May 2008: ’Racist’ Obama Quote Actually from Obama Critic

Steve Sailer. [Source: Steve Sailer / VDare (.com)]An email makes the rounds of the Internet claiming to “prove” President Obama is a racist by “quoting” him directly. The quote, supposedly from Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father, reads, “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.” (Obama’s mother was white.) The quote actually comes from a March 2007 article in American Conservative magazine that reads: “In reality, Obama provides a disturbing test of the best-case scenario of whether America can indeed move beyond race. He inherited his father’s penetrating intelligence; was raised mostly by his loving liberal white grandparents in multiracial, laid-back Hawaii, where America’s normal race rules never applied; and received a superb private school education. And yet, at least through age 33 when he wrote Dreams from My Father, he found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against his mother’s race.” The author of the article was Steve Sailer, who according to right-wing terrorism expert David Neiwert, has long claimed that Obama is a racist, and has often misquoted Obama or fabricated quotes from him to prove his point. (Sailer once called Obama a “wigger,” combining the word “white” with a well-known racial slur.) Neiwert calls Sailer “a racist, a white supremacist in pseudo-academic clothing.” Sailer’s 2007 article prompted fellow American Conservative writer Alexander Konetzki to leave the magazine; Konetzki explained at the time, “I realized that, in addition to the racist associations he employs, Sailer frequently quotes Obama out of context and makes assertions about Obama’s racial identity that the book flatly contradicts.” [American Conservative, 5/26/2007; PolitiFact, 5/19/2008; David Neiwert, 6/12/2008] Sailer is also a frequent contributor to the openly racist VDare (.com) Web site and blog. [Steve Sailer, 10/20/2008]