Today, a lot of my precious few moments of free time has been spent asking myself:
What if Black people, en masse, agreed with President Obama that he is "not the President of Black America?"
This Black person agrees with the superficial fact asserted by President Obama to the extent that he intended to state the obvious, to wit: (a) no President of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation can be focused on the needs of only one constituency and (b) there is no Black America that one can wrap a bow around and put someone in charge of handling, anyway.
But that is the most superficial level of thinking about what the President said to Black Enterprise Magazine. Since I am not a superficial thinker (and don't think anyone should be no matter how tempting it can be at times) I have to question what it says when, in response to a perfectly legitimate question, President Obama's first response was to disavow any responsibility for addressing the challenges of Black businesses, on the grounds that he is not "the President of Black America."
And, when I scratch below the superficial and convenient, and reflect as I have spent today reflecting, I conclude that to the extent that there was any possible way to feel more politically hurt, dissed and dismissed today as a Black person in America whose vote is needed, enthusiasm is needed, willingness to donate money is needed, and willingness to continue to go door to door to make the case for the President's re-election is needed, I'm not sure that I know what that way is.
The assertion that President Obama "is not [running to be] the President of Black America" is one that has been routinely trotted out since 2008 any time anyone (Black or white) has dared raise the question: what can/have Black people gain/gained (besides historic symbolism) from an Obama presidency? What makes this time different, this Black Enterprise interview, is that this is the first time President Obama himself publicly embraced this trope as if there ever has been (in some unknown universe, I guess) such a thing possible as a "president of Black America."
It is a strawman, bullshit, argument, this response. It is a rank insult to our collective intelligence, and those who say it are either (a) purposefully talking to Black people as if they are ignorant or (b) trrying to gain an advantage with white people by lecturing Black folks about something that is obvious.
But it's only obvious if all you care about is the surface, the superficial. (Which I guess American politics is indeed most concerned about.)
You have to ask yourself how much confidence President Obama must have in turning out to the polls again this November the constituency that gave President Obama 95% of its votes in 2008 that he could be so "in your face" about his "it's not my problem" response to a question about Black people by a Black reporter for a Black magazine (albeit a magazine read by well-off Black people, by and large.)
[Just to be clear since folks routinely go to this ridiculous well of argument - the question of whether President Obama can count on Black people in November is not about whether Black folks are going to vote for Mitt Romney. They aren't, by and large. That option is not even on the table. What IS on the table is the phenomena we saw real issues with in November 2010, despite the President and his handlers at the last minute begging for Black votes as a way to "ensure his legacy": not giving a damn, and staying home.]
I guess I should be fair. After all, it is not as if President Obama has ever come out and said the words "I am President of Jewish America" when in speaking to groups of Jewish Americans he makes a point of reaffirming our country's support of Israel as a "Jewish democratic state" (a sentiment which Palestinians might take some issue with), after the meme started circulating that Jews should be concerned about President Obama. Nor has he said, to be fair, say "I am President of Latino America" when he through executive order enacted as much of the Dream Act as he could possibly get away with halting the deportation of undocumented -- almost all Latino -- immigrant minors brought here as children in direct response to increasing clamoring by the Latino community about what precisely they were getting from the Obama administration that justified their votes turning out in November, particularly given the large number of removals of the undocumented done under this administration. And I should be fair yet again, because President Obama has never said he was the President of LGBT America either when he was issuing executive orders about DOMA and DADT in direct response to the public questions LGBT folks were raising about whether they too should support President Obama's administration when they had not seen what they viewed as sufficient progress on the matters that concerned them. And he certainly hasn't been screaming "I'm the President of Female America" from the rafters either despite his touting what he did for discriminated-against Lily Ledbetter every chance he gets.
One day, someone will explain to this ignorant Black woman here the difference (that apparently is so obvious to a lot of folks but her) between all these other identity constituencies making clear that they have expectations and a price for their electoral loyalty and the folks that Black Enterprise merely asking questions. I really would like to know, because the only difference I can perceive is the perceived racial identity of the folks doing the asking/expecting.
The ones that President Obama has not disclaimed responsibility for, i.e. he's not the President of their America, are Not Black.
