This half-Luo tribesman from Hawaii whose African father had no connection whatsoever with the West African ancestors of American slaves, was not imbued, but rather hued, with significance. His melanin carried the meaning, which is to say that he was judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character, in a precise reversal of Martin Luther King Jr’s famous phrase.

America’s African Americans, who have failed to produce a credible leader in the two generations since the Civil Rights Act of 1965, broke America’s last color bar, hailed this carpetbagger as a savior. For a generation of white liberals raised on the notion that skin-color aversion is the original sin of American politics, the confusion is understandable. The African Americans in attendance should have known better. In a way, they did. If not for Aretha Franklin, the day would have been a total loss.

It just wasn’t their day. I mean that literally: it was a day on which a dark-skinned man became president who had nothing to do with them. The son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist walked off with the blood-stained mantle of seven decades of civil rights struggle. If the black poets and clergy offered a counterfeit of real emotion, it is hard to blame them. They were just the extras on Obama’s stage set.

[not a friend of Spengler, but he is right about that!!]