Obama vs. Wright on Race

Thomas Sowell has an interesting take on the differences between Barack Obama and his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. Sowell believes that Wright whips up resentment while Obama sells a sense of entitlement, but both are telling basically the same story:

The difference between Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright is that they are addressing different audiences, using different styles adapted to those audiences.

It is a difference between upscale demagoguery and ghetto demagoguery, playing the audience for suckers in both cases.

Sowell, who is a black man from Harlem, tells three random stories:

• South Korean schoolgirls studying 15 hours a day to get into top colleges;
  
• a Harvard classmate who refused to ask his parents for new shoes he needed but that they couldn't afford;
  
• a childhood friend who literally spit food out of his mouth when he realized it was given to him out of charity.

He ties them together thusly:

People on the far left like to flatter themselves that they are for the poor and the downtrodden. But what is most likely to lift people out of poverty-- telling them that the world has done them wrong or promoting the work ethic of the Korean girls, the dogged determination of my Harvard classmate with the newspaper in his shoe, or the self-reliance of my fellow junior high school student in Harlem who had too much pride to take charity?

Be sure to check out the article.