Post-Racial, My Ass

In a speech akin to that of a black slave driver addressing a congregation of his subjects about the injustice of their enslavement at a prayer meeting, while entreating them to overcome the inequities they face by simply being better slaves, Pretendident Barack Obama adopted his now-familiar Reverend Brother Daddy persona and verbally bitch-slapped his most loyal supporters for not rising above the similar backgrounds they share with him, as he did.  Presenting the keynote speech at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s centennial anniversary dinner, and, once again reducing the major challenges confronting the African American community to bad parenting,  he yet again exhorted black people to turn off their XBoxes and make their children do their homework, as if that alone will make their schools, circumstances, and lives better.

While admitting to systemic inequities, he nonetheless falsely equated the right-wing meme of “personal responsibility” with the justification for the abdication of government obligation to ensure equal access and opportunity to a segment of society to whom those basic rights have long been, and continue to be, denied.  This is all too familiar territory for the man, who, like many of the children of his mythical, stereotypical Ray-Ray and Pookie, (who he exhorts to get up off the couch and stop watching Sports Center and feeding their kids Popeye’s fried chicken for breakfast) was raised in a “non-nuclear” family most of his life.  However, instead of stressing that the family dynamic is far less important than the opportunities to provide that caregivers have to offer their charges, he insists upon promoting the “dysfunctional” black family as the root cause of the majority of black people’s ills.  Let’s face it, he was primarily raised by grandparents, just like many African American, and other “disadvantaged” children “abandoned” by their fathers, yet, unlike those inner-city and impoverished youngsters, his family was able to give him access to world travel and private  school education, options unavailable to the families he now so fondly assails.  Additionally, though when living in two-parent households, the parents in question were never both his, he, for some inexplicable reason, continues to recite the fairy tale that two-parent families are the only, or best path to black success.

In the past, this sort of now-typical obfuscation would largely go unacknowledged in news reports of his long-winded, deliberately obtuse TelePrompTer-read speeches, carefully crafted to appear to be sympathetic to the plight of the audience being addressed, while in actuality giving short-shrift to to the problem at hand, and attempting to camouflage the reality of his indifference and planned continued inattention.  However, it seems that journalists, both black and white, are no longer quite so willing to give their appointed darling such a freewheeling pass.  Though they by no means take him to task to the warranted degree, they are suddenly unwilling to completely let him off the hook.

The Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson and Cheryl W. Thompson say:

Obama has navigated the complicated terrain of race in a nuanced way, seldom dealing with it directly in terms of policy. During last year’s campaign, he did not confront the subject fully until racially incendiary comments by his former pastor threatened to derail his candidacy. Then Obama delivered what many called a history-making address on race but did not touch on race-based government policies.

In her article written prior to the event, Politico’s Nia-Malika Henderson highlighted some of the pitfalls the man whose presidential achievement in some, but not all, ways validates the achievement of the venerable Civil Rights institution, faces:

The disparities are well known and were ticked off by (National Urban League president, Marc) Morial in a report on the state of black America. The report talked of two black Americas, one prosperous and politically engaged, and another, beset by social problems and inequities—high incarceration, foreclosure, drop out, and unemployment rates.

Yet Obama has rarely spoken directly of those problems, choosing instead a one-size-fits-all approach when, for instance, he was asked whether he would do any targeted intervention to reduce the black unemployment rate.

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Strategically, that kind of raceless, universal approach served Obama well in the campaign, and he was able to hold racial issues at arms length, with the implicit understanding among blacks that he couldn’t be “the black president.” But with that tacit agreement, there were also expectations, University of Maryland professor Ron Walters said.

“They want the agenda to be recognized but they are reluctant to press it. There is going to be a lot of listening going on to see if he begins to press aspects of this agenda,” said Walters, who ran Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns. “And there’s going to be a ‘where’s the beef, come to Jesus’ meeting somewhere down the line without any concrete action.”

Even the Chicago Sun-Times‘ expert on all things racial, and major Obama cheerleader, Mary Mitchell, raps the HNIC’s knuckles for his over-emphasis on “inclusiveness,” while effectively “including himself out” of the equation.    Though I have disagreed with Mitchell on many occasions, and even take issue with some her assertions in this column, like, the claim that the issues of “crime, drug abuse and low academic achievement” are wholly self-imposed black societal ills, her position that today’s civil rights leaders must themselves take a “colorblind” approach to holding this president accountable as they have all others, is spot on.  I also appreciated her acknowledgment of Jesse Jackson’s contribution to paving the way for the Obama presidency with his own historic run.

With the abundant evidence of racism not only rearing its ugly head with a vengeance, but actively being stoked by Pat Buchanan and the mostly Southern GOP senators pouring oil on the racial pyre and gleefully tossing matches at the feet of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, in their efforts to justify the fantasy of reverse discrimination disenfranchising the “poor, suffering white male,” instead of being what it is, their attempt to hold on to the myth of their entitlement to privilege, care must be taken to prevent the Republicans’ Undercover Brother from deliberately allowing the fire to continue to be stoked on his watch.  As, like the black slave driver delivering a “slavery ain’t so bad, you can make it better” speech to a plantation prayer meeting congregation, he was hired to do.  Because, as the remarks of earlier NAACP speaker, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, in answer to a Young Republican audience member question about gay and minority inclusion in his party replied, “Y’all come. I got the fried chicken and potato salad,” show, there’s no shortage of “drivers” ready to step into the breech if the Spokesmodel-in-Chief were to stumble by pridefully embracing his blackness, and fall.