Throughout the Democratic primaries, Senator Barack Obama emphasized that the choice for voters was between the past, represented by his main rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, and the future, which belonged to him. Yet on serious issues involving race in America, Obama has stood time and again with the attitudes, grievances and failed policies of the past rather than with the bold solutions of the future. While wowing Americans with his post-racial rhetoric, Obama has consistently supported egregious policies that classify Americans by race and engaged in despicable practices that attack legitimate criticism as racist.

Most notably, Obama talks in lofty terms about racial unity but opposes efforts (like voter initiatives on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska this fall) that promise to end the sordid status quo under which the government dishes out contracts, employment and university admissions based on race. He chooses to believe that opposition to the country’s race-based programs is stoked by the cynicism of conservative politicians and talk show hosts and fueled by anger within the white community. The candidate who believes in bringing people together unfortunately appears completely unable or unwilling to understand that policies that divide Americans by race might be inherently unjust and unfair.

Senator Obama also eloquently exhorts blacks, especially black men, to take responsibility for their own lives and chart their own destiny. Yet he slyly practices the grievance politics that has greatly contributed to modern day racial intolerance. Under America’s sordid status quo, too many black leaders have preyed on the guilt of white Americans to demand handouts and different standards, as too many mainstream politicians of both left and right have failed to challenge this corrosive mentality. In this paradigm, not only is affirmative action the prerequisite for black success, legitimate criticisms of blacks by non-blacks also become racial attacks.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s controversial former pastor, showed America just how such grievance politics is played when he accused the media of attacking the black church when it in fact attacked his hateful sermons and anti-American rhetoric. Though Obama has denounced and disowned Wright, he has not, however, moved beyond the Jeremiah Wright-style of politics that produces hate. Instead, his campaign has subjected critics to a nasty racial politics that exploits the black community’s worst insecurities about racial stereotypes.

When Senator Hillary Clinton observed (not inaccurately) in the run up to the South Carolina primaries that the passage of the Civil Rights Act required the experience of President Lyndon B. Johnson, not just the inspirational rhetoric of Reverend Martin Luther King, the Obama campaign simplified her argument about experience into an insult against the black race. “In her eagerness to point out how white presidents can get things done, she in effect relegated Dr. King’s sacrifice for racial equality to nothing more than a supportive role,” stated the SC Black News, the largest African American paper in South Carolina. The Obama campaign has endorsed this crass, racial depiction by displaying the editorial in which this quote appears prominently in the African American section of its website.

No doubt the Obama campaign has been aided by black leaders and voters who have been all too willing to condemn any criticism of Obama as racist. When President Bill Clinton observed in New Hampshire in January that Obama’s long-standing objection to the Iraq War was the “biggest fairy tale ever,” a legitimate criticism on one of the most important issues of the 2008 campaign, numerous blacks saw it as a racist attack on the viability of a black presidential candidate. Unfortunately, the black presidential hopeful peddling hope for a future of racial reconciliation did nothing to counter or condemn the unfair and unjustified racial misperceptions.

In contrast to Senator Obama’s embrace of the status quo, there are bold proposals that seek fundamental change in the flawed assumptions that govern policies affecting race in America. Against affirmative action, there are proposals to end race-based admissions, contracting and employment. Against playing the race card, there is the suggestion to stop pandering and treat blacks like anyone else. Against the culture of grievance that restricts how Americans can even begin to talk about race, there is the possibility that we can begin by talking honestly.

On these serious issues that affect daily life in America, the post-racial candidate of 2008 unfortunately presents a future that harks back grotesquely to the past. Before November, voters who believe in a race-blind society should ask themselves whether this grotesqueness is in fact the change that they have been waiting for.

Right Commentary is pleased to have Ying Ma as a new author/contributor to the blog. Ying is a practicing attorney in New York and writes about issues ranging from international affairs to race in America. Her op-eds and articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal Asia, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, The American Enterprise, Policy Review, National Review Online and other publications.