AP Photo.
Shawn Maxam responds to The Atlantic article ‘Fear of a Black President’
“The thing is, a black man can’t be president in America, given the racial aversion and history that’s still out there,” Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Obama, told the journalist Gwen Ifill after the 2008 election. “However, an extraordinary, gifted, and talented young man who happens to be black can be president.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Fear of a Black President piece illustrates the complexity of race in this country. He touches on racism, Black rage, white supremacy and Trayvon Martin. The component of Coates’ piece I want to expand upon is the idea that the election of Barack Hussein Obama signified a transcendence of race in America. For so long race has the been the proverbial black eye this country has attempted to disguise with a mask of accepting “assimilated” black folks in the modern era – see the overused Cosby family as an example.
♦◊♦
The election of a Black president seemed to symbolize two things in this country. To people of African descent it created a temporary sense of euphoria and hope. A hope that the plight of the African-American would actually matter in American politics. For generations Democrats have given lip-service to Black communities. African-Americans faced with the lesser of two evils haved forged an uneasy alliance with the more “progressive” party. For white Americans voting for Obama signified a collective reassurance that racism no longer existed as universal belief system. Yes there were outliers who harbored racist beliefs but they represented an evil of yesteryear.
|
I think we misinterpret tolerance or acceptance for respect. The nation’s psyche compartmentalizes the various aspects of successful Black men’s identities.
|
I think we misinterpret tolerance or acceptance for respect. The nation’s psyche compartmentalizes the various aspects of successful Black men’s identities. Michael Jordan is respected as an athlete who happens to be Black but he isn’t considered a Black athlete. Muhammad Ali is an example of what happens when history, time, old-age or bad health neuters brashness and bravado of Black athletes. The non-cocky negro can be revered or respected in America but outspokenness is frowned upon. The Angry Black man is still a scary sight in America and the white-washing of a strong black identity is a necessity. It is of vital importance to have one’s race overlooked to reach the pinnacle of your chosen profession.
♦◊♦
(Image Credit: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo)
Acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. The community in which Obama is rooted sees this fraudulent equality and seethes.
I myself have felt this tension of needing to dial down my blackness. I am large dark-skinned black male who has experienced police harassment dozens of times. The death of Trayvon Martin is a tangible fear for many men of color I know. Separating abstract ideals from lived realities is important when we have discussions about the desires we have for this country. Living in a country where race doesn’t matter is unnecessary goal because if culture is synonymous with race in the United States then that is an impossibility for most minorities. Our quest shouldn’t be for a post-racial America but rather for a post-racist America. Let’s see if we can get there.
Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.
Thanks for reading, sharing and commenting!
R.I.P. SKH
About S. Maxam
I just wanted to add that what black men face is not only discrimination for being black but also discrimination for being male. If Trayvon Martin died because of profiling, it’s not just the way that African Americans are profiled but also the way males are profiled. The trope of the “angry black man” is in part the stereotype of the “angry man.” I’m not trying to discount the impact of racism at all, and I’m not suggesting black women have easier lives than black men, just that there is some anti-male sentiment that often goes along with racism. to paraphrase Coates’ comment: Men are targets, and some of them happen to be black.
Yes to all of this.
Two things to keep in mind. I’m a white male. I’m closer to seventy than sixty and I have known guys who, were they still alive, would be over one hundred. IOW, long time experience, some vicarious or secondhand. I can tell you true. White people spend an amount of time thinking about black people equal to that they spend thinking about exobiology. The exception is when the subject is brought to their attention.
My daughter took a two-thirds pay cut to leave an increasingly “diverse” school so that she could be in a place where she would not be assaulted and the students would do their homework. To put it another way, working in her previous school requires a wage premium in excess of $x0,000.
But, as a regular person leading a regular life, her interest in matters racial were pretty slim otherwise.
Second, Trayvon Martin was killed by a guy who could get on the hispanic affirmative action admit/hire/promote list anywhere in the country. He’s half hispanic and it’s clear as polished plate glass that if his first name were “Jorge”, we’d have heard nothing about it. Tom Wolfe’s “Great White Defendant” is such a goal that we need a half-hispanic guy because we don’t have the real thing.
Meanwhile, the weekly blood bath continues in Chicago. Little seven year old girl named “Heaven”, gunned down a couple of weeks ago. Nobody cared except her mother. The professional viewers-with-alarm don’t care because Heaven did not have the distinction of being killed by a white man. Booooring.
Point is not so much what is happening in Chicago as what normal people think of the rationing of concern. It does look odd, I think you will admit.
Um, you may want to read the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece, then comment. Thanks in advance
Thank you Shawn for a very good personal reminder to check my perspective and attitude. I’ve had friends treated in obviously racist ways and articles like this help me remember the anger for them being treated that way and how I’ll probably never know what that’s like personally but I need to keep hammering away at this work in progress.
Even though I didn’t vote for the President, I honestly tried to be as open minded as possible and approach his presidency with a clean slate, lets see how this goes attitude. Unfortunately, he lost me pretty quickly. The incident that moved him from the “President who happens to be Black” to the “Black President” column for me isn’t mentioned in either your article or The Atlantic article linked. When the Justice Department didn’t prosecute the Black Panther for standing out in front of a Philadelphia voting center with a club, that became my “oh I see how things are going to be handled in this Administration” moment.
Maybe I was too quick to judge. Maybe I had a predetermined mindset I was consciously or unconsciously looking to validate. I know the President had an impossible course to chart on any issue related to race. No matter the decision one side, and in may cases both sides, of whatever the issue were going to be unhappy and publicly voice their opinion.
I’ll never personally know the fear and prejudice you face in your every day life and race probably taints my views and opinions far more than I even realize. It just saddens me to think of the opportunity the last three years offered to make real progress and it has for the most part been unrealized.
Its important to remember that the Southern Strategy as practiced by Lee Atwater and the Reagan Presidential Campaigns continues to be a central strategy for the GOP. That is, appealing to the block of white southern voters by using coded language that attacks blacks. The first round of the language was against things like “forced busing”. Years later the coded language is about “voter fraud.” But what they’re really saying when they say “voter fraud” is we’ll disenfranchise black voters.
When the GOP is running this kind of program to consolidate white votes, you know the race wars are far from over. They’ve just gone underground.
Lee Atwater was well known GOP political operative who ran George Bush Sr.’s campaign against Michael Dukakis. He created the infamous Willie Horton ad that sank Dukakis.
Wikipedia quotes from political scientist Alexander P. Lamis’ book titled Southern Politics. In that book, Atwater framed the Southern Strategy this way: Atwater: “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
The bottom line is the GOP is still playing this card. Right now. The code language is about voter id laws, cutting spending, and the President’s questionable birth certificate. Its all about getting WHITE votes.
What unadulterated crap!!
Code. Is there anything it can’t do?
Since nobody can see it, it can’t be refuted. This is not as important as some might think.
Because the fact is that everybody knows better.
Almost 1100 felons voted illegally in MN. Al Franken won the umpty-umpth recount by about 340 votes and so, we not only have one more clown in the Senate, we have Obamacare.
So. how many blacks we enfranchised by this? Or disenfranchised?
We know that about 1100 legal votes were invalidated.
Is this a win?
Of course. It’s just that we’re not supposed know about it.
To quote the insightful James Taranto, “If you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.”