Paradox of the First Black President

[Blue_Tires]

There is a photo by Pete Souza, the White House’s canny and peripatetic photographer, that surfaces from time to time online. The setting is Marine One, and it features a modest cast of five. Valerie Jarrett, dressed in a suit of blazing pink, is staring at her cell phone. Barack Obama, twisted around in his seat, is listening to a conversation between his then–body guy, Reggie Love, and Patrick Gaspard, one of his then–top advisers. Obama’s former deputy press secretary, Bill Burton, is looking on too, with just the mildest hint of a grin on his face.

In many ways, it’s a banal shot — just another photo for the White House Instagram feed, showing the president and his aides busily attending to matters of state. Stare at it a second longer, though, and a subtle distinction comes into focus: Everyone onboard is black. “We joked that it was Soul Plane,” says Burton. “And we’ve often joked about it since — that it was the first time in history only black people were on that helicopter.”
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Souza snapped that shot on August 9, 2010, but it didn’t make any prominent appearances in the mainstream press until mid-2012, when it appeared in The New York Times Magazine. The following summer, July 2013, the president had a group of civil-rights leaders come visit him in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and the optics, as they like to say in politics, were similar: An all-star cast of minorities (African-American and Latino this time) gathered in a historic place to which the barriers to entry were once insuperably high.

But this was not a meeting the participants laughed about afterward. When Obama opened up the floor, everyone spoke about what they’d witnessed in the 2012 election: how states that limited voter-registration drives and early-voting initiatives had left many African-Americans off the rolls; how strict new laws concerning IDs had prevented many minorities from voting and created hours-long lines at the polls. The answer was clear: legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court had just overturned a key provision of the landmark civil-rights legislation the month before.

But Obama’s response was equally clear: Nothing could be done. Not in this political climate, not under these circumstances. Congress would never allow it.

The group was stunned. As they’d stumped for Obama, one of the many talking points they’d used to turn out the black vote was the threat of disenfranchisement, the possibility that the Voting Rights Act was in jeopardy. Yet here was Obama telling them that a bill addressing this vital issue didn’t stand a chance.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/paradox-of-the-first-black-president.html

[HassleCat]

1. And he was right

At the time, legislation to address this problem would be dead on arrival. Congress hesitates to meddle in the states' business, and voter registration and elections are run by the states. Probably the best bet is to hope some states overreach and then knock them down in court.

[upaloopa]

3. Obama pushes Congress to renew Voting Rights Act

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/250913-obama-pushes-congress-to-renew-voting-rights-act

By Jordan Fabian - 08/12/15 08:04 AM EDT





President Obama on Wednesday urged Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act, following a Supreme Court decision that gutted a core part of the landmark law.


Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act. Our state leaders and legislatures must make it easier — not harder — for more Americans to have their voices heard," he wrote in a letter to The New York Times. "Above all, we must exercise our right as citizens to vote, for the truth is that too often we disenfranchise ourselves."


Congress has in the past always renewed the voting rights act

[YoungDemCA]

2. This is a great, insightful article. I'd like to highlight this part:

Obama’s election brought out not just the best of the country, in other words, but its worst. “Portions of white America have literally had a nervous breakdown over a black man being in the White House,” says Anthea Butler, a religious-studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “I mean, here people are, acting so surprised about Donald Trump’s popularity. Hello? He’s the one who asked Obama for a birth certificate!”

Writing in The Atlantic in 2012, Ta-Nehisi Coates tried to show, brick by brick, how the Republican rhetoric of the Obama years has been racialized in ways both subtle and explicit. He noted that Obamacare was framed as “reparations.” (Bill Clinton’s stab at universal health care, meanwhile, was generally framed as an excess of “big government.”) In January 2012, Newt Gingrich declared that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in history,” when in fact that distinction goes to George W. Bush. When Obama criticized Arizona’s draconian immigration laws, Iowa congressman Steve King said Obama “has a default mechanism in him … that favors the black person.” And in response to the Gates incident, Glenn Beck said that Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

This was the media, Congress, and electorate that Obama had to contend with. How much, realistically, could he explicitly say or do for African-Americans under such circumstances? “I’m deeply conflicted over this fact,” Coates told James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic, in a public discussion. “It’s smart politics for him not to talk about race.”

[YoungDemCA]

4. Another excerpt:

To borrow a favorite phrase of the president’s, let me be clear: Obama is tremendously popular with African-Americans. Right now, his approval rate is 91 percent among them, and he’s rarely fallen below 80 percent. Even his critics in this story are still his supporters. Van Jones is his dogged defender on television. Jim Clyburn notes repeatedly that Obama rescued us during a recession, pulled us out of Iraq. Paul Butler, from Georgetown University Law Center, has an Obama action figure sitting on his kitchen table. Whenever he discovers it’s been knocked over, he makes a point of standing it back on its feet.

