Obama and the Decline of White America

During the Democratic primary, Chris Rock famously joked that George Bush had "fucked up so bad that it's hard for a white man to run for president." Some took him seriously. In August 2007 Esquire ran a cover of John Edwards with the question: "Can a white man still be elected president?" That the headline made any sense at all is a testament to the assumptions that prevail about who is entitled to the job. Of the seventeen presidential candidates in both main parties, fourteen were white men--32 percent of the population, 82 percent of the candidates, 100 percent of the past presidents. These are the kinds of odds that would make Kim Jong Il's election agent smile. Back then, with Obama trailing Clinton and both trailing Giuliani in the polls, the lash had not yet been wielded. But the backlash was already beginning.

Today it is in full swing. Right-wingers have turned up at Obama's events carrying guns. Facebook recently pulled a poll asking, "Should Obama be killed?'' with choices of yes, no, maybe and "If he cuts my health care.'' This was clearly anticipated by Apollo Braun, a Manhattan store owner, whose "Who Killed Obama?" T-shirts were his most popular even before the election.

In between came gun-toting protesters at town hall meetings and official events. One of them carried a placard saying, "It is time to water the tree of liberty"--a reference to Thomas Jefferson's famous quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It's the same quote Timothy McVeigh was wearing on his T-shirt when he was arrested for bombing the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. From the time that Obama declared he was running, the primary concern among African-Americans was the same as the one expressed by Alma Powell as her husband, Colin Powell, contemplated running in 1996--assassination. Now it appears that those dark fears have become, in some quarters, white fantasies.

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