When Barack Obama was elected to the presidency in 2008, even his most voracious critics conceded that one possible benefit of his tenure in office would be a new era of reduced racial tension. It wasn’t an unreasonable proposition at the time. Born of a black father and a white mother, Obama’s public record – from his two autobiographies to his campaign speech on race in Philadelphia – displayed not only a keen sensitivity to the issue, but also a desire to serve a uniquely palliative role in the history of American race relations.
Born into the first generation of African-Americans to experience the blessings of the civil rights revolution – and possessed of a unique talent for fostering a sense of reconciliation – he seemed the ideal figure to inaugurate the nation’s first truly post-racial era.
And then he took office.
In the early days of the Obama Administration, a number of developments made it increasingly obvious that Obama would not be playing the role of the great healer. His Attorney General gave a public speech deriding the country as “a nation of cowards” on racial issues.
At one of his first White House press conferences, Obama – assuming racial profiling – said that a white Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer “acted stupidly” when he arrested a black Harvard professor for disorderly conduct at his own home (audio recordings released later revealed the professor screaming at the policeman, who was responding to a breaking & entering call).
No comments:
Post a Comment