The sophistication of seeing what isn't there rather than what is

Shelby Steele of Stanford University has some of the most profound words of wisdom on race that I've ever read. He argues that our race problem has changed. White racism against blacks is no longer acceptable. We all know that. But...

America's primary race problem today is our new "sophistication" around racial matters. Political correctness is a compendium of sophistications in which we join ourselves to obvious falsehoods ("diversity") and refuse to see obvious realities (the irrelevance of diversity to minority development). I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.

Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If "hope and change" was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency. 

Steele goes on to compare Obama with Reagan, who in contrast worked hard over his career to become known for what he believed, and when American was ready for him, he was elected.
Shhh! Don't tell sociologists about this.