When I’m not vacillating between intense anger and denial about a Trump presidency, I find myself in constant reflection about the legacy of our nation’s first black president. I realize that when I think of him, I also make the connection to my own history and the lessons I have learned over the course of my lifetime about the complexity of being a black woman and a progressive.
My political awakening began with my grandparents. An interracial couple living in Baltimore, they found each other years before Loving v. Virginia made their union legal. Growing up, my white grandfather had never known anyone who wasn’t a Democrat. My black grandmother’s mother was at one point a Republican (who identified with “the party of Lincoln”) but had become a Democrat long before she died, and my grandmother is a Democrat who has friends across the ideological spectrum.
As the first grandchild who also happened to be an only child, and as the grandchild who lived closest in proximity to my grandparents, I spent a lot of time with them during my youth and teen years. I don’t remember exactly when we started having political conversations. Perhaps I just picked up on a number of things that they said around me and made meaning from them. Looking back, I do remember that I learned two distinct things about politics from them. One was that as an interracial couple (each of whom were in their second marriage), their lives and marriage were inherently political because of the bodies they lived in. I remember hearing stories about how they navigated their relationship during the days of segregation—when they would have to drive to different states to eat together since they were often refused service and couldn’t legally eat together in many restaurants in Maryland. I learned my most powerful lessons about race, identity, and privilege from these early conversations. The second thing I learned from them was that even though one can identify as a Democrat and/or progressive, their political views may not fit into a box. I learned that as political creatures we are, and can be, incredibly complicated.
Likely because of my upbringing, I identified as a Democrat long before I even voted for the first time in 1996. So the next year when I was a sophomore in college, I decided to volunteer for the local Republican Committee, just to explore their beliefs. “If I say I’m not a Republican, I should at least know why,” I told my grandfather when he asked why on Earth I would do such a thing. To this day, he still can’t reconcile this action in his mind. Luckily his concern would not be an issue. That experience cemented what I already knew since childhood—I was, and would forever be, a Democrat.
Yet as I grew older, the complications of identity politics became clearer to me.
My grandfather, who was a manager working for the state, wasn’t a fan of unions, which have been a longtime ally of the Democratic Party. When I graduated college and became a teacher in Baltimore City through Teach for America, some of his first words to me about my new job were, “Whatever you do, don’t join the teacher’s union!” In his mind, unions made it hard to fire people who were ineffective in their jobs. While I disagreed with him then and now, as I got older it occurred to me how being a straight white man, born before World War II, with a college education and a good management job informed his thinking on certain issues. I was aware that while we were both Democrats, my lived experience as a black woman made life look and feel different for me. Likewise, my grandmother represents her own political contradictions. A lifelong actively practicing Catholic, she is also a monthly donor to Planned Parenthood. I have had conversations with her where she has asserted a woman’s right to choose, citing “there is life after abortion.” While I don’t know if she identifies as a feminist, she is my feminist hero and role model. So, as I think about the example they set for me, it makes sense that my politics involve different conflicts and complications that sometimes I can’t seem to reconcile.
It also makes sense that since she was the foundation of my political education and identity formation, my grandmother was the first person I called on the night of Nov. 4, 2008—right after Barack Obama was announced as the president-elect. It is a moment that is seared into my brain. Knowing all too well the history of racial animus that undergirds this country’s treatment of black people, neither of us were fully convinced that he would make it through the campaign alive, never mind actually become president. Several decades apart in age and lived experience as black women, through our tears we kept repeating the same thing to each other, “I never thought I’d live to see this day!” It was the most hopeful day of my lifetime.
A few months into Obama’s first term, I was unexpectedly invited to White House for an evening of music, poetry, and spoken word. Though I opted to take my husband as my date instead of my grandmother (who has never quite forgiven me), I kept her abreast of every detail before, during, and after the event. I even called her from inside of the White House to tell her that my husband spoke to the president. There is a picture of me from that night, standing in the East Wing, smiling and talking to her on my cell phone. While I don’t remember exactly what I said to her, I think I said something like,“I’m here. I’m actually here. Michelle is amazing. And yes, he [Obama] is really real!”
