@dnc wrote: "Just yesterday another honkey frren posted on FB "Racism was almost dead in this country until Obama resurrected it".
People actually believe this shit."
Obama didn't resurrect racism. But I had black, women & other minority clients and associates saying things like "Wait until 'our guy' gets in there, shit's gonna change, big time." True story. So a lot of people projected their hopes and dreams onto Obama, and expected him to be their sugar-daddy or their President that would finally do for them what they imagined prior Presidents had done for white society. Those folks very much felt that when Obama got elected, the entire tables had turned, their points of view were now mainstream, and for the first time ever, they would have things their way, for a change.
I voted for him twice and his initial victory was orgasmic. The country felt very unified. Then, just like with Clinton and other Presidents, reality set in and Obama started backing off on the Medicare Public Option, told black kids to "pull their pants up" and started talking like Reagan, which shocked a lot of people. What they failed to grasp was that a President has to govern from the middle, so the sugar-daddy role lead to things like changes in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to help blacks and minorities, and other indirect, structural changes versus direct benefits or money in people's pockets. Yet, many people, particularly minorities still maintained a delirious hope that Obama was going to fix every problem they had and make everything right in their lives. And when he failed to deliver on things, they just blamed Republicans, accused all of Obama's detractors of racism and created a lot of blow-back in the country.
I believe Obama had more Socialist tendencies, believed in the power of Government to do more in peoples lives, and assumed too much guilt for the U.S. and Western society than he should have, such as in that awful Cairo speech or his "remember the Crusades" bullshit. He was way off base on that shit, but maybe he was desperate to have something big on his legacy and resume than fucking up in Libya and Syria.
I still like Obama, but IMO the "problem" with Obama reflected in that quote from dnc's friend doesn't come from Obama himself, but from the expectations, hopes and dreams people projected onto him and saw in him, which were never really there.
The problem is there are idiots that actually thought racism was almost dead before Obama came around.
Comments
It wasn't so bad with Clinton as our first black president.