The Black History of the White House (53 page)

Proponents of postracial policy celebrate the willingness of a growing number of whites, disproportionately young, to vote for black candidates, but fail to explain why. There are at least three reasons. First, black civil rights activists and other black leaders have been successful in exposing the lingering and persistent nature of racism and racial disparities. Clearly, many whites become antiracist because they are open to this information. Second, the Obama–Democratic Party win was the fulcrum with which the nation repudiated conservatism and Republican Party politics. Obama, for many, was the vehicle for the solid rejection of more than a decade of the most regressive government in recent memory. The wretched campaign of John McCain embodied the deadly combination of contradictions that Bush-era Republicans face: a base split between competing cultural, social and economic constituencies; an economic collapse popularly linked to the failed tenets of neoliberalism; unnecessary wars of choice whose cost in lives and resources is too high to tolerate even for many patriotic Republicans; and party demographics that are going in the opposite direction of a more diversifying nation.

And third, the unacceptability of overt racism in the public sphere crosses party lines, and at least some conservatives reject such tactics. This made Palin's venture into these waters problematic for John McCain. Despite a hard-core racist, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic wing in the party, most Republicans
know that they actually turn off voters when they go too far in that direction. At least this appeared to be the case until the possibility, and then the reality, of Obama's election ignited a firestorm of public racial rage not seen in the United States in decades. As former President Jimmy Carter so inconveniently opined, the wrath and animosity aimed at Obama is “based on the fact that he is a black man.”
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At one level, the public sphere has become replete with references to Obama as Hitler, a witch doctor, a socialist/communist/Marxist, and a Muslim. These references surfaced at rallies of groups like the “birthers,” who believe he was not born in the United States and has illegally assumed the presidency. These views also arise among the so-called “tea partiers,” who promote states' rights and limited federal government authority. Both birthers and tea partiers include a mixed bag of libertarians, genuine conservatives, and racists. The tea party movement, championed by Sarah Palin and most national Republican Party officials and leaders, has generally ignored, if not supported, racists in its midst, such as Houston-based
teaparty.com
founder and tea party leader Dale Robertson, who was caught in a photo carrying a sign using the (misspelled) word “niggar” and who sent out a fundraising letter with an image of Obama manipulated to look like a pimp.
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Bigoted tirades against legislation for health care reform from white reactionaries like Rush Limbaugh were thoroughly racialized, as when he referred to the legislation as a “reparations” bill.
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Despite the claim that opposition to Obama is based on his politics, these virtually all-white movements, with a few notable exceptions, have been driven by political extremists who are informed by neoconservative leaders and hate media. Republicans such as Palin, Representative Michelle Bachman, and Representative Joe Wilson—who lowered himself to shout
“You lie!” while the president was addressing a joint session of Congress—are stoking the flames rather than attempting to douse them with reason and reality. During his first two years in office, the entire Republican membership in both the House of Representatives and the Senate marched lock-step in opposition to everything Obama did, signaling to their constituencies that compromise, negotiation, and civility were not options for dealing with this president.

All of this has been aided and abetted by right-wing talk radio and Fox TV News. Just as Wilson's “You lie” can be seen as an attempt to sow public uncertainty and antipathy toward the president, so too can the punditry of Fox News' Glenn Beck, who tries to stoke fear and paranoia with accusations that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
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It is nearly impossible to imagine a black (or white) media personality on the traditional networks, CNN, or MSNBC making a similar statement about a white political leader, let alone the president of the United States, and not being removed from the air immediately and denounced in a rapid-fire press release. Far from being regretful, Beck, Wilson, and others have used these controversies to raise funds and deepen their ties to the most reactionary elements of the far right.
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With each milestone in racial life in the United States, the trope of “postraciality” is dusted off and used by its proponents to call for an end to real, substantive progress in achieving social equality. Indeed, advocacy of postraciality has emerged from prominent people of color, such as Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who is African American, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is of South Asian descent. However, the impulse to close the door on race must be resisted. Well-documented and persistent forms of inequality, driven by institutional racism, inadequate public policy, and racial
blinders, remind us on a daily basis of the unfinished agenda of equal rights. So does the daily venom on the right that is thoroughly racialized. The journey has never been to achieve benefits for a few at the top, but for the advancement of all, beginning with the many at the bottom.

