{"id":24937,"date":"2012-08-23T21:45:22","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T21:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24937"},"modified":"2013-07-14T16:21:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T16:21:02","slug":"fear-of-a-black-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24937","title":{"rendered":"Fear of a Black President"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fear of a Black President<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/a>
\nSeptember 2012<\/p>\n

Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a candidate, Barack Obama<\/a> said we needed to reckon with race and with America\u2019s original sin, slavery. But as our first black president, he has avoided mention of race almost entirely.<\/strong> In having to be \u201ctwice as good\u201d and \u201chalf as black,\u201d Obama reveals the false promise and double standard of integration.<\/p>\n

The irony of President Barack Obama is best captured in his comments on the death of Trayvon Martin, and the ensuing fray. Obama has pitched his presidency as a monument to moderation. He peppers his speeches with nods to ideas originally held by conservatives. He routinely cites Ronald Reagan. He effusively praises the enduring wisdom of the American people, and believes that the height of insight lies in the town square. Despite his sloganeering for change and progress, Obama is a conservative revolutionary, and nowhere is his conservative character revealed more than in the very sphere where he holds singular gravity\u2014race.<\/p>\n

Part of that conservatism about race has been reflected in his reticence: for most of his term in office, Obama has declined to talk about the ways in which race complicates the American present and, in particular, his own presidency. But then, last February, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance underwriter, shot and killed a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, armed with a 9 mm handgun, believed himself to be tracking the movements of a possible intruder. The possible intruder turned out to be a boy in a hoodie, bearing nothing but candy and iced tea. The local authorities at first declined to make an arrest, citing Zim\u00admer\u00adman\u2019s claim of self-defense. Protests exploded nationally. Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea assumed totemic power. Celebrities\u2014the actor Jamie Foxx, the former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, members of the Miami Heat\u2014were photographed wearing hoodies. When Rep\u00adresentative Bobby Rush of Chicago took to the House floor to denounce racial profiling, he was removed from the chamber after donning a hoodie mid-speech…<\/p>\n

…By virtue of his background\u2014the son of a black man and a white woman, someone who grew up in multiethnic communities around the world\u2014Obama has enjoyed a distinctive vantage point on race relations in America. Beyond that, he has displayed enviable dexterity at navigating between black and white America, and at finding a language that speaks to a critical mass in both communities. He emerged into national view at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, with a speech heralding a nation uncolored by old prejudices and shameful history. There was no talk of the effects of racism. Instead Obama stressed the power of parenting, and condemned those who would say that a black child carrying a book was \u201cacting white.\u201d He cast himself as the child of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas and asserted, \u201cIn no other country on Earth is my story even possible.\u201d When, as a senator, he was asked if the response to Hurricane Katrina evidenced racism, Obama responded by calling the \u201cineptitude\u201d of the response \u201ccolor-blind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye. Hence the old admonishments to be \u201ctwice as good.\u201d Hence the need for a special \u201ctalk\u201d administered to black boys about how to be extra careful when relating to the police. And hence Barack Obama\u2019s insisting that there was no racial component to Katrina\u2019s effects; that name-calling among children somehow has the same import as one of the oldest guiding principles of American policy\u2014white supremacy. The election of an African American to our highest political office was alleged to demonstrate a triumph of integration. But when President Obama addressed the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, he demonstrated integration\u2019s great limitation\u2014that acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. And even then, full acceptance is still withheld. The larger effects of this withholding constrict Obama\u2019s presidential potential in areas affected tangentially\u2014or seemingly not at all\u2014by race. Meanwhile, across the country, the community in which Obama is rooted sees this fraudulent equality, and quietly seethes…<\/p>\n

…Shirley Sherrod has worked all her life to make a world where the rise of a black president born of a biracial marriage is both conceivable and legal. She has endured the killing of relatives, the ruination of enterprises, and the defaming of her reputation. Crowley, for his actions, was feted in the halls of American power, honored by being invited to a \u201cbeer summit\u201d with the man he had arrested and the leader of the free world. Shirley Sherrod, unjustly fired and defamed, was treated to a brief phone call from a man whose career, in some profound way, she had made possible. Sherrod herself is not immune to this point. She talked to me about crying with her husband while watching Obama\u2019s Election Night speech. In her new memoir, The Courage to Hope<\/em>, she writes about a different kind of tears: when she discussed her firing with her family, her mother, who\u2019d spent her life facing down racism at its most lethal, simply wept. \u201cWhat will my babies say?,\u201d Sherrod cried to her husband, referring to their four small granddaughters. \u201cHow can I explain to my children that I got fired by the first black president?\u201d…<\/p>\n

…And yet this is the uncertain foundation of Obama\u2019s historic victory\u2014a victory that I, and my community, hold in the highest esteem. Who would truly deny the possibility of a black presidency in all its power and symbolism? Who would rob that little black boy of the right to feel himself affirmed by touching the kinky black hair of his president?<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire essay here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fear of a Black President The Atlantic September 2012 Ta-Nehisi Coates As a candidate, Barack Obama said we needed to reckon with race and with America\u2019s original sin, slavery. But as our first black president, he has avoided mention of race almost entirely. In having to be \u201ctwice as good\u201d and \u201chalf as black,\u201d Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[6000,6001],"class_list":["post-24937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-ta-nehisi-coates","tag-the-atlantic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}