One good thing about the Obama presidency is that it has completely shattered the myth of a post-racial society in the U.S. Sectors of the country believed (with legitimate optimism) that centuries of white supremacy and institutional racism would be washed away because of a black presidency. Instead, it tore open the scabs on the festering sores of racism in this country.
In many ways, the Obama factor has had the opposite effect – bullets flying off the shelves since the 2008 election in preparation for a race war, an increase in white supremacy groups, openly hostile attacks on black and brown people from the president on down, etc.
All of this despite the fact the President Obama has intentionally avoided issues of race, of acknowledging his blackness and all the ugly realities that go with it to prove he is a president of all the American people. The truth that the president is finally forced to embrace is that no amount of suppression or moderation of race issues wins any points with the right-wingers who control most of the media airwaves and legislative halls.
According to Ronald Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service,” the rate of threats against the president increased 400 per cent under Obama from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush. Some sources say it’s an average of 30 threats a day. And it not just the president – there have been threats directed at first lady Michelle Obama and even daughters Sasha and Malia.
We know about the plan hatched by top Republican leaders on the night of Obama’s inauguration – to take back the House in November 2010 and to make Obama, in the words of Senator Mitch McConnell, a “one-term president.”
Obama was successfully re-elected but the GOP did take back the House and have obstructed most of the president’s program for the country. The number of blocked appointments to government and judicial posts is unprecedented.
Then there’s the barrage of racist slurs, comments and cartoons about the president which black folks understand is also directed at them.
The Cliven Bundys and Donald Sterlings of the world also keep us grounded in the reality of whether or not America is in a post-racial period. While they represent very different economic strata, their opinions about blacks are not that far apart.
Bundy has been leeching off the government for 20 years in unpaid grazing fees. His statements about Negroes “being better off as slaves” fit right in with Sterling’s plantation notion of taking care of his black basketball Clippers: “I … give them food and clothes and cars and houses.”
Let’s agree that the U.S. is not post-racial, a delusion that keeps us from grappling with the real and tangible effects of racism. Let’s put some serious energy into breaking the chains of inequality and injustice, held together by white supremacy, that have our communities in economic and political chokeholds.
