Dyson: Obama Wasn't Enough of aBlack President for Black America
He was not always free to relax into his blackness, out of fear that it would frighten white America."
6.28.2016
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Georgetown University professor and author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America Michael Eric Dyson criticized President Obama in a recent op-ed for The New York Times for not being the kind of black president black America truly needed.
Dyson asserted that Obama treaded too thin of a line when it came to issues of race, addressing just enough to keep his most ardent fans happy but not enough to satisfy the onerous demands of the Black Lives Matter movement.
With a few obligatory niceties about Obama's "historic achievement" as the nation's first black president thrown in for good measure, Dyson mostly complained, saying, "Still, I am frustrated," adding that Obama missed too many "targets in the path to racial progress."
"His black brain and tongue have changed America forever," Dyson gushed. "But gales of black pride have swept aside awareness of his flaws, and when those flaws are conceded, gusts of black defiance play down their meaning and significance."
Dyson's menu for President Obama would have included more use of his executive powers to issue direct policies that would "lessen black suffering." He would have had him use "the bully pulpit" to stop racist "demagogues" like Donald Trump from ever being a possibility for president.
"Now, in addition to working to get Hillary Clinton elected, Mr. Obama must more aggressively address the racism that he has never been eager to acknowledge or confront, and that thrives in deep pockets of the support for Mr. Trump," Dyson writes.
Obama's appointments should've included even more blacks, according to Dyson, who proceeded to chide the president for passing over three black women for the Supreme Court, preferring qualifications to skin color.
"Diversity appears to be set off against quality in Mr. Obama’s thinking," Dyson notes.
But perhaps the most egregious complaint in Dyson's denunciation of the president's legacy is complaining about the compassion he showed for a group of school children massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary when he didn't do the same for black deaths in Chicago:
Beyond appointments, the president’s reluctance to highlight black suffering is lamentable. He seems capable only of being forced to do for black citizens what he willingly does for others. For instance, Mr. Obama traveled to Newtown, Conn., two days after the shooting deaths of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He later called that the worst day of his presidency. Yet he had to be prodded to return to his home base, Chicago, as it suffered a rash of black death.
Dyson was repulsed that Obama had the gall to actually blame (for once) the breakdown of the black family in America when he did make it to Chicago:
On that visit, Mr. Obama lamented the absence of male role models, claiming that government alone couldn’t end violence because “this is not just a gun issue” but an issue of “the kinds of communities that we’re building” and that when “a child opens fire on another child, there is a hole in that child’s heart that government can’t fill.” This was mourning mixed with scolding; in Newtown, there were no reprimands for the grieving.
Another example Dyson points to is Obama's soon-after visit to New Jersey during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and offering large federal support but his lackadaisical attitude towards rescuing black residents from lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan, traveling to the area months after the discovery and promising much less. (Besides, weren't whites drinking the water, too?)
"Mr. Obama may not be the president of black America," writes Dyson, "but he is the president of black Americans, and he owes them the same regard he has for all citizens."
Dyson wishes Obama would've had a less "universal remedy" for "black suffering" and more of a "targeted remedy," meaning he should have underscored "specific issues of race and poverty" instead of desiring to help all of mankind.
Dyson concludes his racist rant:
Dyson concludes his racist rant:
He has been reluctant to speak about race, and hesitant to champion the causes of a valuable, if vulnerable, black constituency. He was not always free to relax into his blackness, out of fear that it would frighten white America. There was a lot he couldn’t do. But because of what he did do, the road will undoubtedly be easier for the next black president.
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