The Black Presidency

by Michael Eric Dyson

  When the Obama administration hastily fired U.S. Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod after a right-winger’s doctored tape of a speech she gave falsely portrayed her as a bigot, a couple of truths came into dramatic focus. It seems there was substance to Sherrod’s claim that the White House had permitted conservative journalists and bloggers “to decide how to govern.”3 The White House later apologized to Sherrod for its assumption of guilt, and Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture who dismissed Sherrod, offered her a new job, admitting the administration had been snookered, along with the NAACP and vast numbers of the American public, by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. Beyond causing momentary embarrassment to the administration, however, the incident also dramatized the harmful consequences of the gag order on race in the White House for most of Obama’s tenure. In addition to the failure to offer presidential leadership on the nation’s most persistent social plague, Obama’s reticence has deprived America of a beautiful mind on the issue of race. It is impossible not to remember that he wrote one of the most poignant race memoirs in the nation’s history, in which he offered sharp insight and lucid detail on the perilous journey to black identity. A lot of Obama’s sparseness on race is in step with the nation’s Herculean efforts to avoid the hard work of getting right what we took so long to get wrong. But a lot of it has to do with Obama’s temperament, too, as he seeks to keep the racial peace, often at the expense of black interests.

  To be sure, many reasons have been proffered for the president to avoid race, but none of them are convincing. One argument goes that Obama is very busy with big issues like continuing to strengthen affordable health care and the economy and does not have much room on his plate for race. But race shadowed the health care debate because large percentages of the uninsured are black and Latino; blacks, for instance, are uninsured at nearly double the rate of whites. And while nearly everyone was suffering in our postrecession economy, larger proportions of black and Latino communities were among the hardest hit. For instance, white unemployment decreased from its 9.4 percent peak in October 2009 to 4.7 percent in May 2015, even as black unemployment climbed from 15.5 percent to 16.5 percent before settling in May 2015 to just under 9.6 percent. During much of that time, Latino unemployment decreased only slightly, from 13.1 percent to 12.6 percent, and stood in May 2015 at 6.9 percent. Obama can and should address big social issues that affect all Americans while paying attention to what ails black and Latino populations in particular. It is precisely because Obama wants the whole hand to function that he should not ignore how an injured thumb needs more help than a healthy index finger.

  The economic inequalities fly in the face of the argument that Obama can best help black people by helping all Americans. Obama said in a 2010 interview: “I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African-American community.”4 That sounds good in theory, but it has not worked in practice. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama ushered into law in 2009 aimed to preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery for those who had been hurt the most by the recession. But that money was gobbled up by states with the least racially diverse populations: Montana and South Dakota raked in about $1,200 per state resident, while diverse states like Texas, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii collected only $600 per state resident.5 The “rising tide lifts all boats” approach does not work, because some communities lack economic vessels that are seaworthy, and others need help in boatbuilding through access to capital, job creation, and fair employment practices.

  When I pressed Obama on the negative fallout of his “rising tide” philosophy, he argued: “We came in at a time of extraordinary economic crisis. The rising tide might not lift all boats, but a sinking tide was going to leave everybody high and dry, especially the poorest and the most vulnerable. So we had to stabilize the economy. And if you look at who got fired during the recession, it was disproportionately African Americans. Or Hispanics. If you look at who lost their health care during the crisis, it was disproportionately Hispanics or African Americans.” The recovery money kept cops and firefighters and teachers employed, ensuring that the “folks who were getting hit the worst got the most help,” said Obama.

  “The next step then was for us to say, even as we’re helping to get this economy growing again, how do we start laying a new foundation that will give opportunity to everybody?” Obama said to me. “Now, you look at something like health care; that’s not a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ piece of legislation. That’s a ‘let’s make sure that folks who’ve been left out of the boat are included in the boat.’ Which, by the way, was the criticism of those who were against the health care bill. They said, ‘Eighty-five percent of the people have health care. Why do we spend all this time and money and energy focused on the fifteen percent who don’t?’ Which is probably the reason why it was always difficult politically and never got done.”

  Obama viewed health care reform as a universal program that overwhelmingly helped black and brown folk. Because everyone got health care—after all, in principle, coverage under the Affordable Care Act was universal—Obama told me it meant that “low-wage workers—disproportionately African American, disproportionately Hispanic, who are disproportionately uninsured—now are going to be able to come in with health insurance. We didn’t tag that as a targeted program, because it wasn’t. There’s still more white folks out there who do not have health care than African Americans; but it certainly is helpful to people who, as Americans, aren’t getting a fair shake.”

