Obama: Transcending Race or Playing the Race Card?

In a provocative op-ed in today's Sacramento Bee, historian Jonathan Bean argues that President Barack Obama has retreated from his promise to get America thinking beyond race:

Sadly, President Obama's racial fixation has become disturbing in recent months. By pandering to racial pride and grievance he is betraying the liberal tradition that enabled him to become president - a tradition represented by Frederick Douglass, Branch Rickey, Zora Neale Hurston, Stanley Crouch and others who spoke out against racial injustice and defining individuals by their color…..

President Obama originally grabbed the imagination of the American people after a speech, now reprinted in countless books, speaking of biracialism and a desire to transcend race. A small cottage industry of books emerged describing the shift to "post-racial politics." That was then, this is now.

Read the rest here. Read my review of Bean's superb book Race & Liberty in America right here.