Anthea Butler notes that there’s a generation of black Americans who don’t just love the president but wish badly to protect him — not just psychologically but physically. “If you talk to an older black person,” she tells me, “somebody who’s 70 or older, they’re gonna be like, ‘Honestly, we just want him to get out alive.’ ”

Al Sharpton, one of Obama’s staunchest defenders and a sometime adviser, argues that there is much to be grateful for in this presidency. “You know how many black people tell me, ‘I didn’t have health insurance until now’?” The Affordable Care Act is projected to give an estimated 2.9 million more African-Americans coverage by 2016, significantly narrowing the coverage gap between blacks and whites. “It’s extremely strange to hear people question President Obama who never questioned Bill Clinton,” he continues. “Under Bill Clinton, we got the crime bill that gave us three strikes and you’re out, and the welfare-reform bill. I too would have liked to see the Obama years do more. I agree with that. But Barack Obama never gave us a bill that hurt us.”

[Number23]

5. Great article and I love every single thing about that picture.

[Starry Messenger]

6. Good read.

I liked Sharpton's point there too:

"Sharpton has gotten a lot of grief for his support of Obama. Cornel West, whose manifold political objections to the president are at this point hard to separate from his personal ones, went so far as to call the reverend “the bona fide house Negro of the Barack Obama plantation.” But Sharpton says he’s come by his support for the president through some hard-won local lessons. “When I sat in New York with the first and only black mayor,” he tells me, referring to David Dinkins, “we tried to push him on various issues.” Dinkins kept trying to push back, saying he had to govern for all New Yorkers. It was the same defense as Obama’s. “So we started calling him names,” says Sharpton, “and we started saying, ‘You shoulda done this that and the other.’ ” He pauses. “And we ended up with 20 years of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.”

That's pretty on point.

One think I was thinking too, that the article didn't delve into, is the steep rise in reactionary white resistance, like Cliven Bundy. And that's just some of the things we hear about. I imagine the President has had to govern knowing that not just media firestorms, but actual force of arms can occur if he does something. Which is so sad and disgusting that this country is like this.

I have things I would have liked to have been different, but the ugly racist backlash to the first Black First Family has been nauseating (and dangerous.)

[JustAnotherGen]

7. This . . .

One think I was thinking too, that the article didn't delve into, is the steep rise in reactionary white resistance, like Cliven Bundy. And that's just some of the things we hear about. I imagine the President has had to govern knowing that not just media firestorms, but actual force of arms can occur if he does something. Which is so sad and disgusting that this country is like this

.

Someone asked in a thread / poll a few weeks ago - are you safer than in *I think 2000*.

That's a tough question. As pointed out above - there are people who lost their minds when he won.

Safe is a matter of perspective and life experience.

That said - he kept some of us from mass retaliation for his win.

[Starry Messenger]

8. "That said - he kept some of us from mass retaliation for his win."

I feel like there is a lack of appreciation for this reality on the left. Especially since we keep seeing stories posted about how white supremacy is now much more of a threat than Islamic radicalism or any other form of terror. I don't think that was a coincidence.

[JustAnotherGen]

9. Me either

There was no Tulsa or Rosewood under his watch. And that's a good thing.

[qwlauren35]

12. I saw a play today

about a girl who was coming of age in the 1960's, and how, when the church was bombed in Alabama, she looked at the pictures of the four girls, pointed to one and said - she looks like me. And this character talks about wondering if she'll be next. Later in the play, she hears that Malcolm X has been killed, and her father, a doctor, was there, and wished he could have saved Malcolm, if he's been closer. And even in 1963, when Kennedy was shot, the character said - if they could kill a president, they could kill anybody...

Fast forward to 2015 and 9 black people are shot dead in an Alabama church.

We are not safer. And the president is not safe. I am so happy that he's still alive it makes my head spin. Every day that they don't kill him seems like a miracle.

[Number23]

10. That is one HELL of a point

Dinkins kept trying to push back, saying he had to govern for all New Yorkers. It was the same defense as Obama’s. “So we started calling him names,” says Sharpton, “and we started saying, ‘You shoulda done this that and the other.’ ” He pauses. “And we ended up with 20 years of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.”


Says it all.

[Starry Messenger]

11. It really does!

Good insight, and I hope people think about that!

[lovemydog]

13. Great photo and article, Blue_Tires.

Thanks for sharing. I love images and articles that share perspectives from people who are part of history. They recognized the incredible changes taking place. At the same time they were aware of the obstacles. They face these obstacles with great wisdom, humor and determination.