The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

 

The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson

This book was not what I thought it was going to be. I was wanting a book about the presidency of, and the man Barack Obama. The blame, though, should be on me and me alone.  A careful look at the wording of the title of the book should have probably educated be otherwise.  This is a book about race. Specifically, this book is about the racial tensions and turmoil that still continue to plague the nation; and whether or not having a black president has the ability to change things.  This book, though, is mostly about the racial problems and not so much about Barack Obama.  Yes, we read his name from time to time, but he’s obviously a “supporting” player in this story.  If this had been a movie, we wouldn’t even see the name ‘Barack Obama’ during the opening credits until we get to the words ‘And also starring…’.

Michael Eric Dyson is an op-ed writer for the New York Times as well as a contributor to MSNBC.  He’s also written several books around racial injustice. And if you didn’t already know, yes, he’s black. Like the majority of black Americans, Dyson clearly sees that injustice is still with us.  What’s only slightly less irritating to this injustice is that many white people, mostly on the conservative side, are still blind to the problem.  As a white person myself, I would agree with this. This may sound harsh, but being blind to a problem isn’t quite as bad as acknowledging the problem and then choosing to ignore it.  Sadly, though, the overall effect is just as bad.  Throughout this book, Dyson makes a very compelling argument that having a black man in the White House, even one who was pretty popular, really never changed the race problem in America very much.  He wrote this book in 2016, and had anyone argued with him at the time, he could simply point that person to the George Floyd tragedy four years later and say “I told you so”.

Although this was a good (yet unsettling) book, I still feel a bit shortchanged that there really isn’t that much about Obama here. What the author does in each chapter is present horrifying scenarios of the racist culture in America in meticulous detail; especially during the eight years during Obama’s administration. Whether he’s comparing the preaching of black ministers (remember Jeremiah Wright?) against similar white ministers (who also preach divisive messages, yet from a different angle), or talking about the murders of Treyvon Martin or Michael Brown, he does so with conviction.  He gets so passionate about all of the injustice, that it seems like he’s forgotten that his main subject is supposed to be the 44^th president.  Again, these are important topics that need to be addressed, so the author deserves kudos for devoting page space to such tragedies, but Obama, again, seems to be delegated to the background of the book so to speak.

In fact, an awful lot of this book seems to portray President Obama in a somewhat negative way. Dyson argues many times that a black president really should be doing more during his presidency for black people.  Most of the time, Dyson argues, Obama comes up short.  Now, me being a white person, I must tread lightly when I say that I’m inclined to disagree.  This style of leadership has been going on in our democracy since our country began.  In order for a leader to be successful, they must balance the art of elevating one group of people without knocking the other group so hard that they leave them bloodied and bruised  (I would argue Donald Trump is an exception, but let’s not go there).  In other words, if President Obama were to become too passionate about the black cause, he’s likely to alienate too many white people; and those white people vote.  So whereas the author feels very disappointed by this behavior by the president, I can’t honestly say that I disagree with the majority of statements that President Obama made during his term around racial injustice and imbalance.  Again, though; I am not black, so it’s much easier for me to express such a sentiment when I’m on the outside looking in.

Author Dyson goes deep in many places.  For example, he points out that in the beginning of Obama’s campaign in 2008, he wasn’t exactly loved by the majority of black constituents.  The reason?  Well, Obama is only HALF black, and his black father is a recent immigrant.  So therefore, Obama and his father never quite experienced many of the travails that other black people were experiencing in the days of Jim Crow and the turbulent decades that preceded the Civil Rights bill (and, to be frank, still exist).  The author does do a good job serving as an apologist when necessary.  When you think of such idiocy as the fact that Obama’s middle name is “Hussein” or that no white candidate would ever have to prove he’s a citizen of the United States despite having a legitimate birth certificate, you should (as a white person) understand just how ridiculously stupid such accusations are and how condescending they are in tone. True, ALL presidents have their share of angry detractors on the other side of the fence who sling mud, but you can’t help feel that Obama got a much bigger share of whining losers due to the fact that he was a black man doing a very important job that had only been previously held by white men.

Overall, this is a very good book.  Especially since, as I write this review in the Fall of 2020 after the George Floyd murder, it’s very clear that the United States still has an awful lot to do in terms of racial equality.  I keep hoping (as I stated earlier) that many white people simply still don’t understand how long racial injustice has been going on in our country, and a book such as this just might educate them a tad better.   Perhaps I’m being optimistic, but what else can one do?  No, this really isn’t a book about Barack Obama, but it’s still an important book that still needed to be written.