Race according to Ideology, not Color

Victor Davis Hansen has another brilliant observation concerning Reverend Wright up at his PJ Media Blog.

Rice and Thomas

I was suprised that almost no one has commented on Wright’s slurs against Justice Thomas (“Clarence Colon” ) and Secretary Rice (Con-damn-nesia”). Neither Obama nor any prominent African-American voiced outrage. Why? The two most powerful African-Amerians in public service are an apparent embarrassment to their own communities, due to their ties to conservatives. In other words, in the Ward Churchillian mode, one is not necessarily as much African-American by race as by ideology;thus a half-white Obama of African heritage, who experienced far less prejudice than the older, darker, and African-American Thomas, is the more authentic African-American because of his leftist Chicago politics and his patronage of the fiery Wright

This has real repercussions for future racial relations. Since the liberal left has been able to dictate to the African-American population that a particular leftwing philosophy is essential to one’s genuine (as opposed to false) identity.

The fact that Clarence Thomas almost certainly was subject to more prejudice during his life than Obama is of no concern to Reverend Wright. He is not speaking for the black man, he is speaking for the anti-conservative black man, i.e. himself. Any attempt by Obama to describe Wright's comments as typical black resentment are ridiculous, because there are successful blacks who have endured significantly more hardships in their lives than the Senator, yet they seemingly do not hold any of these resentments.