Do we need to stop arguing over whether Barack Obama is black enough?
OPINION - Is Barack Obama black enough? Should we care? We need to stop arguing over President Obama’s blackness and just move on to a more productive conversation...
Another example is the dud that was President Obama’s beer summit, when he brought together Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police officer who cuffed him for entering his own house while black. The Gates arrest was a squandered opportunity for Obama to address racism in the criminal justice system. And yet, the president stepped to the plate in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin killing, when he offered the statement that his son would have looked like Trayvon.
All elected officials should be held accountable, and the nation’s first black president is no exception. But to focus on whether President Obama is black enough allows the black community to miss the big picture.
Perhaps one could argue that diehard Obama supporters weren’t black enough when they failed to openly demonstrate their concern over black unemployment and other forms of injustice–not to embarrass or denigrate Obama, but to provide him with the space to do the right thing by his base. The Occupy and LGBT movements have shown the president is amenable to public pressure when strategically applied. Unfortunately, too many people among the base mistook the 2008 election for a movement. They assumed that the president would usher in a post racial America where their problems would simply vanish. But that didn’t happen.
And now, the Barack Obama who once treated his Republican adversaries with kid gloves—refusing to offend, and attempting to negotiate with people who sought nothing short of doing him in— has an economic populist message. The new Obama is the old Obama. The president is tapping into public outrage over hard times, growing economic inequality and the predatory practices of private equity firms such as Bain Capital, including chopping up companies and firing workers for profit. Ironically, some of the key opposition to Obama’s message apparently comes from black political surrogates such as Cory Booker, Gov. Deval Patrick and Harold Ford Jr., who have defended Mitt Romney and Bain. Yet no one is questioning their blackness.
Ultimately, in this political year, the black community has no luxury to debate about whether Barack Obama is black enough, as they lose the right to vote and face an Election Day as crucial as any. So, give it up, let it go, and learn to be strategic. The man will be able to do nothing without a second term.
In the absence of a second, better and perhaps even blacker second Obama term, you get Mitt Romney. And with Mitt Romney comes a Supreme Court with three new justices in the mold of Scalia, Thomas and Alito. Now that would give black folks much to argue about.
Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove
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