Author: Mariko Powers
I am outraged by the lack of respect that has been afforded to President Barack Obama – on Capitol Hill, in the media and in public protests. I cannot recall a president so slandered. And frankly, I think a lot of this criticism stems from racial fear, whether unconscious or not. The Reverend Jesse Jackson recently told ABCNews.com, “Some of the attacks the president has taken have been unusually harsh for an American president.” This is true, and is reflective of the racial tensions that have plagued Obama’s administration since his inauguration.
I believe Obama’s actions would have been met with considerably less criticism if a more “traditional” president – one who was older, white, with a nice Caucasian-sounding name- had made the same decisions. Former President Jimmy Carter shared a similar sentiment on the NBC Nightly News, stating, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.” It’s time Americans realize that most negative perceptions of the president are in large part shaped either subtly or overtly by racism.
Realistically, it is too optimistic to expect the election of “America’s first black president” to be seamless and free of racial slurs, but I had hoped that the issue of race could be kept out of his approval ratings. According to a recent Harris poll, 20 percent of Americans say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did,” 40 percent think he is a socialist, 23 percent believe he is anti-American and – most astounding of all – 14 percent say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”
Presidents have played an ever-increasing role in shaping the national political agenda, and Obama is not unprecedented in proposing sweeping legislation. However, any bold political move he attempts to make (such as health care reform, the bailout, etc.) are labeled by many opponents, such as TheFoxNation.com, as a Neo-Nazi Marxist takeover of America.
A blatant example of this brand of racism toward the president recently surfaced in the news, when California State Senator Leland Yee received threatening hate mail because of his inquiries into Sarah Palin’s compensation for speaking at California State University in June. One message stated, in all capital letters, “Were you to extract your head from treasonous Marxist n****** [censored for content] Hussein Obama’s rectum, your brain would still function at its present much diminished level but at least the n***** [censored for content] shit smell would eventually dissipate.” The fax also included an image of a pickup truck dragging a noose. This is just one misguided message, but there have been many more like it, which perhaps indicates that the type of discourse in the country has changed.
Granted, there always have been and always will be extreme members of society who make their prejudices well known, and their opinions most often will not reflect the feelings of the larger public. However, as Sarah Netter of ABC News quotes Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report in her article “Racism in Obama’s America One Year Later”: “[Expect] the vicious and racially charged insults to grow among the small minority who will always use the president’s skin color as a way to lash out against his policies.”
Though Obama’s election raised speculation that American politics had become “post-race,” this has not yet been achieved. In addition, Netter observes that “poll numbers suggest most voters are not judging Obama’s presidency based on the color of his skin, but the issue has continued to surface in Obama’s presidency with disheartening regularity.” If Obama were white, his critics would likely not be as harsh.
As mentioned previously, former President Jimmy Carter believes racism is hindering President Obama in his efforts to lead the country. Carter told students at his 28th annual town hall meeting at Emory University, “When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds.”
I wholeheartedly agree that no public figure – especially one popularly elected to the most respected position in the country – should have to endure such slanderous treatment. Since when did such talk become acceptable?
As the chief executive of the country, every president deserves respect. I understand that political jokes and unflattering portrayals of the president are nothing new: George W. Bush was mocked as inarticulate and unintelligent, and Clinton’s sex scandals made him a ripe target for wisecracks. However, it is when these portrayals stop becoming jokes, bleed into national perception of presidential performance and focus on race rather than policy that it becomes a matter of concern.
I am in no way suggesting that all those who oppose President Obama’s policies are hate-mongers and racists, only that I think that racial distrust has inspired most of the extreme things that have been said about him. There are means and language by which to criticize the president and his proposals without resorting to the use of racial slurs and crass characterizations.
My objections are not about political preference or ideology – it’s about the basic level of respect every president, and person, deserves, no matter what party he or she belongs to, and no matter what the color of his or her skin. Whether Democrat or Republican, extreme insults targeting the president only hurt American unity and morale. As John Avalon, author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijaking America” stated, “We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States.”
The United States may be far from becoming a “post-race” society, and until then I hope that Americans recognize that offensive commentary is not constructive to any cause but fostering hate. Time may prove me wrong – should a more “typical” president be met with such offensive criticism, I will know that America has simply turned the tide on what can be said about a president, that the days when the position commanded as certain level of reverence and respect – whatever the current political climate – are gone. Until then, and until the racist hate mail stops coming in, I will continue to believe that some of the critiques leveled against Obama are largely fueled by the politics of racial hate.
Mariko Powers is an undeclared first-year. She can be reached at mpowers@oxy.edu.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
