{"id":51186,"date":"2017-01-16T00:32:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T00:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51186"},"modified":"2017-01-16T20:29:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T20:29:59","slug":"how-black-america-saw-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51186","title":{"rendered":"How Black America Saw Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Black America Saw Obama<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2017-01-14<\/p>\n

Michael Eric Dyson<\/a>,<\/strong> Professor of Sociology
\nGeorgetown University, Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

I stood in Grant Park<\/a> on election night 2008, along with more than 200,000 other people, and watched as a man I\u2019d known as a fellow member of a Chicago<\/a> church, a man I\u2019d worked to help get elected, took to the stage. He would be the first black president of the United States of America<\/a>. My joy at the surreal scene was transcendent. The jumbotron<\/a> flashed the face of the civil rights stalwart the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson<\/a>, with tears streaming down his cheeks, an image that evoked the profound elation of black America at the election of Barack Obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But his weeping visage summoned a darker prospect for me, one that cast a shadow over Mr. Obama the moment he announced he would make a run for the Oval Office<\/a>: They might shoot him. Mr. Jackson had been present when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a> met his violent end<\/a> on a balcony in Memphis<\/a>. As I viewed Mr. Jackson\u2019s watery eyes, I couldn\u2019t help but associate him with Dr. King and the fear that our newly elected president might be assassinated.<\/p>\n

Black America has held its collective breath during every second of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency. I remember stumping early for the Illinois senator, only to have black people I met on the campaign trail tell me that they couldn\u2019t possibly vote for my man. Not only was he not as well known, or beloved, as his opponent Hillary Clinton<\/a>, but didn\u2019t I know that he\u2019d be harmed if he even got close to the White House? \u201cYou know they\u2019re going to shoot him.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…President Obama\u2019s historic tenure ends as the nation celebrates<\/a> what would have been Martin Luther King\u2019s 88th birthday. As I see it, Mr. Obama is the only figure to ever give Dr. King a run for his money as Greatest Black Man in American history. More than a gentle rivalry for supremacy in the history books joins the two. They are tethered by death, too \u2014 if not by its actual occurrence, then by its looming possibility….<\/p>\n

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

How Black America Saw Obama The New York Times 2017-01-14 Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. I stood in Grant Park on election night 2008, along with more than 200,000 other people, and watched as a man I\u2019d known as a fellow member of a Chicago church, a man I\u2019d worked […]<\/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":[11229,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-51186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-michael-eric-dyson","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51186","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=51186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51187,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51186\/revisions\/51187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}