“The Fear of a Black President” by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the September 2012 edition of The Atlantic magazine is maybe the best historical analysis of the plight and status of black people written in the last couple of decades. Coates does this in the context of Obama’s presidency, and the reaction to it by blacks and whites, noting: “Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president.”
Coates quotes Obama’s pollster: “The thing is, a black man can’t be president in America. However, an extraordinary, gifted, and talented young man who happens to be black can be president.”
Coates points out that “Obama is not simply America’s first black president – he is the first president who could credibly teach a black-studies class. He is fully versed in the works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X.” Yet, Coates also points out that a study of “nearly all public presidential utterances” concluded that “Obama talked less about race than any other Democratic president since 1961.”
Obama’s presidency, Coates argues, not only has unearthed a deep seeded white superiority strain in America (aka the Tea Party), it reflects the paradox black Americans face of having to be “twice as good” and “half as black” in order to succeed in this nation.
“An equality that requires blacks to be twice as good is not equality – it’s a double standard,” Coates writes. “That double standard haunts and constrains the Obama presidency, warning him away from candor about America’s sordid birthmark.”
Eric E. Vickers
St. Louis