama, he was born to a black father and a white mother, and early on faced the challenge—and sometime ordeal—of living with a complex identity. Unlike Obama, Steele moved to the right, a self-described black conservative who opposed affirmative action and called on African Americans to renounce using victimization as a means toward advancement by stoking white guilt; better, wrote Steele, that blacks replace “set-asides and entitlements” with “a culture of excellence and achievement.”

  Now a black politician had emerged who seemed tailored to Steele’s dream, a candidate who “is interesting for not fitting into old racial conventions. Not only does [Obama] stand in stark contrast to a black leadership with which Americans of all races have gro wn exhausted—the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Julian Bond—he embodies something that no other presidential candidate can: the idealism that race is but a negligible human difference.”

  Nonetheless, Steele titled his book about the candidate A Bound Man, and subtitled it Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win. It appeared late in 2007, months before Obama clinched his party’s nomination. Steele described the Democrat as “caught between two classic postures that blacks have always used to make their way in the white American mainstream : bargaining and challenging.”

  But even before the endgame, and the misread tea leaves of his book’s subtitle notwithstanding, Steele thought Obama might negotiate a third way, break the old molds, and cast himself “as the perfect antidote to America’s corrosive racial politics.” It was an intriguing analysis from a notable conservative, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who was presented the National Humanities Award by President George W. Bush in 2004 and who won the National Book Critics Circle Award with his bestseller The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America.

  —Bill Moyers

  The subtitle of your book is Why We Are Excited About Obama. Are you rooting for him?

  I can’t say that. You know, our politics are probably different. But I’m proud of him. And I’m happy to see him out there. He’s already made an important contribution to American politics.

  But you go on to say why he can’t win. That would seem to suggest you don’t think he can become president.

  Part of the infatuation with Obama is because he’s something of an invisible man. He’s kind of a projection screen. And you sort of see the better side of yourself when you look at Obama, more than you actually see Barack Obama.

  You say that his supporters want him not to do something but to be something. What do you think they want him to be?

  I think, to be very blunt about it, in a lot of that support is a desire for convergence of a black skin with the United States presidency, with power on that level. The idea is that to have a black in that office leading a largely white country would be redemptive for America, would indicate that we truly have moved away from that shameful racist past that we had.

  That’s perfectly logical, isn’t it? And desirable?

  Yes, it is. I want it.

  You say in this book that white people like Barack Obama a little too much for the comfort of many blacks. Why?

  Well, the black American identity, certainly black American politics, is grounded in what I call “challenging.” They look at white America and say, “We’re going to presume that you’re a racist until you prove otherwise.” You keep whites on the hook, you keep the leverage, you keep the pressure. Here’s a guy who’s what I call a “bargainer,” who’s giving whites the benefit of the doubt.

  Give me a simple definition of what you call a “bargainer.” And a simple definition of what you call a “challenger.”

  A bargainer is a black who enters the white American mainstream by saying to whites, in effect, in some code form, “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me.” Whites then respond with enormous gratitude, and bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the ’60s and so forth. They give whites this benefit of the doubt. You can be with these people and not feel that you’re going to be charged with racism at any instant, so they tend to be very successful, very popular. On the other hand, say challengers, “I presume that this institution, this society is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference”—affirmative action, diversity programs, opportunities of one kind or another. And so there is a much more concrete bargaining with the challengers. Go into any American institution today and they’re all used to dealing with challengers. They all have a whole system of things that they can give to challengers, who then will offer absolution. We’ll say, “This institution is vetted now. It’s not racist anymore.”

  One of the worst things that can happen to you in this country is to be charged with being racially biased.

  You never get over it. In your obituary, it’ll be the first line. And there’s almost no redemption. The good side of that is that it makes the point of how intense this society is in its desire to overcome racism and its past.

  On the other hand, the bad side of it is that it has become a form of cruelty. All you’re doing is terrifying whites. We’ve underestimated the power of this. Our institutions live under this threat of being stigmatized as racist, and they’re almost panicked over it. Whites know to never tell blacks what you really think and what you really feel because you risk being seen as a racist. And the result is that, to a degree, we as blacks live in a bubble. Nobody tells us the truth. Nobody tells us what they would do if they were in our situation. Nobody really helps us. They use us, they buy their own innocence with us, but they never tell us the truth. And we need to be told the truth very often. America is a great society, a great country, the world’s greatest society in many ways. Those same values will work for blacks. They will help us join the mainstream, become a part of it. But whites can’t say that because then they seem to be judgmental. They’re seen as racist. And so no one says it to us.

