I think that the media and blogger uproar over Barack Obama’s answer at his press conference last night to a request for his reaction to the arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is far more revealing and significant than the answer itself. The man was asked a question (one he would not have been asked if he were not himself black), he answered it (at some length, and thoughtfully), and the mob seizes on one word to expose him as a fraud, not “post-racial” at all, just out to practice the same old politics of division.
He was asked for his opinion because he is the black President, not because he is the President. But when he answers as a black president, out of his experience of being black in America — even though he does so with words that are nuanced, that acknowledge complexity and his own possible biases in the matter — he is attacked.
He is not supposed to give an honest answer, no matter how thoughtful and acknowledging of different points of view. Any degree of honesty or authentic feeling from a black American about a black American’s experience is unacceptable.
Posted in somewhat edited form at Liberty Street.
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