Full-blown Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS), seen in the spew and spittle mouthed by the insecure and egomaniacal occupant of the White House, is not simply a Trumpian affliction. We watched Republicans dig in to subvert and block “the black guy” from the moment he took office. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” hurled at President Obama during a joint session of Congress, ditching decades of decorum, was more than a dog whistle: It was a signal to a significant number of Americans that a black man in the “white” house would not be accepted. That’s ironic given that this nation is now headed to hell in a hand basket, led by the most lying liar in our history.
ODS continued to play out during Obama’s presidential years, culminating in the blocking of Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court nominee. No longer in office, President Obama is now Trump’s excuse for whatever ills he and his crime-klan have brought upon themselves.
But frankly, it has less to do with Barack Obama himself (or his wife) than it does with what I’d call “uppity negro-itis." Had any other black person, male or female, been elected to the most powerful position in the world, their fate would have been the same.
Barack Obama is simply the most visible global symbol of black achievement, and from the point of view of those who hold onto white supremacist thinking, all black achievement must be stifled, smashed, trashed, and vilified.
Don’t buy the “economic anxiety” argument you read about daily in newspapers and hear about from pundits and bloggers. That just masks the deep-rooted fear and loathing of all things black that don’t stay where they are supposed to be.
Trump and others in power know very well how to throw red meat to the salivating masses stewing in racial resentment. Sure, they have black people they embrace—“white seal of approval blacks” who know their place, the Clarence Thomases and Ben Carsons. Those black folks who dare to proudly be who they are become instant targets. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch is a recent example of the “blame-a-black” syndrome which is still being played out for all of us to see.
Let's do a little ODS review. Here is Fox Spews playing directly to the hearts and minds of their audience.
Almost all of the stories I’ve read recently about white, working-class, Rust Belt class anxiety seem to have avoided these ethnographic glimpses from (cough) “nice white Americans”
Charles Blow pointed out the racial aspects of ODS in this op-ed, which wound up trending on Twitter.
In it, he stated:
Obama was a phenomenon. He was elegant and cerebral. He was devoid of personal scandal and drenched in personal erudition. He was a walking, talking rebuttal to white supremacy and the myths of black pathology and inferiority. He was the personification of the possible — a possible future in which legacy power and advantages are redistributed more broadly to all with the gift of talent and the discipline to excel. It is not a stretch here to link people’s feelings about Obama to their feelings about his blackness. Trump himself has more than once linked the two.
Just two months before Trump announced his candidacy, he weighed in on the unrest in Baltimore in the wake of the police killing of Freddie Gray, tweeting: “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!” Months earlier, following the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., after the police killing of Michael Brown, Trump complained: “President Obama has absolutely no control (or respect) over the African American community—they have fared so poorly under his presidency.”Trump also tweeted: “Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!”
Clearly, not only was Obama’s blackness in the front of Trump’s mind, but Trump also appears to subscribe to the racist theory that success or failure of a member of a racial group redounds to all in that group. This is a burden under which most minorities in this country labor.Trump’s racial ideas were apparently a selling point among his supporters. Recent research has dispensed with the myth of “economic anxiety” and shone a light instead on the central importance race played in Trump’s march to the White House. As the researchers Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel reported in The Nation in March:
In short,our analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully leveraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate,strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton.Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics.”
Some folks who call themselves “left” are not immune. It’s no coincidence that many of the voices most targeted by the ultra-left on Twitter are black, just as racist attacks on President Obama cropped up on some blogs quite frequently. Ultimately they failed, simply because more progressive/liberal whites aren’t threatened by black equality or superiority. That is actually a good thing—and gives me hope for the future.
A cautionary note: Help stop the crap. As we gather our forces to head into the 2018 midterms and to the 2020 elections, pay attention to the “Obama-ing” of up-and-coming prospective Democratic candidates. Case in point is California Sen. Kamala Harris, who is being smeared by both extremes.
There is a long history of violently repressing any efforts of black citizens garnering wealth or stability. My grandmother would put it simply: “Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Enslaved blacks were portrayed as shiftless and lazy ingrates who responded only to the whip.
W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in “Evolution of the Race Problem”:
Before emancipation it was stated and reiterated with bitter emphasis and absolute confidence that a free Negro would prove to be a shiftless scamp, a barbarian and a cannibal reverting to savagery and doomed to death. We forget to-day that from 1830 to 1860 there was not a statement made by the masters of slaves more often reiterated than this, and more dogmatically and absolutely stated. After emancipation, for twenty years and more, so many people looked for the fulfillment of the prophecy that many actually saw it and we heard and kept hearing and now and then still hear that the Negro to-day is worse off than in slavery days.