  Some whites think that Obama is a way out of all of that, that he will bring an American redemption. And whites are very happy for that bargain and show gratitude and even affection for bargainers. Oprah Winfrey is the classic bargainer who also has a kind of magic about her. That I think again reflects the aspirations of white America.

  But she never challenges white America.

  No. She makes you feel that this aspiration is possible, that it’s real. White American women love Oprah. She makes them feel that way.

  Bill Cosby did that.

  But he made a big mistake, Bill Cosby. The last few years he has been saying what he thinks. One of the ironclad rules for bargainers is they can never tell you what they actually think and feel. They can never reveal
their deep abiding convictions, because the minute they do that, they’re no longer an empty projection screen. They become an individual, and whites begin to say, “Well, I didn’t know you felt that way. I didn’t know you believed that.” And the aura dissipates. If Barack Obama starts to say, “I really think there’s a value to racial preferences even though it conflicts with equality under the law,” that’s a little too revealing of who he might really be.

  So you’re saying he cannot serve the aspirations of one race without antagonizing the other?

  That’s right. They’re two different agendas. And so his answer is to remain invisible as much as possible.

  What do you mean invisible? Because he’s all over television.

  But if you listen to his speeches—change, hope—it’s kind of an empty mantra. What change? Change from what to what? What direction do you want to take the country? What do you mean by hope? There’s never any specificity because specificity is dangerous to a bargainer.

  You also say he has a nuanced view of whites, and that that’s a problem for some blacks. Why is it a problem to have a nuanced view of other people? I think that’s what we all should have.

  Well, then we’ve let whites off the hook. If you want to make blacks angry, start letting whites off the hook. Start saying that they’re not all inherently racist. The fact that we can charge them with racism and have some degree of credibility is black power. So when somebody like Obama comes along, in their eyes he is undermining the power of his own people by having an open mind toward whites, saying, “I’m going to presume you’re not racist. I’m going to believe in the better part of you.” And so he flatters whites in that sense. Boy, you know, Al Sharpton doesn’t do that.

  You point out that the first thing that Barack Obama usually tells you about himself is that he was born to a white mother and a black father. Isn’t that part of his political appeal, that he transcends both black and white?

  The fact that he has a white mother signals to white Americans that he has to give them the benefit of the doubt. He knows in the most intimate way that not all whites are racist, that you have to go individual by individual. Instinctively, white Americans perceive that in him and feel comfortable.

  You had a white mother.

  I had a white mother and a black father as well. I’m older than Obama, grew up in segregation, and certainly had a different experience than he did. Here’s a kid being raised in an apartment in Hawaii by a white mother and two white grandparents, with no connection either to his father as a father or to a racial identity. One of the themes, I think, that comes out of his first book, Dreams from My Father, is almost an obsession with establishing himself as an authentic black, of achieving a sense of belonging. I empathize with that. I went through a bit of that myself.

  You say that children of interracial unions often live under a degree of suspicion. Why?

  I can remember in the ’60s, if your mother was white, your mother was the enemy.

  And you were collaborating with the enemy.

  By birth, you were collaborating. At the very least, there was a sense that you’re going to have to prove yourself a little more than the rest of us.

  Was there a moment you claimed blackness as your identity, that you definitively made that choice?

  This is, I think, a difference in my case than Obama’s. Growing up in segregation, you didn’t get the choice. The “one drop” rule applied: one drop of black blood and you’re black. That’s what kept the wall between whites and blacks. So I was raised with absolutely no ambiguity about that.

  Where?

  On the South Side of Chicago.

  Where Obama eventually became an organizer. But he was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, because his mother moved there. You think that environment made a different choice for him.

  It probably gave him a much more intense need to belong than I had. On the other hand, that background accounts for this fine, successful, highly educated, polished young man that we see running for president today.

  I’ve read Dreams from My Father, and it was very powerful. He’s just a child, four-thirty in the morning, his mother gets him out of bed out there in Hawaii or in Indonesia, and she makes him study, she makes him read.

  She made him who he was. That’s right.

  His biography seems to be his platform.

