{"id":394,"date":"2012-03-26T11:58:46","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T15:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=394"},"modified":"2012-03-26T11:58:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T15:58:46","slug":"trayvon-martin-and-obama-the-racialist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/trayvon-martin-and-obama-the-racialist.html","title":{"rendered":"Trayvon Martin and Obama the Racialist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2008, then Senator Barack Hussein Obama and his supporters on both <\/em>the left and <\/em>the right assured us that in the event of his election to the presidency,America would enter a new post-racial millennium. The utopian dreams of yesterday would become the reality of tomorrow if only Americans would vote for Obama today.<\/p>\n

Some of us at the time called this nonsense out for what we knew it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2012, there isn\u2019t anyone who any longer believes it.<\/p>\n

On Friday, March 23, the President couldn\u2019t resist remarking upon the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.\u00a0 Martin is black.\u00a0 Although the man who shot him is Hispanic, according to the conventional media narrative, George Zimmerman is \u201cwhite,\u201d or a \u201cwhite Hispanic.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, what appears to have been a tragedy\u2014the confrontation that terminated in Martin\u2019s death at least seems <\/em>to have been avoidable\u2014has been spun by the agents of the \u201cRacism Industrial Complex\u201d (RIC) into a racial incident.<\/p>\n

As in the case of General Motors, Obama is \u201cthe captain\u201d of this industry too.<\/p>\n

Obama called for \u201call of us\u201d to engage in \u201csoul searching\u201d so as to determine \u201chow something\u2026like this\u201d could \u201chappen.\u201d\u00a0 We must look at \u201cthe laws\u201d and \u201cthe specifics of the incident,\u201d of course, but also \u201cthe context<\/em> for what happened (emphasis added) [.]\u201d\u00a0 By \u201ccontext,\u201d Obama clearly wasn\u2019t talking about the immediate context of events within which Zimmerman and Martin encountered one another, for such events constitute \u201cthe specifics of the incident.\u201d No, \u201cthe context\u201d to which Obama referred was the larger racial <\/em>narrative that has become the bread and butter for, well, people like Obama.\u00a0 \u201cIf I had a son,\u201d Obama insisted, \u201che\u2019d look<\/em> like Trayvon\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

So, as it turns out, Obama agrees with his old friend Henry Louis Gates, Jr. after all.\u00a0 Gates is the Harvard University professor who in 2009 was arrested at his home when he was mistaken by the police of being an intruder.\u00a0 He shouted at the arresting officer that it was due to the fact that \u201cI\u2019m a black man in America!\u201d that the police set their sights on him.\u00a0 As with respect to the Trayvon Martin case, hardly any of the facts of the Gates affair were known when Obama sided with Gates by claiming that theCambridgepolice \u201cacted stupidly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Obama did not have to weigh in on either of these two cases.\u00a0 Furthermore, he should not have done so.\u00a0 They are local events that are best left to local authorities to straighten out.\u00a0 But he couldn\u2019t help himself.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 The question is rhetorical.\u00a0 Obama couldn\u2019t resist the impulse to speak to the Martin and Gates incidences for the same reason that he is the last person to whom we should turn for guidance toward a post-racial society: Obama is a racialist <\/em>through and through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More specifically, Obama is a black <\/em>racialist.<\/p>\n

Obama asserts that his son would look like Trayvon Martin. He just as easily\u2014and truthfully\u2014could have said that had he a son, his son would have looked like George Zimmerman, for Zimmerman, as his photo readily attests, isn\u2019t much lighter, if he is lighter at all, than Obama.\u00a0 But he would rather latch his political and ideological fortunes to this case by identifying with the black youth whose fate is now at the center of national controversy.<\/p>\n

This is what we should expect from a man who, in spite of his biracial parentage, has spent his life laboring to forge for himself an explicitly racial identity.\u00a0 Judged not just by our standards, but those of the world, both present and past, there are few people who have had it as well as Obama has had it.\u00a0 For this, he has his mother and her family\u2014not his African father who abandoned him when he was but two years-old\u2014to thank.\u00a0 Yet Obama chooses to regard himself as black.\u00a0 <\/em>As his memoir, Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, <\/em>makes abundantly clear, from the time he was an adolescent, Obama had been on a quest to achieve racial \u201cauthenticity.\u201d\u00a0 He wanted to become \u201cauthentically\u201d black.<\/p>\n

His understanding of what this authenticity entails we can, if we would only summon the will to do so, piece together from what we now know of him. Obama is a hard leftist who, as such, endorses the conventional political narrative of unrelenting White Oppression and perpetual Black Suffering.\u00a0 To be authentically black, then, in Obama\u2019s eyes, is to have experienced \u201cracist\u201d oppression.\u00a0 Yet it is also to be \u201cdown with the struggle\u201d for liberation<\/em> from this subjugation. \u00a0And since this \u201cstruggle\u201d consists of demands for race-based preferential treatment policies of one sort or another, an \u201cauthentic\u201d black person is one who must join the chorus of the enraged \u201coppressed\u201d in pushing for more of the same.\u00a0 One who is \u201cauthentically\u201d black must never fail to express racial solidarity with his fellow blacks.<\/p>\n

This understanding of Obama coincides neatly with his choice of alliances, including and especially that of Jeremiah Wright, his pastor and \u201cspiritual mentor\u201d of over twenty years, the man who is an enthusiastic proponent of \u201cBlack Liberation Theology\u201d and a good friend of none other than Louis Farakkhan.<\/p>\n

Republicans think that they can beat Obama this election season just by focusing on his failed policies.\u00a0 Maybe they can.\u00a0 However, I am doubtful.\u00a0 Politics, as anyone who is at all familiar with it should know, is a contest of narratives or stories. \u00a0John McCain tried to focus solely on \u201cthe issues\u201d when he contended with Obama in 2008.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t work.\u00a0 This time around, I suspect that this approach will fail once more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Republicans have got to re-present Obama to America.\u00a0 His decisions and actions as President must be contextualized within the narrative of Obama\u2019s life that they<\/em> will weave, a narrative, much like that which he composed in Dreams, <\/em>united by the theme of race.\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not only will this narrative increase Republicans\u2019 chances of defeating Obama in November.\u00a0 It is, more importantly, a true <\/em>story. <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack\u00a0Kerwick,\u00a0Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2008, then Senator Barack Hussein Obama and his supporters on both the left and the right assured us that in the event of his election to the presidency,America would enter a new post-racial millennium. 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