{"id":50622,"date":"2016-12-13T20:07:35","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T20:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50622"},"modified":"2016-12-14T14:26:51","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T14:26:51","slug":"my-president-was-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50622","title":{"rendered":"My President Was Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

My President Was Black<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/a>
\nJanuary\/February 2017<\/a><\/p>\n

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

<\/a>
\nIan Allen<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

A history of the first African American White House<\/a>\u2014and of what came next<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey\u2019re a rotten crowd,\u201d I shouted across the lawn. \u201cYou\u2019re worth the whole damn bunch put together.\u201d<\/em>
\n \u2014 F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/a>, <\/em>The Great Gatsby<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I. \u201cLove Will Make You Do Wrong\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the waning days of President Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> administration, he and his wife, Michelle<\/a>, hosted a farewell party, the full import of which no one could then grasp. It was late October, Friday the 21st, and the president had spent many of the previous weeks, as he would spend the two subsequent weeks, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton<\/a>. Things were looking up. Polls in the crucial states of Virginia<\/a> and Pennsylvania<\/a> showed Clinton with solid advantages. The formidable GOP strongholds of Georgia<\/a> and Texas<\/a> were said to be under threat. The moment seemed to buoy Obama. He had been light on his feet in these last few weeks, cracking jokes at the expense of Republican opponents and laughing off hecklers. At a rally in Orlando<\/a> on October 28, he greeted a student who would be introducing him by dancing toward her and then noting that the song playing over the loudspeakers\u2014the Gap Band\u2019s<\/a> \u201cOutstanding<\/a>\u201d\u2014was older than she was. \u201cThis is classic!\u201d he said. Then he flashed the smile that had launched America\u2019s first black presidency, and started dancing again. Three months still remained before Inauguration Day, but staffers had already begun to count down the days. They did this with a mix of pride and longing\u2014like college seniors in early May. They had no sense of the world they were graduating into. None of us did…<\/p>\n

…This would not happen again, and everyone knew it. It was not just that there might never be another African American president of the United States. It was the feeling that this particular black family, the Obamas, represented the best of black people, the ultimate credit to the race, incomparable in elegance and bearing. \u201cThere are no more,\u201d the comedian Sinbad<\/a> joked back in 2010. \u201cThere are no black men raised in Kansas<\/a> and Hawaii<\/a>. That\u2019s the last one. Y\u2019all better treat this one right. The next one gonna be from Cleveland<\/a>. He gonna wear a perm. Then you gonna see what it\u2019s really like.\u201d Throughout their residency, the Obamas had refrained from showing America \u201cwhat it\u2019s really like,\u201d and had instead followed the first lady\u2019s motto, \u201cWhen they go low, we go high.\u201d This was the ideal\u2014black and graceful under fire\u2014saluted that evening. The president was lionized as \u201cour crown jewel.\u201d The first lady was praised as the woman \u201cwho put the O<\/em> in Obama<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barack Obama\u2019s victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing \u201cmere\u201d about symbols. The power embedded in the word nigger<\/em> is also symbolic. Burning crosses<\/a> do not literally raise the black poverty rate, and the Confederate flag<\/a> does not directly expand the wealth gap…<\/p>\n

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

My President Was Black The Atlantic January\/February 2017 Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent Ian Allen A history of the first African American White House\u2014and of what came next \u201cThey\u2019re a rotten crowd,\u201d I shouted across the lawn. \u201cYou\u2019re worth the whole damn bunch put together.\u201d \u2014 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby I. \u201cLove Will Make […]<\/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-50622","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\/50622","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=50622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50630,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50622\/revisions\/50630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}