{"id":511,"date":"2012-07-17T22:00:01","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T02:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=511"},"modified":"2012-07-17T22:00:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T02:00:01","slug":"morgan-freeman-on-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/07\/morgan-freeman-on-obama.html","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Freeman on Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

While on Michel Martin\u2019s NPR show, \u201cTell Me More,\u201d Hollywood titan Morgan Freeman informed his host that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, Barack Hussein Obama is not <\/em>America\u2019s first black president.<\/p>\n

He is the country\u2019s \u201cfirst mixed-race president.\u201d\u00a0 The first black president, Freeman continued, has not as yet \u201carisen.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, one wonders, from whence stems the popular misconception that Obama is black?\u00a0 Freeman has an answer ready at hand: the President\u2019s opponents. <\/em><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s rivals want to fuel the flames of racial bigotry by emphasizing his African ancestry while ignoring his white background. Yet they conveniently \u201cforget that Barack had a mama\u201d who \u201cwas white\u2014very white American, Kansas, middle of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some commentators, particularly those on the right, think that Freeman\u2019s remarks should have been met with more outrage.\u00a0 I personally think that incredulity is a more fitting response.<\/p>\n

At the 2009 White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner, the black comedian Wanda Sykes quipped that while she was \u201cproud\u201d that she could characterize Obama as \u201cthe first black president,\u201d her pride would endure only as long as he didn\u2019t \u201cscrew up.\u201d\u00a0 Once that happened, however, then she would be asking: \u201cWhat\u2019s up with the half-white guy?\u201d<\/p>\n

It is difficult indeed not to think that Freeman\u2014a long-time Democrat and supporter of the President\u2014isn\u2019t animated by the same impulse over which Sykes joked.<\/p>\n

Obama, after all, had long ago fallen hard\u2014and fast\u2014from the peaks at which he stood in November of 2008.\u00a0 His unpopularity continues to increase as more and more Americans realize the disastrous toll that his policies are taking on the nation.\u00a0 This consideration in and of itself should suffice to legitimize the theory that Freeman is now <\/em>revising Obama\u2019s racial identity so that \u201cthe first black president\u201d isn\u2019t remembered by his contemporaries and history as an abject failure.<\/p>\n

But there are other considerations that make this thesis that much more plausible.<\/p>\n

First, it stretches credibility to the snapping point to suggest that it is Obama\u2019s opponents <\/em>who are alone, or even primarily, responsible for accentuating his blackness.\u00a0 If anything, the President\u2019s critics twist themselves into proverbial pretzels doing their best to avoid invoking race to any extent.\u00a0 Their dread over being accused of \u201cracism\u201d dictates this as the safest course of action (or so they think).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moreover, if they really wanted to play the racial angle, as Freeman claims, then there is an abundant supply of resources in the way of Obama\u2019s own utterances\u2014for one, his own memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of <\/em>Race and Inheritance<\/em>; deeds\u2014his \u201ccommunity organizing,\u201d as well as his intercession in the cases of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Trayvon Martin, to say nothing of his massive redistributive schemes within which blacks and non-whites benefit at the expense of whites; and alliances\u2014Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, and a host of other notorious anti-Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet Republicans avoid like the plague touching upon these topics.<\/p>\n

There are other reasons not to take Freeman seriously.<\/p>\n

If anyone can be said to be ultimately responsible for identifying Obama as black, it is the President himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Obama was abandoned at a very young age by his Kenyan father. It is his white family, his mother and his grandparents, particularly his grandmother, who provided him with the life of privilege that he enjoyed.\u00a0 Obama spent much of his young life in Hawaii surrounded by mostly white friends while attending one prestigious private educational institution after the other.<\/p>\n

He lived a life that, as far as safety and material comfort is concerned, would be the envy of most of the world.\u00a0 If the leftist drivel of \u201cwhite privilege\u201d had any meaning at all, Obama could be said to have enjoyed it in spades.<\/p>\n

And yet he <\/em>insists upon identifying himself as black. <\/em><\/p>\n

Shortly before his election, Obama said: \u201cI identify as African-American\u2014that\u2019s how I am treated and that\u2019s how I\u2019m viewed. I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d\u00a0 As recently as 2010, while filling out the census, the President identified himself as \u201cBlack, African Am., or Negro\u201d\u2014in spite of the fact that he had other options.<\/p>\n

Finally, and most decisively, Morgan Freeman <\/em>had regarded Obama as the first black president up until this most recent discussion on NPR.<\/p>\n

Just last September Freeman told Piers Morgan that Obama\u2019s nemeses, specifically the Tea Party, were motivated by sheer \u201cracism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir stated policy, publicly stated, is\u2026Screw the country.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to do whatever we can to get this black man<\/em> out of here\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

Whether Freeman, Wanda Sykes, or any other one-time Obama admirer secretly wishes to deny his blackness now or not is ultimately irrelevant.\u00a0 They are stuck with him.\u00a0 They wanted the first black president and they got him.\u00a0 Any attempt to wish his racial self-identification away now must be seen for the piece of disingenuousness that it is.<\/p>\n

orginally published at American Thinker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While on Michel Martin\u2019s NPR show, \u201cTell Me More,\u201d Hollywood titan Morgan Freeman informed his host that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, Barack Hussein Obama is not America\u2019s first black president. He is the country\u2019s \u201cfirst mixed-race president.\u201d\u00a0 The first black president, Freeman continued, has not as yet \u201carisen.\u201d So, one wonders, from whence stems…<\/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-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMorgan Freeman on Obama<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/07\/morgan-freeman-on-obama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Morgan Freeman on Obama\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"While on Michel Martin\u2019s NPR show, \u201cTell Me More,\u201d Hollywood titan Morgan Freeman informed his host that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, Barack Hussein Obama is not America\u2019s first black president. 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