In 2012, I went to early vote for Obama’s second term with my grandparents. I ran a volunteer phone bank for the campaign and was an officer in my local chapter of Young Democrats. I had donated quite a bit of money to the campaign and was “fired up and ready to go.” I was mostly ready for Obama to do all the things he hadn’t done in his first term. As we waited in line to vote together, it occurred to me that not only were we voting for Obama as a family; we were also in agreement that we would all vote for same sex marriage which was on the ballot, and in-state tuition for undocumented students. In that moment, it felt like life had come full circle. A black woman (my grandmother) whose people had been historically denied the right to vote, with her white husband in a marriage that wasn’t even legal 45 years prior, together with their granddaughter, voting for the second term of the first black president and voting to advance the rights and freedom of other marginalized peoples. Life was good and, for that brief moment, everything was right with the world.
But life is rarely so serene or cut and dry. My feelings of hope and pride about the Obama presidency are filled with many powerful contradictions. I feel a deeply intense and personal sense of pride about Obama, his legacy and his historic first; but as a black woman, I also feel incredibly protective of him. Though I’ve been well aware for some time that I live in a country with a deep rooted history of racism and sexism, prior to his presidency, I had a tiny sliver of hope that he would be different, or more specifically that he would be treated differently. I know the daily microagressions that come with being a black body in a world which values and privileges whiteness, but my naiveté and the dizzying, indefatigable hope he inspired in me allowed me to imagine a world in which he would be respected—if for nothing else but for the power of the office that he held. Of course, this harkens back to the respectability politics I’ve learned at various points through my life: That as black people, if we work hard enough, if we go to the “right” schools, if we talk and act the “right” way, we will be somehow become immune to racism. Of course, that’s not how racism works. We all saw how the microagressions directed at the very proper, well-educated Obama became outright hostility and then a rabid, unrelenting, unyielding, deep-seated racism from which we could not shield our eyes and ears. And while I slowly became accustomed to the racism that was directed at him, I was not prepared for it to be directed at us (everyday black Americans) too.
Our country couldn’t handle the idea of a black man and his family in the White House and they did everything they could to let black people know it. Over the last eight years at work, at home, and at graduate school, I routinely had private conversations with my black friends where we talked about how things had gotten harder for us since he took office. Suggestions by white people that we only voted for him because of his race, as if history hadn’t shown that many of us had been Democrats for generations. White co-workers who suddenly became more difficult and demanding which came across like an effort to “put us in our place.” Strangers who hurled the n-word and other racial epithets at us freely and without shame. More aggressive and hostile encounters with police. White Obama voters who wanted to draw us into conversations about how they felt disappointed with him and asked us to co-sign their feelings. Conservatives who spent years telling us he had failed us as black people because the murder rate in Chicago had skyrocketed and because Ferguson and Baltimore had experienced uprisings. And more recently: Donald Trump, who among many things told us that we were all jobless and living in urban hellholes. For me personally (and for other black women I know), living my life online also came with challenges that reflected this anything but post-racial world. I was subject to a special kind of rage and abuse from the alt-right whenever I tweeted anything about being a black woman.
But as black people, we remained steadfast and refused to give in. Most of us were raised to know you don’t air your dirty laundry in public. So while we may have had our own issues about what Obama did or didn’t do, many of us weren’t likely to critique him in “mixed company,” especially because of all the racism surrounding him. It was an unspoken rule not to be in the business of talking bad about other black people with non-black folk, especially white folk. This feeling was particularly prevalent among the black women I know. As the backbone of the black community, the one thing that is etched into our DNA is to love, support, and uplift other black people fiercely. We’ve been doing it since time immemorial and, in this country, we’ve been doing it since our ancestors were first brought to these shores. We protect our own and knowing the depraved history of how black men have been treated, we will put aside our experiences of sexism and proudly become race women. So that meant that Obama was ours and, for better or worse, we were sticking by him. While whites supported him (and there were many) and while he was the president of all Americans, they didn’t know what he was going through like we did. It felt like he belonged to us. We had lots of expectations of him and we felt that we had a special obligation to support him. When I think about this, the picture of black pastors laying hands on Obama back in 2008 when he was running for president comes to my mind. Laying hands on a person in Christianity is a way of invoking the Holy Spirit to bless them. The pastors were praying for his success, his health, and most importantly, his safety. As a black woman, I know that you don’t have to be clergy or even religious to understand this. It’s just what we do in community with each other. Without needing to ever articulate it, I knew that all of us as black people, figuratively speaking, were laying hands on our president too.
