(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
(image via)
This photo is one of my favorites from Barack Obama’s time in the White House. It was taken less than two months into his administration. I love Presidential photography and always have; glimpses into the inner life and the humanity of the people who hold the office of President and those who serve the President are always welcome. I find now, though, a certain tragic note as well in photos like this, and not just of Obama but of Presidents Biden and Bush and Clinton and Bush the Elder and even Reagan, Carter, Ford, and hell, even Nixon, who as weird and skeevy as he was at least looked like a human being sometimes. The guy liked to bowl, at least. The current guy? There’s not a human moment to be found in the man. His White House is bereft of art and music and humanity. He has no dog, no cat, no pet goldfish. Looking for humanity in President DJT is an exercise in futility. It’s one of the things about him that I find the most baffling, in terms of who he is and how he has been so thoroughly embraced by millions of Americans he wouldn’t dream of embracing in return.
Of course, the photo is also sad because of the components in the photo, only one–President Obama himself–still exists. Bo the dog passed away several years ago, and President DJT had the East Colonnade demolished last week in favor of building his colossally stupid ball room.
I’ve had President Obama on my mind of late, for various reasons…and not just because I find myself wistfully looking back on a President who wasn’t, well, garbage in every way. I’m thinking about him because of a talking point that I see over and over again from right-wingers.
I rarely try to plumb the depth of right-wing logic anymore, because generally the right (at least in the US, I’m not sure about elsewhere) increasingly bases its ideas on pure, unadulterated fantasy coupled with constructs of logic that are about as sound as the present-day hull of the RMS Titanic. But one talking point that I have heard a lot in recent years that actually does pose an interesting look into just how the American right views the world is their idea that the most divisive political figure in recent American history is not Donald Trump, or Mitch McConnell, or Steve Bannon, or Stephen Miller, or JD Vance. No, for them the most divisive political figure in recent American history (or in all of American history, depending on who is spouting the talking point) is former President Barack Obama.
When I’ve encountered this notion, I’ve pretty much laughed it off because it just doesn’t make any sense…but I keep hearing it and I keep hearing it, to the point that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I had to figure out just how on Earth President Obama is supposed to have been a deeply divisive person, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it.
Maybe this is the most obvious thing ever, but…the man is Black.
Yes, I know. But why would he be divisive just by being Black?
This is where the white “entitlement” comes into play. Because Barack Obama didn’t just be president while being Black. He also talked about his Blackness. He talked about race. Did he talk about those things a lot? Probably not. Did he talk about those things enough? In my opinion, definitely not. But for many Americans, and almost all of them on the right, his error was in ever talking about his Blackness in particular and about race in general at all.
Barack Obama was elected President for many reasons: his predecessor had made a thorough mess of everything; he was an energetic new voice who spoke with eloquent relish about rising to the challenges facing the country; and yes, he is Black. For many Americans, if not most Americans, the prospect of President Barack Obama was an opportunity to embrace a future that was unthinkable just years before, certainly within my lifetime. The problem is that for a great many Americans, and quite possibly a majority of white Americans, the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States wasn’t just about making a big step in our nation’s long struggle with race. No, for many–and certainly for everyone on the right, even if they never once considered voting for him–the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency was about ending our nation’s long struggle with race.
With Obama’s election, race was over. It was done. We had finally defeated racism, for all time. How could a racist country elect a Black man to its highest office? Obviously it couldn’t…which means, ergo, that America was no longer racist. All such talk was now off the table permanently. “See, Black people? We did it! We let one of you be President! Now it’s all done and none of you can complain anymore!”
That is absolutely the logic that the American right took when Obama was elected…and so, when it turned out that no, we were not done with our racial struggle, not by a long shot, not by any damn sight, that meant that it was all Obama’s fault. He was supposed to get into office and declare racism over, but he didn’t. Racial things still happened, and worst of all, Barack Obama talked about it. He brought it up.
And that is where the division, the divisiveness, comes in. Because by electing Barack Obama, White America finally gave itself permission to not think about race anymore. The slate was clean, atonement was achieved, and all wrongs had been addressed. And now this uppity Black President thinks that he gets to talk about race more? He thinks he gets to keep–gasp!–playing the Race Card?
(That’s what “playing the Race Card” means. You realize this, right? You know that when a white person complains about a Black person “playing the Race Card”, the white person is actually saying, “That Black person mentioned race in a way that I do not personally approve of.”)
Ultimately, Barack Obama is seen as “divisive” because white people don’t want to have to think about race anymore, and he made them think about it. White people don’t want to talk about race anymore, and he made them talk about it. White people want Black people to just calm down and be quiet about all that unpleasantness, see. Race is over, see. Why do you gotta keep bringing it up?
Why can’t you people just stay in your lane? Why can’t you people just stay where you belong?
They think Barack Obama is divisive because he didn’t quiet down and he dared set the direction of the national conversation. Which is what Presidents of the United States are supposed to do, isn’t it…unless. Unless they’re Black. In that case, a President is supposed to prioritize the comfort of white people. He was divisive because he didn’t maintain the national conversation in a way that they preferred.
As for me…well, I wonder if President Obama wasn’t divisive enough. I, for one, am deeply tired of all of the factors holding America back, and one of those is very much the “comfort of white people”. Maybe it’s time for more discomfort. Maybe. Just maybe.
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I agree with what you wrote. Additionally, though, I think he was handcuffed by two things.
One: he said he was a black man when he had white mother; the declaration suggested that he was dismising his whiteness and therefore dismissing white people (which he wasn’t; e.g., in his trip to Ireland, he was Barack O’Bama)
Two: he was trying not to be an angry black man, the cliched image of a “thug.” There was an ongoing routine by Key and Peele where one was how Barack presented himself and the other was the angry black man who wishes he could have said what was REALLY going on in his mind. I thought it was spot on.
Note the things he was criticized for: when Henry Lewis Gates got detained for breaking into his own home and BHO suggested there have been a racial component; when he suggested Trayon Martn could have been his son, et al. Basically, while some folks thought he wasn’t black enough, some white folks, thinking we had reached our post-racial America, thought he was too black.
So we need to get rid of affirmtive action/DEI/equity. This stuff in Project 2025 is that they (blacks, but also “the gays,” women, and so on) got, in a term most people of a century or more ago would understand, too “uppity.”