Has the Obama presidency made racism acceptable?

Great Debates
1

Little caveat: I read these forums regularly and know that i am not up to your all’s standards of posting so please go easy on me :slight_smile:

I am hillbilly from Eastern Kentucky that recently moved to Louisville and work in the “projects” so to speak. Most of my co-workers are black. Until I took this job, my experience with black people was limited. For example, in the county I grew up in of over 16,000 there were less than 5 black people. So it has been an extraordinary learning experience seeing and getting an understanding of black culture and thought. I had no previous frame of reference really except what you see on TV. And wow! I have learned a lot.

I was talking to the other members of my department (who are all black) the other day and one of them said that electing Obama as president has set back race relations 30 years. I was surprised to here her say that. She feels that (and has had this feeling reinforced by pretty much everyone she knows) the election of Barrack Obama has brought racism back to the forefront only covered by the ideals of politics. i. e. I don’t hate black people, i just hate his policies - that is why I am anti-Obama. But because of this shroud, people are letting their racism come out and they feel OK by it. She went into a little more detail, but then we got side-tracked.

So this got me thinking…I see blatant hatred of Obama everywhere I go and everywhere I look. And I wonder how much of it is because of race? I know that towards the end of his presidency, there was a lot of anti-bush sentiment going around. But the bumper-stickers I saw weren’t all targeting him personally. It seemed that a majority of them were against the war, not him. I don’t see bumper stickers today that say “healthcare reform is a lie!” but rather nObama, or ones equating him with Socialism, or Fascism or of being a Muslim. I see “impeach Obama,” “Stop Obama,” take America back from Obama" and many more much wittier.

I see automatic weapons brought to political rallies. I see democrats who won’t back him. I see republicans attacking him constantly on the radio and TV. Fox News is number 1 and their agenda is almost strictly anti-Obama.

So I am bothered by this. I know there are plenty of examples on both sides and I want to be educated. So I have a few questions…

Has the black community taken ownership of Obama to the point that any attack on him is seen as personal?

Do democrats not back him because of his policies or because of his race?

Has the media fed this by constantly being anti-Obama? Or are they simply reflecting the publics’ taste?

If Obama loses all momentum and is unable to pass any reforms, will it hamper any future black American from attaining the presidency? (except Morgan Freeman, he makes a great president. Everyone knows that)

Is my co-worker right? Has the election of a black president made racism OK again?

I know that there are better points and counterpoints. Please help me understand! Thanks!

2

I can’t figure out the pure hatred of Obama. He’s actually pretty centric. The health care bill is similar to what was proposed in the Republican platform, he hasn’t closed Guantanamo or ended DATD, and is it really so outrageous to loan money to GM so that one of the US’s largest employers doesn’t disappear?

The level of vitriol and complete and unabashed lies being told about him are without parallel in my lifetime. It could be race, the nature of the internet and cable news, or the fact that one political party has it’s own network for the first time.

3

Oh, and the most popular commentator/pundit/dickhead on Fox has labeled him a racist with a deep seated hatred of white culture.

4

See I agree with that completely! On a lark the other day I was reading LBJ’s accomplishments with the Great Society and thought holy hell! How would American’s react today to those programs! Obama is not even close to the most liberal president we have had.

I should also have noted that I voted for Obama and continue to support him to this day

5

Mr Obama is hated for a lot of reason. I don’t like him because I knew him long before he was president.

Mr Obama is disliked in DC because he’s an outsider. Think about this. The Clintons worked for decades for the Democrats, they gave their all to the “Democratic machine” Hillary was the expected winner. She had the “machine” behind her. Then comes Oprah who thinks Mr Obama is so cute and boom he upsets everything.

So a lot of regular Democrats were upset by this. The point of working for years for a poltical party is you are going to get rewarded by showing how well you can work with the “machine” or party. But here comes Mr Obama who no one ever heard of and boom he’s it?

Now the regular Democrats are like, “What’s the point of working hard for my party, when an upstart can get in.” It’d be like if you worked for a company for ten years and worked hard and when the time for the promotion came your boss gave it to his brother-in-law.

