The Upside of Obama

OK, I'll grant this much. Symbolism as substance. "The Upside of Obama: Will he end white liberal guilt?" Mark Goldblatt, NRO:

Ironies abound. The most bitter is that a disproportionate number of foreclosures have affected black homeowners, because they were riskier buyers to begin with. But the most profound is that the fiscal crisis precipitated decades ago by the Community Reinvestment Act has contributed decisively to the election of the first black president, Barack Obama.

Many conservatives are licking their psychic wounds at the moment, but an Obama presidency may yet wind up as a healthy development — if it forces us to confront the ways in which white liberal guilt has warped our political landscape for the last four decades, especially since the primary victims have proven, time and again, to be blacks.

Read it all.