{"id":32575,"date":"2013-07-26T15:36:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T15:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32575"},"modified":"2016-11-11T19:59:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T19:59:39","slug":"obama%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cdouble-consciousness%e2%80%9d-on-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32575","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s \u201cDouble Consciousness\u201d On Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama\u2019s \u201cDouble Consciousness\u201d On Race<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/a>
\n2013-07-26<\/p>\n

Jonathan Alter<\/a><\/strong>, Author, Reporter, Columnist, TV Analyst, Lecturer<\/p>\n

More than a century ago, W. E. B. Du Bois<\/a> wrote of the \u201cdouble consciousness<\/a>\u201d of the black man: \u201cOne ever feels his two-ness,\u2014an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.\u201d President Barack Obama\u2019s extemporaneous remarks in the press room last week about the Trayvon Martin case<\/a> and the plight of young black men were pitch-perfect in part because they let no one off the hook, not even well-intentioned people who want him to lead what he predicted would be a \u201cstilted\u201d national conversation on race.<\/p>\n

But the surprise appearance will have lasting importance if it keeps the President on the hook, too\u2014if it helps reconcile a double consciousness that had left the Obama White House facing some of the most important issues of the day as if under a veil (another of Du Bois\u2019s concepts).<\/p>\n

Those who know the President well attest that, for the most part, there aren\u2019t \u201ctwo Obamas\u201d the way that there were famously \u201ctwo Clintons\u201d (the policy wonk and the man of appetites). The gap between the public and the private Obama is much smaller than it is for most politicians\u2014except when the subject is race.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In public, he has, until now, tread gingerly; in private, after hours and especially with friends and family, race is often an overt part of the conversation\u2014or else it inhabits a place close to its surface.<\/p>\n

The President\u2019s Trayvon talk, and its generally positive response, represents the narrowing of the gap between the public and private Obama. The caution that grew out of his status as the first black President, which one close aide described to me as \u201cthe President\u2019s inability to swing at certain pitches\u201d before being reelected, made it harder to confront social issues that have engaged him deeply since he was a young man…<\/p>\n

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

Obama\u2019s \u201cDouble Consciousness\u201d On Race The New Yorker 2013-07-26 Jonathan Alter, Author, Reporter, Columnist, TV Analyst, Lecturer More than a century ago, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of the \u201cdouble consciousness\u201d of the black man: \u201cOne ever feels his two-ness,\u2014an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.\u201d President Barack Obama\u2019s extemporaneous […]<\/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":[15301,3886],"class_list":["post-32575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-jonathan-alter","tag-the-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32575","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=32575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41856,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32575\/revisions\/41856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}