In case I haven't made this clear, this statement by President Obama is, to me, a very Big Deal. This country has already said in so many ways that we -- Black people and Black people's causes -- are something nobody wants to even hear much about, let alone try and help make better. That message has been getting increasingly, not decreasingly, loud. Especially as the new face of "Black politics" makes clear that it is perfectly willing to overtly embrace everyone's cause BUT ours, because once again there is no "ours." (Unlike others.) They are free to be as anti-essentialist Black as they want to be because this freedom to not worry about the collective condition of 40,000,000 of their own people is the true measure of our freedom as a people in the country our slave labor helped build.
Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!
(Those other measures that Dr. King cared about, like segregated housing, employment discrimination, mass incarceration and felon disenfranchisement? Meh. Piddling life discomforts like more Black men in New York being stopped and frisked than actually LIVE in New York, disproportionately getting shot dead by cops who are called out to help you, even when we're helpless or even taken out by random folks who decide we are a neighborhood threat merely walking home from the 7-11 with candy and a soft drink? Pay none of that no never mind, neither. After all, asking for programs to address these types of hell just because of their disproportionate impact on Black people would be asking for "special treatment."
Hell, you can't even talk about Black people anymore in politics except in negative terms. It's always blackandbrown. Or blackandhispanic. Or people of color.
Seriously - go look. Black folks' separate needs and political identity have been largely erased from the political discourse except in terms of talking about our dysfunction (which continues to be both the silent ugliness nobody talks about or talks about to the exclusion of everything else, take your choice.)
It's all about our post-racial nation. After all, we elected a Black president right? What else do you complaining (lazy, whining, etc., etc., etc.) Black people WANT?
Given this, perhaps, eventually, some post-racial person will explain why, when the chips are down like they were in 2010, folks are still out there demanding Black folks' electoral loyalty -- if there is no reason, however unspoken, grounded in race for such specific outreach to us as Black potential voters and electoral participants (however inartfully and inadvertently evocative of supremacist assumptions as it might have been with references to "laziness", i.e. bedroom slippers, and "whining", i.e. "stop grumbling and crying" I assume it was?)
When we get to a day where the nation's first Black president feels he can respond in a testy, dismissive fashion to a legitimate question about Black businesses and perceptions of what he has or hasn't done in his administration rather than actually articulate what he has done with specificity, inquiring minds have to ask whether this is evidence of what some have claimed is President Obama's "selective insensitivity"/ingratitude. I don't know what it is. I just know that it's truly sad, either way: whether because he was counting on all of the Black voters who came out for him in 2008 just "understanding" (aka the "you gotta do what you gotta do" defense that has been raised so often in defense of arguably racially defensive missteps by this President) or because he didn't care whether or not we all did understand.
No other constituency but Black voters is ever asked that it be willing to be rhetorically pushed away, including publicly, as a condition of getting anything from politics. For 50 years, the Left has demanded that Black people not only be the moral conscience of our party, but the trusted, ignorant, loyal sheep who when thrown a bright shiny of symbolism better turn out to vote for Democrats or else it's our fault if horrors are vested on us and the white poor. It's our fault. We have to understand. If in fact the results of policy doesn't indicate that we're any better off from our votes, and may be worse off? Too bad. Just think of how much worse it could be. We are valued only for our votes. When they show up, we get nothing that we are told directly (or usually, indirectly since after all, action speaks louder than words) in our name -- unlike almost every other key Democratic constituency. When we don't show up? Well, if only those Negros understood what was good for them.
Value as people worth prioritizing even in small ways?
None at all.
Not even to President Obama - the only President we've ever had to say that he is Black (on his census forms.) It's clearly too much of burden.
And, as all the defensive rhetoric leading up to his disclaiming of the Presidency of the mythical Black America makes clear, it's audacious and bodacious to even ask.
Being the spook who sat by the door isn't required by President Obama in order to send a different message, if it was a message he really wanted to send (and not just through surrogates.) It has never been required. The folks who rush to knee-jerk defend remarks like that made yesterday know that full well. I also grow weary of the front men and women who KNOW it is not what has been asked of the President, yet nonetheless run out penning pieces lecturing us in advance if we are just a little bit taken aback, on the grounds that anyone who is upset must be ignorant aka just "doesn't understand" the "obvious."