Race Neutral or Race Conscious?: Obama's Dilemma

This is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. . . . There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.
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—Toni Morrison, endorsement of Obama

It would be a mistake to reduce Obama's election as primarily a victory for black America. His triumph is a collective one that highlights the persistence of the long struggle for democracy by a wide range of communities and constituencies. In this light, his win is a benefit for the nation and the world as a whole. And when we elected Obama to lead the nation at home and represent us abroad, for once, at least in this era, nearly the entire world rejoiced with us. In villages, towns, cities, favelas, barrios, prisons, army bases, cafés, and public spaces around the globe, people celebrated. In some neighborhoods people stopped traffic to dance in the streets.

Obama's win—our victory—is also a repudiation of the conservatism that has dominated American politics for forty or more years. Manipulating racial fear, class prejudices, imperial global relations, and deregulated markets, conservative Republicans and opportunistic Democratic administrations in the 1980s and 1990s attempted to roll back the social and legislative advances of the Great Depression and the Great Society. But especially under the George W. Bush administration and the hyper-reactionary Republican Congress of 1995–2007, the
nation and the world experienced the most radical retreat on political and human rights imaginable. All the while, transnational corporations, disproportionately U.S.-based, pillaged the nation and the world with the full assistance of the antigovernment Bush administration.

Obama has called for, and he should receive, fierce support for the progressive dimensions of his agenda: ending the war in Iraq, building a green capitalist economy, reining in constitutional abuses, reforming the health care system, focusing on job creation, closing foreign prisons where torture has occurred, and so on. He should also receive fierce opposition to his more conservative proposals and any stalling or rollback on campaign promises, like ending the Iraq War, closing Guantánamo Bay prison, and prohibiting torture. The Obama administration must also be pushed to fulfill its promise to address the urban issues that have been left to fester for decades. He must overcome fears of being called a “racial hostage” i.e., appearing to be obligated to addressing racial concerns, and a real—rather than imagined—effort to ensure equality for all must continue to forge ahead.

Obama seems to get it. In his July 2009 speech before the NAACP he stated:

I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there probably has never been less discrimination in America than there is today. I think we can say that. But make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America. . . . But we also know that prejudice and discrimination—at least the most blatant types of prejudice and discrimination—are not even the steepest barriers to
opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation's legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.
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The “some” he cites at the outset are the proponents of “postracialism,” who contend that only an individual's personal shortcomings hold them back in today's post–Civil Rights era. The reference to “structural inequalities” is significant because it implies the need for programmatic remedies that address institutional change. President Obama's speech was well received by an audience that longed to hear the country's leader speak in such clear terms.

Many supporters believe—or want to believe—that Obama will be a transformative political leader in a transformative time. They eagerly await the flowering of peace and social justice policies that will open a new chapter in the abatement of “the structural inequalities that our nation's legacy of discrimination has left behind.” Whether Obama, carrying the weight of race on his shoulders in a manner that no other United States president ever has, will provide leadership and initiative on these issues is yet to be seen. At every opportunity, we should remind him to try.

Several ironies have already emerged. One, the race-based backlash against Obama might actually generate the type of crisis that will open up space for policy reforms relevant to the ongoing crisis in communities of color that has been ignored for decades. Such backlash could prompt a discussion that Obama's White House feels it cannot otherwise initiate. An honest and frank discussion from a thoughtful and articulate president in the effort to resolve a crisis might be on the horizon. Then again, it might not.

Another striking irony is that, left to race-neutral strategies, the main beneficiaries of Obama's progressive policies will be the very working-class whites who are mobilizing to oppose him. Obama's White House might just be the best development in U.S. politics for generations for low-income and working-class white Americans. While certainly blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans suffer disproportionately from the wrecked state of the U.S. health care system, in terms of raw numbers it is overwhelmingly whites who are being harmed and exploited by the current state of affairs. As has nearly always been the case, the spread of democracy and inclusiveness to the nation's communities of color reaps benefits for white people as well.

