Mixed Race Studies

Obama struggles to balance African Americans’ hopes with country’s as a whole

The Washington Post
2012-10-28

Peter Wallsten

Barack Obama stood at the lectern, trying to figure out what to say — or at least how to say it. He started speaking, then stopped, then started again, each time searching for the right tone, the right cadence, the right words.

The audience was a small group of advisers, including two African American scholars who were counseling him on how to get his message across most effectively with black voters. Obama, whose memoir years earlier had explored his mixed-race background and search for racial identity, wanted to connect with African Americans but remain true to his own style and voice.

“I can’t sound like Martin,” Obama said at one point, according to the scholars. “I can’t sound like Jesse.”

Obama was still more than a year away from becoming America’s first black president, but already he was parsing that identity in his mind…

…Obama rarely discusses his innermost feelings about being the first African American to occupy the Oval Office, according to friends and associates, preferring to keep his thoughts closely held, shared with only a select few. He has shown himself to be drawn to the symbolic, or even aspirational, aspect of his presidency.

One of the iconic images of his tenure is a 2009 photograph of Obama leaning down to let a 5-year-old black boy, Jacob Philadelphia, touch his hair. The boy wanted to see if his hair felt like the president’s. The image, captured by White House photographer Pete Souza, has been on display ever since, just outside the Oval Office in a hallway that Obama passes through regularly…

…If the election of four years ago put to rest the notion that the United States was not ready to elect a black president, this year poses a new question: Can an African American president, after four years as a fixture in Americans’ lives, win reelection?…

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Obama’s alliance with the left is an uneasy one

The Washington Post
2012-06-09

Peter Wallsten

President Obama bristles when he is the target of activist tactics he once used

Barack Obama entered the stately Roosevelt Room and assumed his customary spot. Many of the nation’s leading immigration advocates had been waiting for him inside the windowless meeting space in the West Wing, eager to make their case. The president’s reserved chair was situated at the center of the long conference table, its back slightly elevated, a gentle reminder of power, but this did not seem to intimidate the activists on that March afternoon in 2010.

One after another, they spoke their minds, telling the president what he had done or not done that bothered them. They complained that a rising number of deportations on his watch were “terrorizing” Hispanic neighborhoods and tearing apart good families. They warned that he was losing credibility with a crucial constituency that had put its faith in him.

Obama’s body stiffened, according to several witnesses, and he started to argue with them. If they wanted meaningful change, he said, they should focus their pressure on the Republicans in Congress who opposed reform, not on him. He was with them but could only do so much. “I am not a king,” he said.

That night a group of Hispanic lawmakers came to the White House. They, too, were coming to talk about immigration, and after hearing about the earlier confrontation, the lawmakers were bracing for another argument. Instead, they encountered a president in a reflective mood, almost contrite.

“Look who I am,” Obama said, as several guests recalled. He reminded them that as a black man he had experienced discrimination in his life and understood “what it feels like for people to not be treated fairly.”

The variations in his demeanor that day and night illuminate the competing impulses of sympathy and frustration that have characterized Obama’s relationship with liberal activist groups since he entered the White House. Their uneasy alliance has gone through three distinct phases, moving from great expectations to tense confrontations to pragmatic coexistence as the next election approaches. With Hispanics and gays — key liberal constituencies that moved early in Obama’s tenure to openly challenge the Democratic president — the tension has mostly been about means more than ends, when more than what. The president’s history, his temperament and style, his idealism vs. his ambition — all have come into play as he has responded to pressure from these two essential segments of his base…

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