{"id":52304,"date":"2017-03-10T20:42:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T20:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=52304"},"modified":"2017-03-10T20:42:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T20:42:56","slug":"president-barack-obama-was-black-and-imperfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=52304","title":{"rendered":"President Barack Obama Was Black and Imperfect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.teenvogue.com\/story\/president-barack-obama-was-black-and-imperfect\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>President Barack Obama Was Black and Imperfect<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.teenvogue.com\" target=\"_blank\">Teen Vogue<\/a><br \/>\n2017-03-01<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/offbeatorbit\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Ashley Reese<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.teenvogue.com\/story\/president-barack-obama-was-black-and-imperfect\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/assets.teenvogue.com\/photos\/58b747861ef4ad14d9d0664d\/3:2\/w_757\/GettyImages-630975506.jpg\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em><small>Saul Loeb<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>A nation built on black subjugation elected a black man to be the president of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\" target=\"_blank\">United States of America<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In this op-ed, writer <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/offbeatorbit\" target=\"_blank\">Ashley Reese<\/a> explores the nuanced legacy of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama&#8217;s<\/a> presidency and what it means to her as a black woman.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I briefly met <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Obama<\/a> in October of 2010. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/MTV\" target=\"_blank\">MTV<\/a> was hosting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtv.com\/news\/2579750\/mtv-barack-obama-live-blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">a live question and answer session<\/a> targeting young voters in an attempt to garner interest in the upcoming <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Midterm_election\" target=\"_blank\">midterm election<\/a>. The studio was filled with no more than a couple hundred young college students from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Washington,_D.C.\" target=\"_blank\">Washington D.C.<\/a> area \u2014 Georgetown students mingling with Howard students, people who shared the same city quadrant but still managed to be worlds apart \u2014 looking dapper and polished as we asked the president about everything from war in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Middle_East\" target=\"_blank\">Middle East<\/a> to gay marriage. During the live segments we were poised, poker-faced statues who wanted to make sure the president knew just how engaged we were. The commercial breaks were a different story. We were all abuzz with anticipation, waiting for our chance to have Obama shake our hands, give us a nod, acknowledge our existence. We weren\u2019t allowed to have phones on us, so selfies were out of the question. It wasn\u2019t about the photo op \u2014 though, God, I wish I had one for a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Throwback_Thursday\" target=\"_blank\">#TBT<\/a> at the very least \u2014 it was about the experience.<\/p>\n<p>I shook his hand. He smiled. I introduced myself. His hands were soft.<\/p>\n<p>So soft, in fact, a young black woman a few rows behind me vocally echoed my thoughts. \u201cWhat lotion do you use?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cetaphil\" target=\"_blank\">Cetaphil<\/a>!\u201d he said&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teenvogue.com\/story\/president-barack-obama-was-black-and-imperfect\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A nation built on black subjugation elected a black man to be the president of the United States of America.<\/p>\n<p>In this op-ed, writer Ashley Reese explores the nuanced legacy of Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency and what it means to her as a black woman.<\/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":[26397,22573],"class_list":["post-52304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-ashley-reese","tag-teen-vogue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52304","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=52304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52305,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52304\/revisions\/52305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}