Frankly, I'm not surprised at the speed at which some usual suspects got out there in the media this morning with that dismissive-to-their-own people's argument that folks don't have a right to be upset about the phrase "I'm not the President of Black America" being the President's first response to a legitimate question that would have been rightfully asked of any president. Notice the complete absence of a link or citation to a pundit or journalist's words to support the claim that someone has actually ever called for the President to label ANYTHING he does part of a "Black Agenda". Not even the Black Agenda Report has made such a call.
What Black Agenda Report said instead was this, and since it is more eloquent than I can be on this matter right now I'll just quote it:
The president’s remarks reflect a consistent perception that there are members of the African American community who expect too much of the Obama Administration. The portrayal is that they are demanding that Obama re-paint the White House black and put a picture of Malcolm X on the front door. The president is absolutely correct that he has to be sure to serve all of his constituents, not just the black ones. That point has been duly noted and consistently reiterated by both the Obama Administration and all of its surrogates in the African American community.
The concern about the president’s remarks is that he has actually forgotten one undeniable truth: Mr. Obama, you ARE the president of black America, in addition to being the president of white America, Jewish America, Gay/Lesbian America and all the other groups that came together to form the melting pot that broke their backs to put you into office. The “I am not just here for black folks” defense certainly excludes you from having to spend a disproportionate amount of time looking out for black interests, but it does not exclude you from the responsibility to treat the black community with the same degree of legitimacy as every other group that is being consistently patronized by the White House.
So this idea that somehow Black folks are asking "more": from President Obama, for "special treatment" is demonstrably false. False despite folks almost constantly throwing shade at Black Agenda Report, Dr. Cornel West, and Tavis Smiley, and yes even Rev. Jeremiah Wright amongst others almost constantly since they first had the nerve to actually say "Hey, wait a minute" in response to the President's actual words and actions (or lack thereof) when it comes to the pressing concerns of Black Americans. False because none of them has ever claimed anything more than an hope and expectation that
unlike every President before him (for obvious reasons) he might actually feel something more than the usual dismissiveness when the concerns of Black people are brought to his attention. I don't know - it just doesn't seem all that out of the realm of reason to surmise that the first Black President of the United States who began his career in the Black community might actually think Black people's condition in America is uniquely difficult and our current status is impacted in unique ways that are provably the result of hundreds of years of racism and white supremacy. NOT the result of "wanting a handout" or "sitting on our butts" -- phrases I've read Black talking heads and hoi polloi commenters alike use for the last 4 years to defend the President's tacit, now express, disavowal of being "President of Black America" as they (without source quotation) repeat the claim (the
lie) that Black folks have EVER asked for an "agenda specifically targeted to help Black America" any more than any other minority ethnic demographic has asked the President to consider to meet their folks' stated interests.
Unlike others, who have no pause whatsoever not only asking for stuff based upon their community's needs (too often, using arguments grounded in invoking Black people to do it), Black folks have collectively been given the message loud and clear that it is not in our best interests to ask for anything in our name. Especially not since January 2009. So by and large, the Black community hasn't. No more than it had previously when it comes to programs and policy furthering its perceived interests. Yet I've read Black folks who should know better throwing this shibboleth about "a Black agenda" around this morning just as much as much as white people, arguing with equal ignorance that it would somehow be "special treatment" to have any type of policy specifically targeted to help Black people (not that it wouldn't help anyone else, but of course the white supremacist American culture on the left and right can't ever see a plus for We Who Are Dark as anything but a minus for them).
And that makes me see red.
