{"id":54930,"date":"2017-09-08T02:45:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T02:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54930"},"modified":"2017-09-08T02:45:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T02:45:35","slug":"trump-truly-is-something-new-the-first-president-whose-entire-political-existence-hinges-on-the-fact-of-a-black-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54930","title":{"rendered":"Trump truly is something new\u2014the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>For <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Donald_Trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trump<\/a>, it almost seems that the fact of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Obama<\/a>, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Seth_Meyers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Seth Meyers<\/a> publicly humiliated him at the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/White_House_Correspondents%27_Association#White_House_Correspondents.27_Dinner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner<\/a> in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough\u2014Trump has made the negation of Obama\u2019s legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. \u201cRace is an idea, not a fact,\u201d the historian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nellpainter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nell Irvin Painter<\/a> has written, and essential to the construct of a \u201cwhite race\u201d is the idea of not being a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sister_Souljah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sister Souljahs<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Willie_Horton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Willie Hortons<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sally_Hemings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dusky Sallys<\/a>. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent\u2014an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new\u2014the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorific\u2014America\u2019s first white president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ta-Nehisi Coates, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54925\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The First White President<\/a>,\u201d <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, October 2017. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2017\/10\/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates\/537909\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2017\/10\/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates\/537909\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Trump, it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough\u2014Trump has made the negation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21057,6000,6001],"class_list":["post-54930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-donald-trump","tag-ta-nehisi-coates","tag-the-atlantic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54930","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=54930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54931,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54930\/revisions\/54931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}