Of course that’s not really what happened but it seems that way.

Another difficult part of Mr Obama is, in reality, he’s just as much white as he is black. Furthermore his “blackness” doesn’t come from the roots of slavery. His ancestors were not slaves.

If I’m an African American I see a black man and am proud to see that. But on further examination I see a man who’s just as much white as he is black, and while I, as an African American have ancestors who were slaves, his ancestors were free blacks in Africa

So through no fault of his own, Mr Obama is often presented by others as things he’s not.

He’s presented as a non-citizen, black, Muslim, which he is not. But the thing is he’s close enough that groups looking for a “hero,” for lack of a better word, can identify with him.

Mr Obama didn’t set race relations back.

Why do people hate him? Because he’s PRESIDENT. Clinton spent his entire presidency fighting off charges.

Add to this it’s a horrible economy. I believe the policies of GW Bush and to a lesser degree Clinton 'caused this mess (that’s a seperate thread though), but the point is, it doesn’t matter WHAT caused this mess, we need help.

And Mr Obama made a lot of promises he couldn’t deliver and most likely knew he couldn’t deliver on. This doesn’t hold up well.

Last you have to remember people didn’t vote FOR Mr Obama as much as vote against the Republicans. George W Bush was so disliked almost any Democrat would’ve won. Remember only barely beat Hillary for the nomination. This shows people were voting against the Republicans.

While I don’t like Mr Obama (based on his actions as a Senator and before) you have to be fair to everyone. He’s learning that a president can’t do it alone. You have to make compromises at every end to get anything done. Mr Carter also had to learn to that.

6

Nah, we saw the exact same thing with Bill Clinton. As soon as Clinton was elected, the right wing unleashed all their fury at him. Democrats abandoned Clinton on gays in the military and NAFTA, and Clinton had to beg to get Democrats to help pass the budget. Similar crazy conspiracy theories such as Bill Clinton murdering Vince Foster. There were Clinton bumper stickers with the “C” shown as a hammer and cycle.

Same shit, different decade.

7

Pretty much. It’s a result of A) Democrats being a bunch of wimps and B) the right wing going into attack mode whenever a Democrat is in the White House.

8

The difference is that what used to be fringe is now main stream.

9

As an outsider looking in, I would say that this is the impression that the rest of the world gets.

You get a republican president and obviously he gets criticised.

You get a democrat president and on top of all the criticism you have raving hatred and groups that spend the entire presidency ranting that, for one reason or another, he shouldn’t even be president. (Whitewater, Monica, Birthers).

We have much the same in the UK.

PM’s from both parties are disliked but the blind hatred for Labour PM’s is always more notable. (Well, except perhaps for Thatcher but she was so appalling even a lot of conservatives hated her.)

10

I can buy this, but I don’t think this affects the vast majority of Americans. They don’t care that he didn’t earn his stripes, only those in the political machine do. Actually, I would think his role as an outsider would help engender him to most Americans. Now the consequences of his outsider status I would think could contribute, but to my uneducated eye, it seems the hatred started almost immediately before he actually “did” anything or even attempted to.

I don’t see the hatred from the black side though. I see it from mostly whites, hispanics. Where I am from, if you look black, then you are black. It doesn’t matter how much white blood you having running through your veins. When you look at him do you see a white man? Our country is still pretty hardcore on the black/white issue. Most people do not seem to look at degrees of blackness. Do they?

Sorry I don’t understand that.

I don’t know. I am not a black person so I can’t speak to it. But my admittedly small sampling of black friends all unanimously agree that the election of a black president has harmed race relations. And it is very disappointing to them as they seemed to think that his election would help us overcome that.

I barely remember that, but I do. Is it basically just republican policy to attack the man regardless of race/beliefs, etc? Maybe it is easier because Obama does represent a minority and he has a funny name.

I don’t remember it that way. I remember it as the democrats having 2 very strong candidates. I fundamentally disagree that people were not voting FOR Obama. Now if Kerry would have won in '04 we would all agree that we were voting against GWB and not for Kerry.