That makes me see red since the standard excuse that "a rising tide lifts all boats" such that programs designed to address the disproportionate harm being wreaked upon the Black American diaspora is defied by actual history, with few exceptions, when it comes to the post-Reconstruction history of black people in America. Frankly, it's a right-wing argument, that; almost Reaganesque in its simple elegance in the assertion that if you just come up with color blind solutions to problems, Black people will just naturally benefit too (and you never even have to mention us and risk losing the vote of that one racist democrat in Utah that still hasn't decided to vote for Romney!) Given how much Democratcs can't win the presidency without us, it doesn't seem to much to ask as a condition of our votes for some acknowledgment that there are concerns we Black Americans have that are unique to us. Acknowledgment in action not just in word that things are worse for us collectively today because of the ongoing legacy of racism and white supremacist lies about both our collective history and our collective desires as a people), such that they are worth spending just a little focused time analysing and targeting strategies towards ameliorating that unfair, born of our nation's racist legacy, disproportion (instead of just assuming that we will benefit from everything done for the majority when eventually works its way around to us.)
[Imagine for a moment if doctors and research scientists had just stuck with that type of assumption that what works for the majority when it comes to hypertension treatment works equally well for everyone. We'd have never learned about the increased salt sensitivity presented by many black hypertensives that was adversely impacting the effectiveness of their treatment. We'd have never learned that treatment protocols grounded in ACE inhibitors which work wonders for whites and Asians seem to be less effective than diuretics as first-line treating Black hypertensives. In other words, we'd have never adjusted those treatment protocols which for decades were "proven effective to treat hypertension" because of their success with white people's hypertension but which were simply not as helpful to Black hypertensives on the same regimes.]
Those few Black critics of President Obama's approach to the Black community's primary issues that have not been effectively silenced by a collective insistence that we have to "understand" mixed in with a(n) (un)healthy dose of personal insults as the first order of non-substantive response (i.e. crabs in a barrel, jealous, hatin', bitter, useless, "not in touch", you name it) have been consistent as a metronome in both saying they know that President Obama has got a lot to deal with and has taken more bullshit than any president in history and deserves our respect AND also never letting up on the question of "How have Black people benefitted from an Obama Administration", a legitimate question that has not only been asked of every other President, but given the unemployment issues, destruction of the Black middle class in terms of loss of (our precious few) assets including our historic Black neighborhoods, renewed expressions of overt anti-Black racism, targeted law enforcement harassment and increasing numbers of our youth registering Independent because they reject both parties?
I feel that with today's President Obama is now asking too much, from Black people who truly love Black people. It is bad enough to choose to speak directly only to Black people who many in the 'Hood (you know, those poor folks that sent in $1, $5, $10, $20 to help lift him up in 2008 because that was all they could afford) would consider bougie and wannas. At places like Black Enterprise. Or the Urban League. It feels too much to ask that we collectively continue to love him, and lift him (again) on high, when he can't even publicly say he loves us back by name (which he has said to many others; for example, the first time I ever saw President Obama speak, in Oakland California, he was busy giving much love to the Irish and his Irish roots. He never said the word "Black" the entire time even though his hosts were two of the greatest Black politicians the SF Bay Area has ever produced, something that was not lost upon the attentive). Even though the only time you hear him talk about us at all is either in negative or haranguing terms or when someone is brave enough to break out of the unofficial Cone of Silence and actually ask that he address what his administration has done for Black people to justify their electoral support for you (using, gasp, the words "Black people" all by themselves!)
I used to think I knew the answer to the question of what was in the President's heart when it came to him wanting to make his mark, as the only Black man to have ever been president in this country, making a difference for Black people. Now, I'm not so sure. And that is the cruelest cut of all. Because Black people could have gotten the same answer as was given to Black Enterprise Magazine from Herman Cain (actually, we already did get that answer from Herman Cain). Even if only a precious few of us are going to dare say it out loud, I suspect a lot of folks will speak softly and in whispers over the next few days about this (as is too often the case whenever one of these Black-related racial situations has come up withe the President this past four years). I could be wrong: it may not even matter to anyone else except those of us who have been about advancing Black people in more than "I got mine, get yours" ways our whole political life. Who knows? Given what I've seen this past four years, and certainly I don't expect any empathy for my views from those for who it's all about the Presidential Election.
Including President Obama himself, it appears.
So I will ask the question I began with again, and hope that the President's minions charged with reading the blogs actually recommend that he think about this question and his answer in these last 90 days before the election:
What if Black people were to agree with President Obama that he is "not the President of Black America?"?