Forbes prints this conversation with Steele.
How did it feel to Steele to watch Obama, a man whose experience was in so many ways like his own, elected president? “It hurt,” Steele says. “He stands for nothing that I stand for.”
Steele’s analysis of the Obama campaign.
To whites, Obama promised a way to blot out the stigma of the past.
“If I vote for Obama and he becomes the president,” Steele believes
millions of whites reasoned, “then I’m not racist and this is not a
racist country.” To blacks, Obama offered a way to blot out a stigma of
their own. “The stigma that blacks have lived under,” says Steele, “is
that we’re inferior. If Obama gets to be the most powerful man on the
planet, how can we be inferior?”Obama thus involved whites and blacks alike in the same
inherent contradiction. Conscious that they yearned to rise above race,
he persuaded them to vote for him because of the color of his skin.
