A bound man

Shelby Steele, a writer who has received awards, argues that Senator Barack Obama's historic run for the presidency is doing more than shaping an election. In his view, the campaign is prompting the country to rethink where race relations stand today. Steele notes that conversations about race usually center on poverty and inequality. Obama's candidacy lifts that discussion into a more abstract register, where race becomes a system of guilt and innocence rooted in the nation's painful history. Steele describes it as a moral drama playing out between and within racial groups, in which innocence brings power and guilt brings powerlessness.

Steele contends that Obama faces the two strategies Black Americans have long relied on to move through the white mainstream: bargaining and confronting. He argues that Obama is pulled between these two postures. The book also offers a path for Obama to escape that bind and speak in his own voice.