There’s no question. The week of January 18th, the week in which he celebrated his one-year anniversary in the White House, wasn’t the best of times for the man we’ve been calling “America’s first black president.”
It was coming at him from all sides, it seemed. There was the normal run of bad news from Afghanistan, the continuing horror of after-shocks in Haiti; there were more negative headlines about joblessness and the still-worsening economy; and several polls released that reflected continuing declines in his job approval ratings.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, the week before that, the “Massachusetts Miracle” happened, when a heretofore unknown, underdog, Republican state senator from Massachusetts, named Scott Brown, became a national household word and the most sought-after political interview in the country, by beating an endorsed Democrat named Martha Coakley in the special election to replace “Ted” Kennedy in the U.S. Senate.
This all happened despite the fact that the president had staked his political reputation on a Coakley victory by flying into Boston to rally the troops two days before the election.
Unfortunately the results in Massachusetts were no better than they had been when he tried to help two other fellow-Democrats, last year, in New Jersey and in Virginia.
Things had gotten so crazy that there was speculation that Mr. Brown’s election could almost singlehandly lead to the demise of the Health Reform legislation, and a shut down, for all intents and purposes, of the Obama Administration’s entire political agenda. By mid-month, there was speculation that Barack Obama, following the “Miracle,” was now destined to be a one-term president. There was even talk about Scott Brown being considered as a strong candidate for president, himself, in 2012.
On top of all of that, and complicating the whole national leadership issue for Mr. Obama, were the results from a late November Pew Research study that raised, once again, the nagging question of his racial identity and its political implications.
With everything moving so swiftly in a negative direction, in whatever few, quiet moments the president had available to him, he could still take consolation in the fact that black Americans, in the main, were still solidly in his corner.
In the Gallup Poll’s presidential job approval survey for the week of January 11, 42 percent of whites said they approved of the job the president was doing, 69 percent of Hispanics approved and a whopping 91 percent of blacks approved.
What the pollsters and, perhaps, what Mr. Obama, himself, don’t seem to understand is that black folks are committed to the “black president” no matter how hard he works to separate himself from them, politically, or how much, apparently, they suffer under his administration’s economy.
In fact, a recent Pew Research Center survey made the point that there is a significant disconnect between the way black survey respondents answer questions posed to them about their economic circumstances and the actual level of economic pain being experienced in the African-American community.
It’s no secret that the most recent national unemployment data disclosed a 10 percent unemployment level for Americans, in general, but a 16.2 percent unemployment rate for black Americans, and an even-worse 18.2 percent unemployment rate for African-American males.
Despite that, the percentage of blacks who rate the national economy as “excellent or good,” according to Pew, stood at 14 percent in December, down just two percentage points from December 2006. Over the same period, the percentage of whites who rated the economy as “excellent or good” declined from 42 percent to 7 percent.
How can that be, you ask?
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that most black Americans have made an emotional investment in Barack Obama’s success, much in the same way that we normally do with all significant “black firsts.”
For better or worse, we believe our destinies are tied to his, because he is a “first black.” That being the case, we not only have a great deal of pride in his achievement, we also feel, deep down inside, that if he fails, we also will fail. If he, somehow, does a poor job as President, we believe, it will be a very long time, if ever, before another African American will receive serious consideration for the job.
We did the same thing for other ‘black firsts.’ When Benjamin O. Davis was promoted to being the first African-American general in the history of the U.S. Army, black men and women across the country who were absolutely opposed to war and who wanted nothing at all to do with the U.S. military, rooted for him to be successful.
When Shirley Chisholm became the first black female to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, black people ─ and especially black females ─ prayed that she would be successful ─ because they were proud, and because they knew that, based on her performance, both black and white voters would determine whether any other black females would ever deserve to be elected to Congress.
In the same way, Guion Bluford, the first black astronaut, in 1983, and Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut, in 1992, brought black folks back to cheer for the “space program.” The list goes on: Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice was absolutely important to us, as is Xerox’s Ursula Burns, the first black female CEO of a Fortune 500 Corporation, who assumed her position as recently as May 2009.
In the same way, black folks want , more than anything to see Barack Obama be successful ─ so much so that I believe that they are actually reluctant to say anything negative about him to inquiring pollsters ─ even if they have not been absolutely pleased with his performance. I’m not saying that they would actually lie to the pollster, I’m just saying that they are extremely reluctant to say anything at all that would make him look bad. That’s because, in their minds, he is ‘the first black president” ─ and that’s enough for them.
But, in that regard, here’s something that’s really strange: With all of the talk about the U.S. having elected its “first black president,” Pew Research Center, in its telephone survey done during November 2009, asked black, white and Hispanic voters: “Do you think of Obama as black or mixed-race?”
Shockingly, only 23 percent of Hispanics said they think of Obama as a black man. The majority of Hispanics (61%) said they see him as “mixed-race.”
It was much the same kind of response from whites, only 24 percent of whom think of Obama as black. Fifty three percent of whites see him, also, as “mixed-race.”
It appears, in the minds of most American voters, even though a man named Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election in November 2008, they still don’t believe they’ve ever cast their vote for a “black” candidate for that office.
If that’s really true, then we’re way off base when we suspect that the President’s opponents are anti-black. If we believe Pew Research, it appears that a certain percentage of “Obama haters.” are simply “anti-mixed race.”
Who knew?
With the country’s voters admittedly confused about the President’s actual ethnicity, those of us who want to know the truth have no choice left but to find out directly from him how he defines himself.
Perhaps we can gain some insight by understanding something that Mr. Obama said in a telephone presentation to a conference of 2000 Asian-American leaders in May of last year.
This is what he said: “I am a Pacific Islander…I consider myself one of you.”
Now what?
Is Barack Obama, after all this time, not really black at all? Is he really the "first Asian/Pacific Island president?"
Who knew?
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