I definitely agree with this. I do think that he thought he would have more support from his own party, which ties in nicely with what you said earlier

11

I really think the political hatred is merely that those out of power want to be back in power. I seriously do not see their ideologies being so divergent as to merit this level of vitriol. Indeed Obama has put forward proposals that republicans themselves put forward in the past and now republicans somehow think these are awful ideas.

I think republicans see they made a complete mess of things. A colossal mess the likes of which few people alive have witnessed. By rights they shouldn’t be able to achieve office again for a decade. The only way around that is to take the opposition side and blame it all on the guy currently in power and prevent that guy from doing anything to fix the problem.

Icing on the cake is the very wealthy who had a heyday under republicans see a real danger in reform. Nevermind if reform is a good idea (whatever the reform may be). If it negatively impacts them they positively freak.

Sadly this seems to work (and frankly Obama has done a poor job of using his mandate when he got there to achieve real reforms).

The trickle down effect of this is for their constituents to become virulent assholes and embrace the hatred as real.

12

So is the cyclical hatred of democrats not worse with Obama? To me it seems that it is, but of course that could be thanks to the explosion of media/coverage. We all know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so the fringe groups get more airtime. I would imagine that this feeds upon itself to make things markedly worse.

13

Another thing to remember is that the rightwing noise machine was in its infancy back in Clinton’s presidency. It’s had almost 20 years to mature (so to speak) and become the massive thing it’s become today. If there had been as many rightwing pundits and media companies and outlets in 1992 that there are now, you’d probably have seen the same level of rhetoric against Clinton.

That said, there ARE certainly racist elements of Obama-hatred…you can’t look at the signs at Tea Party rallies or the stuff that happened during the 2008 campaign without acknowledging SOME racism in the anti-Obama ranks.

14

I think it’s worth pointing out that if electing a black president harms race relations, race relations weren’t so hot before hand either.

Obama in office doesn’t legitimize racism. It does, however, make racists louder. Remember the Tea Party and the “Secret Muslim” bumper stickers are a vocal minority. If he were a white man, there would be some backlash just because he sits a little left of them politically. If it were HRC, there would be misogyny from the fringe, although maybe not to the extent of the Tea Party.

“Take America back,” and “He’s destroying our country” aren’t being cried by the majority of Americans. It’s an extremely vocal few who want to preserve what they perceive America to be - that is, a gentrified, middle class bubble.

Edit: Maybe it’s a topic for another thread, but what’s with the “Mr. Obama” stuff? Do people just have so little respect for the office? I sat through 8 years of Bush, which was regrettable, but I still refer to him as “President Bush” when I’m speaking in public.

15

What I think is funny, is that you see people everywhere saying “we need to get the carreer polititians OUT of Washington”

Then, when Obama shows up on the scene, you hear people saying “He has no EXPERIENCE to be President!”

Of course, America has become a “right NOW” society, and now people are upset because he hasn’t solved every problem in the world overnight.

If you want to see the true face and voice of the “new American racist” watch Glenn Beck.

16

This is not about politics, it’s about racism. Racism had not disappeared from our culture, but the struggle against nearly has. The racists no longer feel shame when they openly spew their intolerance. But it is not anything new. The social acceptance of racism declined through the 60s and 70s, but then became acceptable again as Reagan told his lie about ‘welfare queens’. Then bit by bit under the careful tutelage of Pat Buchanan, who established the Crossfire ideal that all ideas are equal, racism once again became an acceptable mainstream view. People disagree with my lack of tolerance for the intolerant, but I don’t stand by while people spit their venom in my eyes. Cowards will always be with us, but if their cowardice is acceptable, it is our fault for providing them haven.

17

Funny how perceptions differ.

I took that to be a conscious sign of respect since GWB was usually referred to - on internet forums at least - as ‘bush’ or ‘shrub’.

18

As a blond haired, blue eyed, never tan, burn and peel, White guy I can only say this about racism.

No Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Martian has ever done me any direct harm, but MANY White people have managed to do so.

Who am I supposed to hate?

19

I think it is standard procedure to refer to the president as President Joew the first time and all subsequent times refer to him/her as Mr./Mrs. Joew

20

Funny, he doesn’t look Joewish.