  But then he turns around and says that maybe things are so desperate for blacks that they don’t need this model, that they can rely on black nationalism and blackness. Maybe it will give them—he uses the word—an “insularity” out of which they can feel proud. Well, which is it? Is it your mama or is it black nationalism who’s responsible for you being here? I want to know. What evidence do you have that black nationalism works? You know that what your mother did works. Why don’t you give her credit? Why don’t you build a politics out of that?

  Who did it for you?

  My mother and my father. Period. I went to wretched segregated schools that were abusive. And then I saw something else. I saw my mother organize that little community and shut that school down and boycott that school. So I saw that there’s a place for collective action. It can work. They made it a better school. I’m here solely because of my mother and my father.

  Describe what whites see in Obama.

  Barack Obama is the first black American to bring bargaining into the political arena. Barack Obama is saying, I’m going to treat you as though you’re not a racist. And I’m going to simply ask you to treat me as though I’m not black. Treat me just as an individual. Well, it’s a nice bargain. But boy, does it make blacks nervous. Our blackness is our power—we think. I don’t think it is. But that’s the delusion, I think.

  What is your power?

  I think our power is the same as it is for anybody, any other group—the collective energies, the imagination of the individuals within the group. We’re no better than what our individuals achieve. Identity should be the result of effort and achievement. It’s not an agent. It’s not going to bring you there.

  But you can’t escape a part of your identity, because it is about, as you say, blood and color.

  You can’t escape it. And I certainly don’t want to escape it. I am black and happy to be so. But my identity is not my master. I’m my master. And I resent this, you know, civil rights leadership telling me what I should think and what issues I should support this way or that way. In black America, identity has become almost totalitarian.

  That’s a very strong word. What do you mean?

  That you subscribe to the idea that the essence of blackness is grounded in grievance. And if you vary from that, you are letting whites off the hook. And we’re going to call you a sellout. We’re going to call you an Uncle Tom.

  At the same time you write, “When someone tells me that I am not really black, I hear their words as ... a little attempted murder.” What are they killing in you?

  They’re taking away something that is sacred to me—I look at the history of my people, and coming from that kind of oppression, it’s glorious. In just the last century, we’ve created a literature that is on a par with the literature of many nations. We transformed music all over the world. This, from this relatively small group of truly oppressed people. So I’m proud of that. And you get a little sense of superiority.

  Well deserved, I think.

  Yes.

  So how is it that to be, as you say, a “true” black involves, and I’m quoting you, “a slight corruption ... a little habit of self-betrayal”? Explain that to me so that I can understand how you feel about it.

  In order to be black, if I’m going to fit myself into the current identity, I’m going to have to betray impulses, desires, certain aspirations in myself as an individual in order to squeeze myself into this identity, which is, again, grounded in grievance. Maybe I, as an individual, don’t believe that’s the biggest problem that I face. But I’ve got to pretend that it’s the biggest problem that I face in order to stay inside the group. St
ay inside the church, as we say. And I’m going to be a backslider if I start to say grievance is really not the central thing.

  You say in your book that to be black means you have to wear a mask. Do you wear a mask?

  All of this work that you see here came about because I got exhausted with the pressure from whites and blacks to wear a mask.

  What kind of mask were you expected to wear?

  I was in academia, I was expected to be a challenger: “You should have a chip on your shoulder. You should be angry. If you’re not, you’re going to take the pressure off this institution and we’ll lose. That chip on your shoulder is our power as a minority group.” Well, I just got completely fed up with that, and again, the self-betrayal that it continued to force me into. I began to understand, it was going to be me or the group. And I was going to have a life or I was just going to be a kind of surrogate for blackness. And it was very difficult—I was scared to death, because I knew the price that that one would pay for that.

  And that price is?

  I don’t want to overdramatize this or seem to be playing the violin. But you enter a kind of exile where the group identifies you as someone who is a threat. And part of being black is despising or having contempt for people like me, for people who refuse to wear the mask.

  I can understand that in the context of the ’60s, black power, the ’70s, and in the ’80s with the Reagan revolution—anyone like you who supported the Reagans, the conservative movement in this country, was called an Uncle Tom. But today, it seems to me—and I may be naive about this—that Obama is the result of a transformation of race in this country, so that you’re no longer penalized for being a black conservative.

  Oh, boy.

  Am I wrong?

  I think so. It’s no accident that 92 percent of blacks vote Democratic in every presidential election no matter what. The black identity is with liberal politics and the Democratic Party. If you’re not a Democrat, you’re not altogether black.