MY PRESIDENT WAS BLACK

Feeling Rebloggy

Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing “mere” about symbols.

Whiteness in America is a different symbol—a badge of advantage. 

In a country of professed meritocratic competition, this badge has long ensured an unerring privilege, represented in a 220-year monopoly on the highest office in the land. For some not-insubstantial sector of the country, the elevation of Barack Obama communicated that the power of the badge had diminished. For eight long years, the badge-holders watched him. 

They saw footage of the president throwing bounce passes and shooting jumpers. They saw him enter a locker room, give a businesslike handshake to a white staffer, and then greet Kevin Durant with something more soulful. They saw his wife dancing with Jimmy Fallon and posing, resplendent, on the covers of magazines that had, only a decade earlier, been almost exclusively, if unofficially, reserved for ladies imbued with the great power of the badge.

~Ta Nehisi Coates

Atlantic 

Listen to the article below or read it. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is often magic, marks the end with amazing grace. The imagery Coates creates of celebration and seriousness is blended well.  We are at the end of the Obama Era. And it was eight whole years long. Can you believe it? 

Read More:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/my-president-was-black/508793/

 Hear More: