From The New Yorker, September 8, 2008 - The Mail

At Selma, Martin Luther King, Jr., made a transition from nonviolence as a philosophy to nonviolence as a tactic. What Smiley, Glen Loury, and others need to understand is that Obama is asking African-Americans to make a similar transition in the twenty-first century. He is not asking us to give up our righteous anger; he’s simply asking us to consider the possibility that our anger may be the primary barrier to our progress. It is no longer our advantage to scare white people. On the streets of Chicago, Obama learned a basic lesson of the black South: you tell white folks only what you want them to know and you make it sound like what they want to hear.

Robert Hinton

Department of Social and Cultural Analysis

New York University

New York City

I don’t disagree with the premise that blacks scare white folks. I think it dates back to slavery. No matter how many times the white Southern Baptist minister preached that dark skin and slavery were the result of the evil and devilish nature of black Africans, in their hearts whites knew that the true evil was the institution of slavery and its inhumanity. Black skin, black nights, black deeds - all these connotations dredge up fear of the unknown and unknowable. Top that with the fear that God will require a retribution for the sin of slavery to be inflicted upon the white race instilled a irrational fear of blackness that lingers to this day.

For Mr. Obama’s sake, Robert Hinton should have left that reminder unsaid. It is difficult enough to move the conversation in America from race to less controversial, but no less important, issues facing America today. Mr. Obama cannot overcome his blackness but he can convince us that it is not important.