Ishmael Reed explains:
What Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama
NOT all of my white teachers viewed me as a discipline problem. To the annoyance of my fellow students, one teacher selected me regularly to lead assembly programs. A high school teacher insisted that I learn about the theater. She was an America-firster who supplied me with right-wing pamphlets and magazines that I’d read at breakfast and she didn’t seem bothered by my returning them with some of the pages stuck together with syrup.
But most of them did see me as an annoyance, and gave me the grades to prove it.
I’ve been thinking recently of all those D’s for deportment on my report cards.
[…]
And I’ve thought about them as I’ve listened in the last week to progressives criticize President Obama for keeping his cool.
Progressives have been urging the president to “man up” in the face of the Republicans. Some want him to be like John Wayne. On horseback. Slapping people left and right.
One progressive commentator played an excerpt from a Harry Truman speech during which Truman screamed about the Republican Party to great applause. He recommended this style to Mr. Obama. If President Obama behaved that way, he’d be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. His grade would go from a B- to a D.
What the progressives forget is that black intellectuals have been called “paranoid,” “bitter,” “rowdy,” “angry,” “bullies,” and accused of tirades and diatribes for more than 100 years. Very few of them would have been given a grade above D from most of my teachers.
When these progressives refer to themselves as Mr. Obama’s base, all they see is themselves. They ignore polls showing steadfast support for the president among blacks and Latinos. And now they are whispering about a primary challenge against the president. Brilliant! The kind of suicidal gesture that destroyed Jimmy Carter — and a way to lose the black vote forever.
Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all. They know how it feels to be unemployed and unable to buy your children Christmas presents. They know when not to shout. The president, the coolest man in the room, who worked among the unemployed in Chicago, knows too.
According to his bio on Wikipedia:
Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but grew up in Buffalo, New York, where he attended the University of Buffalo, a private university that became part of the state public university system after he left. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1995. He moved to New York City in 1962 and co-founded with the late Walter Bowart the East Village Other, a well-known underground publication. He was also a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, an organization that helped establish the Black Arts Movement and promoted a Black Aesthetic.
I’m gonna take a wild guess and say Mr. Reed had a close up view of the Civil Rights Movement. Not to belittle his point of view or take anything away from his life experiences, but what does any of that have to do with Barack Obama?
I can hear the Obots saying “He’s black too, you moron” now.
No, he’s not.
Obama is bi-racial. He was raised by white people in a life of privilege a long way from the segregated world that Mr. Reed was born and raised in.
As for his over-hyped experience as a “community organizer” isn’t it strange that a man who wrote two memoirs by his mid-40’s has never really provided a detailed account of what was allegedly one of the key formative periods of his life?
Not even the most wild-eyed DFH progressive expects Obama to behave like some stereotypical ghetto gangsta and start screaming profanities and slapping Republicans around. Nor is there a meaningful debate about what letter grade to assign him for his deportment.
The issue is Obama’s achievements or lack thereof. The people who supported Obama and the Democrats had reasonable expectations as to what they wanted from the past two years. These are the same kind of expectations any winning candidate for POTUS would face.
They are expected to govern competently. They are expected to do their best to advance the agenda they ran on – to keep their campaign promises. They are expected to be the kind of person they portrayed themselves to be.
Here at TC we’re not disappointed with Obama’s performance. We expected a massive FUBAR and he’s exceeded our worst nightmares. But his progressive supporters (however naive and/or gullible they may have been) have a legitimate complaint.
Not according to Ishmael Reed, though.
Welcome to post-racial America, where the only thing that really matters is race.
Filed under: Barack Obama, General, racism | Tagged: Barack Obama, Race Card | 93 Comments »
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