For the millions of Americans who drove his campaign and voted for him, Obama's victory was a collective and transcendent historic moment one rarely experiences in a lifetime. The country can retreat on the extension of civil and political rights to blacks—as it did after Reconstruction and during the Reagan era. Conservative administrations and movements can abandon or outlaw affirmative action—as happened in California, Washington, and Florida, and was unsuccessfully attempted in the 2008 election in Colorado. But none can undo Obama's victory and the fact that it forever changes the image of the White House and who has legitimate claim on it. And this is the feeling that Obama supporters, across all the boundaries and dividing lines, have embraced. The notion that a black man has the right to govern the country—and that a family of color runs the White House—counters centuries-old views of exclusive white entitlement to power. Except for those who believe Obama has no legal right to be in the White House, itself a reflection of some whites' extreme racial reaction to his victory, even his conservative opponents concede the historic change that has occurred. This transformed view of the White House was celebrated and
acknowledged not only in the United States but around the world, as captured in the jubilant response broadcast on election night and the thousands of newspaper and magazine covers that followed.

However, redefining the symbolism of the White House is not the same as changing its racial politics. Obama will not, in fact, cannot, govern as a “black” president who mainly addresses the concerns of people of color, even though those concerns are real, serious, and national in scale. Beyond the fact that such a governing model is not Obama's style or sentiment, the checks and balances of the U.S. political system and the deep-rooted racial suspicion that has animated a significant segment of his opposition will resist all efforts in that direction. As was seen in the first year and a half of his administration, issues of race, no matter how seemingly small, will take on an especially significant tone during his command in the White House. There was a remarkably large number of prominent race-related controversies during the first eighteen months of Obama's presidency, including:

• The revival of “Confederate History Month” in Virginia by Governor Bob McDonnell who initially did not even include a mention of slavery in his original press statement; Georgia and Mississippi governors, Sonny Perdue and Haley Barbour respectively, also declared “Confederate History” months and neither mentioned slavery in their official proclamations. All three neglected the interests, sensitivities, and history of their black constituents.
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• Fierce anti-Muslim opposition to the building of an Islamic Center that would include a mosque two blocks from the “ground zero” site in New York City. Nearly all national Republican leaders, from former Alaska Governor
  Sarah Palin to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, joined the hysteria against the mosque, thereby fueling an atmosphere of religious intolerance. Even Senate Majority leader Harry Reid also came out against the mosque saying through a spokesman that he thought “the mosque should be built somewhere else.” President Obama eventually made a strong statement defending the legality and right of the Center, “As a citizen and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.” However, after coming under fire from the Republicans and the conservative right, he demurred on whether that right should be exercised in this particular case. Obama has also made no public comment on the racist nature of much of the opposition to the Center.
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• The Obama administration's refusal to attend or participate in the Durban Review Conference (aka Durban II) in Geneva, an international conference to assess the follow-up and legacy of the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism endorsed by civil rights activists and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Although Obama signaled before the election that he was interested in his administration attending the conference, under pressure from the right and Israel, the administration ultimately decided not to attend. The decision to boycott the conference occurred after the organizers made changes in key documents demanded as a condition for its attendance. While the Obama White House could not argue that the current documents contained objectionable language, it maintained that the documents still supported the original conference, which was unacceptable.
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• Passage and then judicial suspension of an Arizona law
  (SB 1070) that would have forced police officers to check the citizenship status of anyone they “reasonably suspected” of being undocumented, i.e., an official obligation of the police to racially profile Latinos. On July 6, 2010, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against arguing that it is unconstitutional for states to make immigration laws. The Justice Department did not tie its opposition to the law to racial profiling. On July 28, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued an injunction against key provisions of SB 1070 preventing its implementation.
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• Resistance to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina and the first Latino, to the U.S. Supreme Court; conservatives attacked Sotomayor as a bigot when it was discovered that in a 2001 University of California speech she had stated, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” Talk show host Rush Limbaugh and former House speaker Newt Gingrich referred to her as a “racist” but she was ultimately confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 68-31 vote.
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• Accusations that Obama's Justice Department had a double standard for not harshly prosecuting members of the New Black Panther Party for an incident that had occurred outside of a voting site during the 2008 presidential election. The incident involved two members of the New Black Panther Party, Jerry Jackson and King Samir Shabazz, who on election day, November 4, 2008, stood outside a polling site in Philadelphia and engaged in verbal insults against whites who came to vote. The case had actually been reviewed by the Bush administration
  which decided to only seek an injunction against the men and their leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz. In April 2009, the Obama Justice Department dropped charges against everyone except King Samir Shabazz, thereby winning an injunction against him. In 2009 and 2010, conservatives cited the case as evidence that the administration tolerates racism perpetrated by blacks against whites.
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