Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
I don't think you get it. That would be great. I would love that. But read the article again. We can fault Obama for being sensitive to racial issues as Coates did by calling him out on his treatment of Shirley Sherrod. His treatment of her was shameful. I won't excuse it. But I understand why it happened.
I don't want you to neglect parts of the article like this one: "The irony of Barack Obama is this: he has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear, by being “clean” (as Joe Biden once labeled him)—and yet his indelible blackness irradiates everything he touches...No amount of rhetorical moderation could change this. It did not matter that the president addressed himself to “every parent in America.” His insistence that “everybody [pull] together” was irrelevant. It meant nothing that he declined to cast aspersions on the investigating authorities, or to speculate on events. Even the fact that Obama expressed his own connection to Martin in the quietest way imaginable—“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”—would not mollify his opposition. It is, after all, one thing to hear “I am Trayvon Martin” from the usual placard-waving rabble-rousers. Hearing it from the commander of the greatest military machine in human history is another."
In short, "...when President Obama addressed the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, he demonstrated integration’s great limitation—that acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. And even then, full acceptance is still withheld. The larger effects of this withholding constrict Obama’s presidential potential in areas affected tangentially—or seemingly not at all—by race." The black community seethes (and apparently so do you), as Coates says, because he should be our hero and he should stand tall for what is right. But the black community understands that in order for him to be effective, he cannot do this because race is such a charged topic in the country that a black President who does so, even when he is in the right to do so, will be cutting himself off at the knees. Every single act following such an approach will be tainted with the assumption by the white electorate that he favors black people. And that would render him as good as powerless. I know it. Coates knows it. Sherrod knows it. And now you know it.
"But whatever the politics, a total submission to them is a disservice to the country. No one knows this better than Obama himself, who once described patriotism as more than pageantry and the scarfing of hot dogs. “When our laws, our leaders, or our government are out of alignment with our ideals, then the dissent of ordinary Americans may prove to be one of the truest expressions of patriotism,” Obama said in Independence, Missouri, in June 2008. Love of country, like all other forms of love, requires that you tell those you care about not simply what they want to hear but what they need to hear.
But in the age of the Obama presidency, expressing that kind of patriotism is presumably best done quietly, politely, and with great deference."
I think that last sentence is packed with meaning and emotion. Coates doesn't want it to be this way. He thought maybe it didn't have to be and like you, I suspect, hoped Obama was the one to change that. But it's just not possible--even the man who pulled off that wonderful speech after Jeremiah Wright's now famous sermon can't tell the country what it needs to hear in the way one would expect him to. I think Coates is saddened by this. He's conflicted about what he wants Obama to be and what he knows Obama can't be. That's why Coates' last three paragraphs are so powerful.
"In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard.
And yet this is the uncertain foundation of Obama’s historic victory—a victory that I, and my community, hold in the highest esteem. Who would truly deny the possibility of a black presidency in all its power and symbolism? Who would rob that little black boy of the right to feel himself affirmed by touching the kinky black hair of his president?
I think back to the first time I wrote Shirley Sherrod, requesting an interview. Here was a black woman with every reason in the world to bear considerable animosity toward Barack Obama. But she agreed to meet me only with great trepidation. She said she didn’t “want to do anything to hurt” the president."
That part in bold italics is what this whole article is about. Remember, it's called Fear of a Black President. The article talks about Obama and his failings and triumphs, sure. But Coates' thesis is about us and what we are ready to accept and how that affects what we get from and out of our first black President.
TM
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