President Obama and the Complicated Politics of Racism in America

President Obama knew what he was doing yesterday on Marc Maron's podcast, I have little doubt.  A president who has chosen his words deliberately, with extreme caution throughout his presidency does not use the n-word publicly for the first time since his memoir was published without having thought about it thoroughly.  The president knew what he was doing, and was hoping the media would react probably exactly how it did.  There were those on CNN and FOX News, the Chicken Little and the Foxy Loxy of the news media respectively, both focused on the actual word that was uttered, with little regard for the larger point that the president was making, while the internet media had a more thoughtful approach, knowing that they could always look more sophisticated and worldly than the guests on The Kelly File.  Politicians ranging from Rev. Al Sharpton to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver weighed in, focusing more on Obama's larger point, which was that just because you don't say a vile term in public doesn't mean that racism has been cured in America.

This last point is what made me want to write this article, because it's confusing to me that that, the actual content of the president's message, wasn't the focus of the conversation.  Yes, it's a bit jarring to hear such a hateful word from the president, perhaps the first time this word has been used publicly by a president in at least eighty years, if not since Restoration.  And yet we should focus on the fact that President Obama is trying to make, which is that racism isn't just about using a specific word, but about a larger, broader, and more institutionalized way of thinking that has, while it definitely has gotten better since the 1950's, hasn't come nearly far enough for us to claim that we live in a post-racial society, which so many seem to claim.

Rep. Cleaver made an interesting point when he was asked about the podcast, saying that "what people should really be thinking about is how much embedded racism there is in many people who take pride in not saying it...what about the people who come to congressional hearings and talk about people living in public housing because they don't want to work or using their food stamps to buy Chivas Regal?"  Rep. Cleaver has a definite point here, because there's racism and hatred in those arguments too.  These sorts of conversations about public assistance programs almost always have a racially-charged meaning behind them, and people aren't willing to admit that there are more challenges to growing up African-American in the United States, insisting that everyone has opportunity if they "work hard," and everyone thinks "well I struggle too."

But the reality is, and this is one of the larger points made by Obama and Cleaver, is that the greater public and certainly the media dismiss more subtle racism every day.  FOX News jumps all over President Obama literally every single time that he mentions anything regarding race, claiming he is race-baiting, but when Bill or Hillary Clinton bring up issues that focus on the African-American or Latino-American communities, they don't get that sort of treatment.  Incarceration rates in this country disproportionately target African-Americans, and we have seen in places ranging from Ferguson to New York cases where police brutality has crossed over the line with young black men that we almost never see in the cases of young white men or women, but the media questions these facts in hopes of trying to appear nonpartisan.  We spent years trying to invalidate a president's birth certificate, and questioning his country of birth despite ALL evidence concluding that he was born in the United States, an endeavor that we surely wouldn't have done for a white presidential candidate (want proof?-look at the way the media handled John McCain being born in the Panama Canal Zone).  And it took a heinous shooting in a church in Charleston for Southern Republicans to finally start acknowledging the racist implications that result from flying a Confederate Flag, perhaps the most obvious symbol of racism in the United States, over a government building.

So yes, while President Obama said a word that we all (including he) wished would never be uttered again, it's important to not focus on that word exclusively but also the reason that he said it-this is a conversation that frequently gets brushed under the rug because it's uncomfortable, and it forces us to acknowledge certain things about ourselves (that, perhaps, it's not just hard work but also a society that has unfairly hindered or helped us along the way that got us to our present circumstances) that we don't find easy.  It's a conversation that we should continue to be having, and not just in the light of a national tragedy.  It shouldn't take the worst of circumstances for us to acknowledge a problem, and we shouldn't forget about the problem once the next story hits the front pages.