Slave-owning Christians patted themselves on the back about rescuing blacks from “savagery” in Africa. They then claimed slaves had to be treated as children needing the rod in order not to be spoiled. The plight of free blacks was also perilous. Ira Berlin’s Slaves Without Masters is a history which details this group of over one-quarter million who lived in the South. The perils were there for those in the North as well, demonstrated by events like the white riot referred to as the New York City Draft Riots.
Over the years numerous massacres (often called riots, as shown in the video) would occur, along with lynching and terror. The pogroms that wiped out many a black community, the Dred Scott decision, and the historic 14th amendment which finally made black people “citizens” in 1868 (though we’ve been here since the 1600s) are all a part of what we face today and we still ain’t got reparations.
In these modern times “shiftless and lazy” blacks would be cast as welfare queens and thugs. And despite the incredible weight of oppression on our backs, black Americans would still rise to the heights of acclaim in numerous fields of endeavor including science, the arts, medicine, entertainment, sports, education, and politics.
But that achievement comes with a price. I haven’t forgotten what happened to Hank Aaron when he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record:
Aaron showed Mike Capuzzo of Sports Illustrated some examples in 1992, including at least one that exemplified both the racism and threats that Aaron so often encountered:
Dear [deleted] Henry,
you are [not] going to break his record established by the great Babe Ruth if I can help it.... Whites are far more superior than [deleted].... My gun is watching your every black move.
It was arranged for Aaron to have a bodyguard, who did his best to hide especially hateful letters. The Braves did their best to filter out letters with assassination threats, which were sent directly to the FBI.
More than four decades later, when celebrating the anniversary of his achievement, he got a fresh flood of hate mail.
Daily Kos stories rarely discuss sports, but conversations in Black Kos often point to the racism experienced by world-famous athletes like the Williams sisters. Hatin’ on Venus and Serena has become a sport of its own. Colin Kaepernick is vilified daily for protesting and supporting Black Lives Matter. Even Simone Biles, the world’s top gymnast, has had to face unrelenting racism from certain sectors.
When hate targets black folks who have dared to buck the odds and succeed, oftentimes the term “uppity” is attached. I wrote about that in “NYTimes, "Uppity Nig**rs" and the destruction of Black Wall Street.”
In our homes and at community gatherings, in barber shops and beauty parlors, black folks take great pride in watching another black person deliver what we term a “comeuppance” to the white world that tries daily to knock us down. Whether it’s Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali in the ring, James Baldwin kicking William Buckley's ass in a debate, Barbara Jordan setting the stage to take down Nixon, or the tears streaming down our faces when Barack Obama won a victory against all odds, we will honor the uppity among us.
When used as a racist slur, “uppity” clearly means “Get in your place, stay in your place, know your place—or else.”
I still have ugly memories of having to get off the sidewalk and move into the street when white folks were walking toward me.
I remember being denied the art honors medal for my junior high school graduation, even though I was the only student to have been accepted to New York City’s most prestigious arts high school after auditioning. For the “presumptuousness” of even going to the audition, I got a juvenile delinquency citation. Black students of merit still face these problems today.
I still chuckle about the people on the internet who, in order to dismiss my opinions, dubbed me “patrician” (read uppity). My response was to wear an “Uppity Negress” tee shirt to Netroots Nation last year.
In today’s world of politics and multiple media platforms, one thing has been made perfectly clear to those of us who support them:
Barack Obama is uppity.
Michelle Obama is uppity.
Eric Holder is uppity.
Maxine Waters is uppity.
John Lewis is uppity.
Loretta Lynch is uppity.
Kamala Harris is uppity.
Hell, Frederick Douglass—who the orange know-nothing in the White House thought was still among the living—was uppity.
So it’s not that Trump and company are simply deranged by Barack Hussein Obama. They are actually driven mad and made to froth by black superiority disproving their notions of black inferiority.
Even some “liberal” commentators fall into the type of patronizing and dismissive critiques of prominent black folks that are not applied to white folks of equal stature. But I look forward to supporting a whole new crop of up-and-coming, uppity young black folks, along with other young people of color.
And if I’m lucky, I may live long enough to see another one in the White House.