I haven't put this out on the table in the past 9 months but it is time to go there. In all of my years, I have NEVER heard this much criticism early in his term of ANY President (this includes George W. Bush). Barack Obama is a victim of the "Black Tax."
Black folks, you all know what I mean here. The Black Tax is the "the notion that Black people have to work and perform regular tasks twice as well as White people." This is in full effect in 2009.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/...
I will get back to the Black Tax in a minute but first I want to address the issue of white racial resentment among the wingnuts on the Right. White racial paranoia is plainly evident in the birther movement and even in the consistent claims that Obama is a "socialist."
Tim Wise made this very point on CNN a few weeks back:
http://www.cnn.com/...
In a subsequent blog post, Wise expands on the issue of white racial resentment:
In the end, although there are many people, with many different reasons for opposing the President or his health care proposal, the role that race and racism is playing cannot be ignored. With major conservative spokespersons stoking the fires of racial resentment daily, and with most whites having long ago come to the conclusion that social program spending is something done on behalf of racial "minorities" at their own white expense, it is not too much to insist that race is operating, for some quite overtly and for others more subtly.
And for those who insist racism has nothing to do with it, the question remains why they have said nothing to those persons coming to their rallies and giving exactly that impression by way of the signs they carry. Where are their letters or calls to Limbaugh or Beck, chastising them for saying Obama hates white people, or that health care is just a form of reparations--racial payback of white America? Of course they have written no such letters. They have made no such calls. They are too busy. Busy waxing nostalgic for bygone days, which they mis-remember as a time of innocence, of decency, and of self-reliance, but which days were really days of widespread injustice, profound indecency, and institutionalized racial preference for people like them.
They can neither accept the present as it is, nor, interestingly, the past as it was. So they invent a phony version of the latter, while hoping against hope for a reversal of the former. Let us deny them the ability to do either for very long.
Doug J at Balloon Juice posted a provocative blog today which made me think once again about the "black tax." In this post titled "Walking on Water Won't Make Him A Miracle Man," he writes:
One of the things I find most fascinating about Barack Obama is ability to do extremely difficult things while being criticized (especially from the left) for not doing them better. I didn’t think we’d see a black man elected president in my lifetime, but if you recall, a huge amount of the discussion in August and September wasn’t about the fact the fact that he was ahead of McCain in the polls but about why he wasn’t ahead by more. Likewise, I had thought there was no way anyone was going to beat Hillary, but from May on, the focus was on how he wasn’t winning more decisively—"limping towards victory" was a phrase that I recall. And then he managed to get a good-sized stimulus passed; well, the story was that it wasn’t big enough (I agree that it wasn’t big enough, personally). Now, we’re closer to some kind of health care reform than we’ve ever been before and Obama is portrayed as an ineffectual sell-out.
Is it always like this with Democratic presidents or is it peculiar to Obama? The only one I followed closely was Clinton and it was certainly like this with Clinton (not entirely unjustifiably, in my opinion).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for pushing for a public option. I think I’m for Obama taking the lead on it too if that will help. But I don’t see the value in the "he’s another Carter", "Hillary would have been better", "he’s too distant" stuff.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/...
This post captures the reality of the "black tax" like few I have read over the past 9 months. To add fuel to the fire, I then read that Saxby Chambliss believes that President Obama better show "humility" in this speech tomorrow.
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo...
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said today that, because of angry town hallers and the like, President Obama should show "humility" when he speaks to Congress Wednesday night.
"What you're seeing is folks on my side anxious to see what the president has to say tomorrow night," Chambliss said. "I think he's gonna have to express some humility based on what we've seen around the country this August and that's not his inclination."
Once again the ugly head of racism rears its head. Basically here is an old, white, Southern senator telling the President of the United States "not to get too big for his britches." I expected him to use the word "boy" in his statement at some point.
Every Black person in this country has had the experience of living with the reality of the "black tax." It's nothing new.