A Bound Man

A lot has transpired since Shelby Steele wrote A BOUND MAN--so much so that it's not clear whether the book is even relevant anymore. Steele's premise is that Barack Obama is caught between the two ways in which blacks have traditionally operated in the U.S.--by bargaining or challenging. But Obama's more recent pronouncements on race and racism, and the voting public's apparent comfort with them, seem to undermine some of Steele's strongest arguments. Richard Allen's narration is not one of his better efforts, in part because of what seems to be a slightly "hot" microphone. While clear, Allen's voice sometimes seems tinny and artificially fast. J.B.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

October 8, 2007
Why we are excited: Obama is a talented, charismatic politician and living proof that whites have welcomed blacks into the mainstream. Why he can't win: He's still mired in an ideology of racial victimhood and separatism that Steele (White Guilt
), a Hoover Institution fellow and, like Obama, the son of a black father and white mother, deplores in this stimulating, conservative critique. Obama's conflict over his mixed parentage and abandonment by his father, the author argues, engenders a need to prove his racial authenticity by accommodating a black identity politics that, while it energizes his African-American base, risks alienating white voters. Worse, as president Obama might reflexively support affirmative action and government initiatives to help African-Americans, instead of emphasizing the self-reliance, individual responsibility and avid assimilation that Steele contends are the only remedies for the black community's problems. The author's tendency to psychologize Obama's policy agenda sometimes overreaches. Still, the book is full of fresh insights into the cultural politics of race; Steele's analysis of Louis Armstrong and Oprah Winfrey as “iconic Negroes” granting moral absolution to whites, for example, is a tour de force.

May 1, 2008
This book attempts to examine the role of race in the current political presidential run but fails miserably. Steele ("White Guilt") is a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford University, so the book carries a clear bias. The child of a mixed-race marriage, like U.S. Senator Barack Obama himself, he mentions early on the damage he believes has been caused by affirmative action. The author's assumption that black and white Americans both like Obama because of an inherent "agreement" that he will not bring up America's tortured, racist past if we will not hold his race against him is ludicrous and ignores the 15-year gap in their ages; times have indeed changed. He does make one interesting point a few times when he talks about Bill Cosby and how "The Cosby Show"'s popularity perpetuated this "agreement." Had Steele left Obama out of his argument and focused extensively on the history of being black in America, this audiobook would have been an interesting listen. Reader Richard Allen does a marvelous job with the limited material; his voice is the only redeeming feature about this mess of a book. Not recommended. [Steele won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in 1990 for "The Content of Our Character; Bound Man" is also available as downloadable audio.Ed.]Jesse M. Light, Memorial Hall Lib., Andover, MA

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