There are few adults in the USA, black or white, who have not at least heard of the expression "DWB" which is short for "Driving While Black." Even if you aren't sure what it means, you've heard it. Comedians of various stripes have used it. Over the years hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles have been published about it. And for many African Americans, especially those of Baby Boomer age and older like me, it is an all too real experience, either for them or someone they know. Well, for the last two years, our half-white, half-black, Hawaii born and raised, private school educated President, a man who did not grow up in a black, urban environment or a southern segregated one, has experienced a similar phenomenon: PWB or "President While Black."
Basically, DWB -and now PWB- means to be completely disrespected by others, usually an individual or groups of people who are not black, and who feel no hesitation about treating you disrespectfully because in their minds: A. They have a right to do it (white privilege), and B. There is little if anything that your black ass can do about it.
To illustrate my point about what is happening to the POTUS, first a primer.
The ACLU has one of the most comprehensive studies that I've read. Even though this particular report is about ten years old, and even though things have improved incrementally in places, DWB is still a problem.
What you will learn in the ACLU's report is that examples abound from daily indignities like being stopped and falsely accused of "weaving" to having your window smashed by a cops' billy club to being spread-eagled on the filthy ground in broad daylight in front of the public with guns pointed at you for no good reason (this happened to me). And God help you should you question the officer in anything other than the meekest of voices as to why he's treating you this way. Act like you have a spine and you might get a taste of what it was like to be a cornered runaway slave, circa 1850. Be white and stand up to an officer and you're a citizen demanding to be treated appropriately by a civil servant. Be black and stand up to an officer and you're "arrogant" and "uppity" at best, and dangerously militant at worst. Hispanics, especially in certain parts of the country, also face constant harassment by police. And sometimes white people, especially in the company of blacks or Hispanics, will catch hell by association. Baby Boomers who were part of the counter culture generation in the 60s and 70s also caught hell from the cops on our nation's roads. Paint a peace symbol on your VW Beetle, wear long hair and "hippie" clothing, and it was open season by the cops. But those times have passed. The white Woodstock generation that referred to cops as "pigs" is now on Wall Street. Black folks are, well, still black.
There are clear differences in racial perspectives when on our nation's roads. When most white Americans see a police car roll past on a cross road, pull up behind or beside them at a traffic light they feel no danger. In fact, as my wife puts it, she feels a sense of safety. The sudden presence of "law enforcement" is a good feeling. However many black Americans have a very different feeling when they see police car behind them. You thoughts go like this: "I better not move a muscle and definitely avoid reaching under the seat to pick up my Blackberry that just slipped to the floor." "What is this muth!@#* going to hassle me about this time?" "I heard what happened to my [cousin, uncle, sister, brother, Dad, friend, classmate, neighbor, etc.]. I hope this isn't my time." You breathe a huge sigh of relief when the cop moves on and doesn't bother you. Your heart stops racing, pulse returns to normal. And when you DO get pulled over, you think of previous experiences, or those of other blacks that you've heard about, and you brace yourself, and you remind yourself what you heard from adults when you were younger: SOME white cops are itching for the slightest excuse to drag your black ass out of your car and arrest you. And if you're a black teenage boy, you are especially vulnerable because of racial profiling. Hold your tongue. Mind your matters. Come home safely.
While less horrific these days, DWB continues to be a problem in America because, like a chameleon, it just changes its appearance. DWB morphs into something else, as soon as someone who does not look like a "normal American" encroaches on sacred ground. It used to be the sacred ground was primarily white residential neighborhoods and schools, now it's occupational categories. And there is no occupation more visible, more powerful, or more coveted than the Presidency of the United States of America.
Without belaboring the issue, this President has been treated more disrespectfully by both the right and the left, than any President in U.S. history. Not even Abraham Lincoln, hated by the South and slaveholding sympathizers was disrespected by a member of Congress in the way good ol' boy Joe Wilson disrespected Obama. From "you lie!" on the right, to massive bellyaching on the left over Libya and anything involving the Middle East (soundly defeated in this great column by Joshua Greenman ) .
As an African American, I sometimes get the feeling that progressives are completely puzzled by a black politician without an explicit civil rights agenda, without "Reverend" in front of his name, but someone who is clearly not conservative, clearly on our side: (Obama's Accomplishments) .
Perhaps it's the POTUS' intellectual approach to decision-making. Maybe some liberals like most conservatives consider him "uppity," not sufficiently deferential to white (in this case liberal) opinions. Or maybe those on the extreme left simply prefer a "righteous" brother like Cinque, the Symbionese Liberation Army "Field Marshal," who with his white compatriots murdered someone before kidnapping Patty Hearst. Power to the People and all that.
It was the only known homicide ever committed by the band of adventurers who gathered around Donald DeFreeze, who had taken the name Cinque from the leader of a 19th- century rebellion on the Amistad, a slave ship. The field marshal had never quite made it as a street mugger in Los Angeles. In prison he was known as a lightweight. But to the young white prison-reform activists who adopted him, Cinque was a street-talking Spartacus.
Maybe what some liberals really want is dashiki-wearing, black power saluting MILITANT. If a black man is going to hold an establishment type job, at least he could be like Afro-wearing Linc Hayes from the 60s TV series "Mod Squad" and end every conversation with the word "solid." Is that the problem?
Fortunately, our POTUS isn't Cinque. He isn't Linc. He isn't Reverend Jackson, Reverend Sharpton, Reverend Wright, or Reverend Anybody. And to those overly exuberant liberals like Ed Schultz who were hollering for Obama to go all Eugene V. Debs and join the protests in Wisconsin, he's not a labor leader either. He is President of the United States of America. No one would expect a white president to do those things, so why are they expected of Obama? Why so much angst when Obama does not do them? Does a black POTUS draw a different standard than a white one? Is he/she supposed to be, you know, black?
Whatever it is, it seems both right and left have a stereotype about how a black man should behave, especially a black man elected to power and authority in a majority white country, except the stereotypes differ. But either way, President While Black, like DWB, means suffering racial profiling or stereotyping. Obama's preternatural calm, regal bearing, and intellectual, professorial style is making heads explode on both sides of the political aisle, especially at the extremes.
People, this has to stop. No more whining "I'm tired of supporting the lesser of two evils," no more excuses for ignoring this president's huge list of accomplishments and acting as if President Obama is only slightly better than a Republican, when we all know damn well that neither George W. Bush nor John McCain would have accomplished anything Kossacks say they care about, things President Obama has accomplished. No more of this bullshit that President Obama "betrayed us," or we should "primary him" or "stay home in 2012."
Want even more progress? Then aim your fire in the direction of the real enemy: the Republicans and their Tea Baggin' agents. Stop doing the enemy's work for them by undercutting the best president we've had in more than forty years. Criticize the POTUS if you must for not moving fast enough or bold enough, but giving 2012 campaign ammunition to the Republicans by tearing him down or openly opposing him is what my beloved, late father used to describe as "cutting off your nose to spite your face." It doesn't make sense, and it damn sure isn't a winning strategy.