{"id":26123,"date":"2012-10-21T15:55:42","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T15:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26123"},"modified":"2017-04-13T21:18:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T21:18:42","slug":"for-president-a-complex-calculus-of-race-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26123","title":{"rendered":"For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2012-10-20<\/p>\n

Jodi Kantor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

When President Obama<\/a> greets African-Americans who broke barriers, he almost invariably uses the same line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be here if it weren\u2019t for you,\u201d he said to Ruby Bridges Hall<\/a>, who was the first black child to integrate an elementary school in the South. The president repeated the message to a group of Tuskegee airmen<\/a>, the first black aviators in the United States military; the Memphis<\/a> sanitation workers the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a> addressed in his final speech; and others who came to pay tribute to Mr. Obama and found him saluting them instead.<\/p>\n

The line is gracious, but brief and guarded. Mr. Obama rarely dwells on race with his visitors or nearly anyone else. In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary…<\/strong><\/p>\n

…\u201cTragically, it seems the president feels boxed in by his blackness,\u201d the radio and television host Tavis Smiley wrote in an e-mail. \u201cIt has, at times, been painful to watch this particular president\u2019s calibrated, cautious and sometimes callous treatment of his most loyal constituency,\u201d he continued, adding that \u201cAfrican-Americans will have lost ground in the Obama era.\u201d…<\/p>\n

… Her husband is more circumspect, particularly on the question of whether some of his opposition is fueled by race. Aides say the president is well aware that some voters say they will never be comfortable with him, as well as the occasional flashes of racism on the campaign trail, such as the \u201cPut the White Back in the White House\u201d T-shirt spotted at a recent Mitt Romney<\/a> rally. But they also say he is disciplined about not reacting because doing so could easily backfire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president knows that some people may choose to be divided by differences \u2014 race, gender, religion \u2014 but his focus is on bringing people together,\u201d Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, wrote in an e-mail.<\/p>\n

Even when Newt Gingrich<\/a> called him a \u201cfood stamp president\u201d during the Republican primaries, the most the president did was shoot confidants a meaningful look \u2014 \u201cthe way he will cock his head, an exaggerated smile, like \u2018I\u2019m not saying but I\u2019m saying,\u2019 \u201d one campaign adviser said…<\/p>\n

…Out to Change Stereotypes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shortly before his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama took his family to see the Lincoln Memorial<\/a>. \u201cFirst African-American president, better be good,\u201d<\/strong> a 10-year-old Malia Obama<\/a> told her father, who repeated the story later, a rare acknowledgment of the symbolic shadow he casts.<\/p>\n

For all of Mr. Obama\u2019s caution, he is on a mission: to change stereotypes of African-Americans, aides and friends say. Six years ago, he told his wife and a roomful of aides that he wanted to run for the White House to change children\u2019s perceptions of what was possible. He had other ambitions for the presidency, of course, but he was also embarking on an experiment in which the Obamas would put themselves and their children on the line to help erase centuries of negative views…<\/p>\n

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

When President Obama greets African-Americans who broke barriers, he almost invariably uses the same line.<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-26123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26123","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=26123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53481,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26123\/revisions\/53481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}