{"id":51109,"date":"2017-01-09T21:25:41","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T21:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51109"},"modified":"2017-01-09T23:19:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T23:19:18","slug":"the-obama-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51109","title":{"rendered":"The Obama Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Obama Paradox<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Slate<\/a>
\n2017-01-09<\/p>\n

Jamelle Bouie<\/strong><\/a>, Chief Political Correspondent<\/p>\n

Our first black president has an unyielding faith in the goodness of America. It got him elected. And it will cost him his legacy.<\/em><\/p>\n

The myth of Barack Obama<\/a> usually begins with his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention<\/a>, and for good reason\u2014it was the speech that jump-started his political career, putting the then\u2013state senator on the fast track to national office. But it wasn\u2019t the speech that made him president. That speech was delivered at a moment of crisis. His former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright<\/a>, was in the middle of a media firestorm over a sermon<\/a> he had given in 2003 in the wake of the Iraq invasion<\/a>. \u201cNo, no, no. Not God bless America,\u201d thunders Wright in the now-infamous video<\/a>. \u201cGod Damn America!\u201d…<\/p>\n

…For Obama, who built his political appeal on his distance from this rhetoric\u2014from the tenor and tone of traditional black politics\u2014Wright\u2019s sermon was a disaster in the making. To operate in the mainstream, to attain influence and power, black public figures have to navigate a narrow strait of acceptable behavior. They cannot indulge their anger or give way to their passions. And for Obama, who sought an office all but reserved for white men, he had to prove that he wasn\u2019t an Al Sharpton<\/a> or a Jesse Jackson<\/a>, that he held no resentment or frustration with the country. And so on March 18, 2008, Obama delivered an address in Philadelphia<\/a> now known as his \u201cA More Perfect Union<\/a>\u201d speech. In it, he repudiated Wright\u2019s anger without dismissing its sources, and along the way he demonstrated the qualities that have defined him as president: a sense of balance, a willingness to look to the better angels of his opponents, a belief that there is always common ground…<\/p>\n