It occurred to me that we were supposed to have a serious discussion about racism in America many times during the Obama presidency. Listening to Omarosa, Trump, and Sarah Sanders brought to mind the times President Obama talked eloquently about racism. For example:
Where are we, Maron asked, when it comes to race relations?
Obama: I always tell young people in particular: 'Do not say that nothing's changed when it comes to race in America — unless you've lived through being a black man in the 1950s, or '60s, or '70s. It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours, and that opportunities have opened up, and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact.
What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives — you know, that casts a long shadow. And that's still part of our DNA that's passed on. We're not cured of it.
Maron: Racism.
Obama: Racism. We are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say 'nigger' in public. That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't overnight completely erase everything that happened 200-300 years prior.
So what I tried to describe in the Selma speech that I gave, commemorating the march there, was, again, a notion that progress is real, and we have to take hope from that progress. But what is also real is that the march isn't over, and the work is not yet completed. And then our job is to try in very concrete ways to figure out, what more can we do?"
Yes, Obama said the n-word.
Transcript: Barack Obama's Speech on Race, when then-Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, delivered March 18, 2008, in Philadelphia at the Constitution Center. In it, Obama addresses the role race has played in the presidential campaign.
Excerpt:
But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that, working together, we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care and better schools and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans: the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for our own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Now we have a president who may or may not have used that word. As many have noted, it doesn't matter that much, except politically, because he has demonstrated his racism for decades. I don’t have to put a poll on to venture an opinion that almost all readers here think he used the word often and in a malevolent utterly racist way.
I thought of writing this morning when I read this story, which earned the Fox hatemonger a place in my photo montage: Tucker Carlson claims there’s no white nationalism. His show’s obsessive racism suggests otherwise: Fox host’s claim that virulent racism is a myth is belied by the millions who tune into his show every night.
Virulent racism is a myth, Tucker? I suppose if you define “virulent” as burning crosses and bombing black churches, it is a myth (not that they are many people who wouldn’t support or participate in these things if they thought they could get away with it).
The most disturbing part of all of this is how many people in America view Trump as their James Jeffries, their great white hope. We don’t know the numbers. We can only guess how many people pictured below are racists. What do you think? Take the poll.