Slide Show: Race in the Obama Era

Despite the historic and inspirational election of America’s first president of color, 2009 has been a year filled with racial turmoil. The economic crisis has taken a disproportionately severe toll on African-Americans and the healthcare debate has inspired overtly racist rhetoric directed at the president.

Still, there is proof of progress as well, from the emergence of Michelle Obama as an American icon to the confirmations of Eric Holder and Sonia Sotomayor as the nation’s first African-American Attorney General and the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice respectively. Through it all The Nation has offered its unique brand of progressive coverage and analysis.
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Shortly before the 2008 presidential election, there is a widespread perception that many Americans will not vote for Barack Obama because of his race. Nation contributor Lakshmi Chaudhry’s Indian father-in-law reportedly said, “Americans may want to elect him, but in the end they won’t do it. He’s a good man, but he’s black.” Yet Obama’s popularity grows quickly–from South Africa to France and Italy–people cheer for Obama, wear badges and wave American flags. The promise of hope and change quickly spreads across the globe breaking cultural, generational and racial barriers.

Eric Holder sparks debate with a speech to Department of Justice employees celebrating Black History Month. Holder says that the US is “a nation of cowards” when it comes to dealing with issues of race. The statement inspires a lot of anger and defensiveness, but also earns Holder praise from those who admire his forthrightness. Nation writer Melissa Harris-Lacewell writes “It was a deft move of racial defiance by proxy.”
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After being vilified during the 2008 presidential campaign, Michelle Obama is widely embraced as a role model for women of all races once she becomes First Lady. Simply by being herself, she breaks ground. As The Nation‘s Katha Pollitt writes,”Some days I think just being a highly visible admirable black woman is a social cause all by itself, given how little of that side of black life most white Americans see.”
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President Obama’s loving engagement with his daughters is the very embodiment of idealized male parenting. However, it is interesting that Obama’s role as good and loving father allows us to ignore the simple fact that the first black president of the United States did not have a present and available black father. Obama can’t make all fathers be responsible parents but he can help single mothers give our kids the opportunities he had.
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When Michael Steele (pictured) is elected chairman of the RNC shortly after the election of President Obama, Republicans hope his selection would help change their party’s image as a whites-only club. But Steele’s posturing that he wants to appeal “to urban, suburban, hip-hop settings” fails to ring true and his fearmongering on issues like healthcare is transparently shameless.
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The confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court, is fraught with racial tension and frankly, ignorance. Republicans like Sen. Jeff Sessions (pictured) fixate on past Sotomayor remarks about being a “wise Latina”, implying that she would discriminate against white males from the bench. Ultimately she is confirmed by a solid majority.
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The sudden death of pop icon Michael Jackson captivates the American public during the summer of 2009. While Jackson’s complex, and some would argue, sordid personal history will always be subject to scrutiny he undeniably transcended many racial hurdles during the 1970s and 80s. Still, his own relationship with race remains ambiguous.
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The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., not known for fiery rhetoric on racial issues, proves to be another divisive moment for uneasy Americans. Some rush to defend the white police officer who arrested Gates in his own home, while others express anger over the unfair treatment of a respected intellectual. Gary Younge wrote, “[T]he fact that racism might affect a Harvard professor is amazing only if one buys into the idea that black people who have reached a certain status should be exempt from racism. If you believe that, then the problem with Gates’s arrest is not racism. It’s that he was treated like a regular black person.”

President Obama tries to broker peace by inviting Gates and Officer Crowley to the White House for a beer, but the incident only reopens barely-healed racial wounds.
Photo courtesy of the White House.

The NAACP heads into its 100th year with its youngest leader ever, the 36-year-old Benjamin Jealous, tasked with reaching out to a new generation while remaining faithful to the long history of the organization. The centennial celebration features a speech by President Obama, whose words are both refreshing but also, in the words of The Nation‘s Adam Howard, leave “a bit of a bitter aftertaste and the realization that even with a black president it’s not a good time to be black in America.”
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For two or three generations, Republicans have defeated progressive reform of the healthcare system by hinting that it would mean redistributing wealth from whites to blacks. For those whose sense of identity has been premised on a raced, masculine, conservative Christian hierarchy of American power, the world must seem even more emotionally terrifying than any actual facts would indicate.
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A yearning to soothe this national shame and heal the gaping racial wound that was reopened by Katrina is partly responsible for America’s enthusiastic embrace of Barack Obama. American willingness to confront racial injustice dissipated as quickly as Bush’s promises to rebuild the city, but Katrina had awakened a deep desire to prove that America is not a nation marred by racism.
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On September 5, Van Jones, a celebrated environmental activist, is forced to resign from his position as green jobs czar for the Obama administration following an orchestrated witchunt led by Fox News blowhard Glenn Beck. More disappointing than the White House’s capitulation to right-wing zealots is the not-so-subtle racial undertones to the attacks directed at Jones.
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In an eloquent and passionate speech before a joint session of Congress, President Obama deftly fights back against blatant rightwing lies that in some cases played up fears of the president’s supposed racial animus against white Americans, particularly seniors. Obama warned his foes “if you misrepresent what’s in [my health plan], we will call you out.” Let’s hope so.
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Slide Show: Race in the Obama Era

Slide Show: Race in the Obama Era

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