Within no time of Barack Obama\u2019s election to the presidency, his honeymoon was met with a backlash of epic proportions, an uprising against \u201cBig Government\u201d of which the newly created Tea Party was an emblem.\u00a0 Many of Obama\u2019s left-leaning supporters, both in Washington as well as in the media, identified this phenomenon as a \u201cracist\u201d reaction to the election of our \u201cfirst black president.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those on the right, forever ready to prove their color-blindness, insist that Obama\u2019s color or race hasn\u2019t anything to do with their frustrations; rather, it is his determination to grow the government well beyond anything that it has ever been\u2014and even further beyond anything that it was originally intended to be\u2014that is the source of their angst.\u00a0 In a word, it is Obama\u2019s \u201csocialism\u201d that unleashed the beast typified by the Tea Party movement.\u00a0 Had he been any other color and still been a socialist, his conduct would have been greeted by exactly the same response.<\/p>\n
So, does <\/em>Obama\u2019s race factor into the grassroots rebellion that his election invited?<\/p>\n It may interest readers of this column to discover that I find the left\u2019s account of events to contain some truth.\u00a0 Of course, the idea that the overwhelming majority of whites that constitute the Tea Party and \u201cconservative\u201d movements, to say nothing of the Republican Party, are driven by an irrational and malevolent pathology called \u201cracism\u201d is absurd.\u00a0 However, that Obama\u2019s race informs, to some extent, the great awakening that appears to have transpired over the last couple of years is a proposition that isn\u2019t so easy to circumvent.<\/p>\n The aggressiveness with which Obama and his Democrats pursued his socialist agenda isn\u2019t itself what gave rise to the resistance with which it has been met.\u00a0 I have no doubts that had John McCain or some other Republican been president, and had this Republican moved just as speedily and ambitiously as Obama in advancing the same exact program as the latter, the town hall meetings, massive Tea Party demonstrations, and the like would never have occurred.\u00a0 Moreover, while there would have been some measure of outrage, I suspect that even had any other Democrat<\/em> been president and moved with the swiftness that Obama moved, chances are that this outrage would not have been as intense as that which Obama faces.<\/p>\n Conservative students of modernity have long noted the sense of \u201calienation\u201d experienced by citizens of the modern state.\u00a0 The modern state\u2014what is commonly (but not always correctly) called \u201cthe nation-state\u201d\u2014is unprecedented for its largeness of size and scope.\u00a0 Thus, the national governments of such entities, of necessity, are far removed from the everyday lives of the citizens over which they preside.\u00a0 Due to this, citizens tend to feel as if their government is something over and above them.\u00a0 That is, they feel alienated <\/em>from it.<\/p>\n Much to the chagrin of many a leftist, from its inception to the present day, the vast majority of America\u2019s citizens have been white.\u00a0 The segment of the population with ancestral roots in Europe has diminished some in recent decades, it is true, but the country remains predominantly white.\u00a0 Given this fact, for as racially enlightened as 21st<\/sup> whites undoubtedly are relative to other peoples around the world and throughout history, this tacit sense on the part of Tea Partiers and scores of others that their federal government is among <\/em>them, not of them, <\/em>intensified with the election of our 44th<\/sup> president.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, as Obama\u2019s opponents have repeatedly insisted, the color<\/em> of his skin alone isn\u2019t relevant to their feelings toward him and their government. After all, contrary to popular opinion, no one, <\/em>white, black, or other, ever sees just color.\u00a0 Race is never thought of as a just a matter of biology.\u00a0 In every person\u2019s mind, race encompasses certain cultural, and even ideological, characteristics.\u00a0 Blacks more so than anyone recognize this, a fact that explains such otherwise puzzling phenomena as their description of Bill Clinton as \u201cthe first black president\u201d and the insistence of left-leaning blacks that their more conservative minded brethren aren\u2019t really <\/em>black.\u00a0<\/p>\n No, that our president has more melanin than the majority of Americans is by itself neither here nor there.\u00a0 His color isn\u2019t at issue.\u00a0 But Obama is <\/em>a \u201crace man.\u201d\u00a0 This much has always been abundantly clear to anyone who was willing to read his first memoir\u2014Dreams from My Father: A Story of <\/em>Race and Inheritance<\/em>\u2014or consider his selection of allies.\u00a0 Whites chose to ignore all of this. Blacks, in stark contrast, are well aware of it.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n By some estimates, Obama received as much as 96% of the black vote.\u00a0 Thus, blacks have no doubts regarding his racial authenticity<\/em>. Yet Obama is considered authentically black precisely because of both his alliances\u2014let us never forget the colorful cast of far left racial ideologues with whom Obama surrounded himself for most of his life, beginning with his pastor and \u201cspiritual mentor\u201d of over two decades, Jeremiah Wright\u2014as well as his unapologetic endorsement of a robust redistributive scheme designed to transfer resources from whites to non-whites.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Though they won\u2019t admit this, even to themselves, I maintain that since his election, it has dawned on an ever growing number of whites that this black president may regard himself as black before he regards himself as the president.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It is this realization, I contend, that has exacerbated their sense that their government is as alien to them as is Obama\u2019s name. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Within no time of Barack Obama\u2019s election to the presidency, his honeymoon was met with a backlash of epic proportions, an uprising against \u201cBig Government\u201d of which the newly created Tea Party was an emblem.\u00a0 Many of Obama\u2019s left-leaning supporters, both in Washington as well as in the media, identified this phenomenon as a \u201cracist\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n