And while I knew that my unwavering support served as a sort of cushion to soften the blow of the racism that Obama was (and we were) experiencing, I also felt torn because, as I grew in my progressive identity over the course of his presidency, I found myself disappointed in many of things that he didn’t do. Having worked in immigration advocacy for many years and having gone through the immigration process with close relatives, I was beyond disappointed that immigration reform didn’t happen on Obama’s watch. I know this largely was due to Republicans blocking nearly everything he proposed but I wrestled with judgment and anger over why he didn’t do it early in his first term when he had the political capital to do so. I spent a lot of time talking with immigrant family members and friends who felt like pawns who were used to get votes, but in the end didn’t get what they were promised—something which they felt Democrats did a lot. I believed that DACA and DAPA were tepid and came too late, and was horrified that his actions had earned the nickname “deporter-in-chief.” I hated that the ACA rollout was disastrous and that navigating the exchanges was nightmarish. I wanted an end to privatized prisons and detention centers and wanted fair sentencing for drug offenders who were not violent felons. I was uncomfortable with the use of drone strikes, questioned his decisions around Syria, and all around, wanted him to be more progressive and radical. Though I loved and was so proud of him, I wanted him to do better. This is a hard thing for me to admit. Even by writing this, I feel like I’m betraying the unspoken rule of not critiquing him in mixed company. In fact, I realize that I could only write this reflection upon his departure from the office of the president.
To be clear, this is not about me bashing our 44th president. In fact, I think that history will show that he accomplished many notable and important achievements, particularly in the face of overwhelming opposition. Despite my misgivings, I understand that governing is never simple. There are complex factors that go into the huge decisions that get made, factors that are rarely transparent to the people and the end results are almost never satisfactory to everyone. I also know that the presidency is often about looking at the long view, which sometimes means immediate wins at the federal level are often sacrificed for wins at the local and state level, which ultimately enable change at the national level. I could spend years debating the issues I mentioned above and realize that others in the progressive community can come up with valid viewpoints to both support and argue against my thinking. And no matter my frustration and sometimes disappointment, though I cannot predict the future, I believe that Obama will be the most humane, thoughtful and brilliant president of my lifetime.
So as I say goodbye to President Obama, I am filled once again with contradictions and complexity. I am infinitely proud of what he achieved and am thankful that I was able to live during this moment in history. I am mesmerized by the feeling of hope that he inspired in me and millions of others and remain encouraged (and quite frankly amazed) by his continued faith in the goodness of the American people. I also feel that his work is unfinished and am sitting with the mixed feelings of discontent about what he didn’t do. I am forever changed by the intense racism and bigotry that we experienced during the last eight years, though I also know it made me a realist. It has helped me to grow into the activist that I am. And finally, because of this president, his impact, and through the exploration of my relationship with my grandparents during his tenure, I enter this year with a deeper understanding of my political and social identity. I embrace the nuance I learned over the last eight years and am able to accept myself fully as a black woman and a progressive—along with the pain and discomfort and “in-between” that accompanies it.
My grief and pain and rage make this transition of power surreal. But if anything, the Obama presidency has taught me to learn to live in a world in which blinding hope and crushing reality can coexist. I will move forward with a mix of sadness, disillusionment, and fierce determination. And most of all, with a sense of overwhelming gratitude for a president who made an indelible mark on our country and world—and who has forever changed me.