Sowell's column is well worth reading. Some snippets:
Barack Obama’s own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far-left fringe. In college, “I chose my friends carefully,” he said in his first book, "Dreams From My Father". . .
In Shelby Steele’s brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama — A Bound Man — it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying
to become a convert to blackness, as it were — and, like many converts, he went overboard.
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the U.S. Senate is the furthest left of any Senator. There is a remarkable consistency in what Barack Obama has done over the years, despite inconsistencies in what he says. . .
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the Left to the Far Left. That’s bringing us all together?
Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have.