  Obama made the same argument about the billions of dollars allocated for Pell Grants and student loans. “Who gets Pell Grants?” he asked me. “I’ll let you examine the statistics.” I did: 20 percent of white students received the federally funded grants; 46 percent of black students received them; 39.4 percent of Latino students; 22 percent of Asian students; 36 percent of Native American students and Alaskan natives; and 26 percent of native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students received the grants.6

  “The point is that we are able then to make strides on issues that can close the achievement gap, or close the gap on insurance, without calling them targeted programs,” Obama argued. “They are programs that help people who need the help the most. And we do that not only because it’s good for those individuals; it’s good for the economy as a whole. It’s good for everybody. I’ve been trying to get out of this zero sum approach that says either you’re helping black people or Hispanics, or you’ve got these broad generalized programs that ignore the particular problems,” Obama told me. “What I say is, I’m going to create universal programs that make sure everybody’s got a shot, but because it provides that ladder of opportunity for everybody, it’s the people who have got the least opportunity who are going to benefit most from it. And that is consistent not only with concerns about the historically left out; but it’s also consistent with what I think the broad base of Americans view as fair and just. That’s their definition of equality of opportunity, which means that we can mobilize broad consensus and actually get some of this stuff done.”

  Obama believes that mainstream American ideas of equal opportunity are the catalyst, along with race-neutral goals, for improving the plight of minorities. His belief that universal programs provide a better outcome for minorities rests in part on political expediency: whites will embrace these programs only if they offer everyone the potential to succeed.

  Obama also told me: “I do think that the discussion about targeted strategies versus broad-based strategies is probably the central fault line around which I may be criticized by African American leaders. And that particular argument is one that I’m happy to have. But I really am very confident I’m right on it,” he said. “It’s based not only on how I think I should govern as president—meaning I’ve got to look out for all Americans, and do things based on what will help people across the board who are vulnerable and who need hel
p. But,” he added, “it’s also based on a very practical political reality that some of my African American critics don’t have to worry about because they’re pundits or they’re preachers, so they’ve just got a different role to play. I’ve got to put together coalitions that allow me to get legislation through a House and a Senate that results in a bill on my desk that I can sign into law.” Looking me straight in the eye, Obama rebuked the idealism of two of his most vocal black critics: “I have to appropriate dollars for any program which has to go through ways and means committees, or appropriations committees, that are not dominated by folks who read Cornel West or listen to Michael Eric Dyson.” I chuckled at Obama’s moxie, wondering if he was about to unload on me the way he had on West when the president collared him at a National Urban League gathering in 2010 and cussed him out for his vituperative criticism.

  “I don’t always have the luxury of speaking prophetically”—an arrow aimed at West’s relentless and self-anointed prophetic criticism—“or in theory,” a knock at my insistence that race theory be specific without being racially exclusive, that public policy be targeted toward the vulnerable. “I’ve got the job of governing and delivering to the people who desperately need help.”

  Universal Coverage

  If neither I nor West is useful to Obama in the legislative process, another black intellectual looms large in the president’s theory about how to reduce black suffering without aiming primarily to do so. Sociologist William Julius Wilson wrote the 1990 “Race-Neutral Policies and the Democratic Coalition,”7 arguing that Democrats, in order to expand the party’s base, should not emphasize race-specific policies like affirmative action, but should embrace race-neutral policies that overwhelmingly serve poor minority communities. Wilson has more recently changed his mind.

  In my previous writings I called for . . . policies that would directly benefit all groups, not just people of color. My thinking was that, given American views about poverty and race, a color-blind agenda would be the most realistic way to generate the broad political support necessary to enact the required legislation. I no longer hold to this view.

  So now my position has changed: in framing public policy we should not shy away from an explicit discussion of the specific issues of race and poverty; on the contrary, we should highlight them in our attempt to convince the nation that these problems should be seriously confronted and that there is an urgent need to address them. The issues of race and poverty should be framed in such a way that not only is a sense of fairness and justice to combat inequality generated, but also people are made aware that our country would be better off if these problems were seriously addressed and eradicated.8

  Obama would be wise to follow suit. One size does not fit all; one solution cannot possibly apply to all cases. If one visits the local hospital, some folk are downing aspirin for headaches, some are injecting insulin to stave off diabetic shock, while others are taking chemotherapy for cancer. Policies, like medicines, are most effective when they are targeted to the social ill at hand.

  Some have argued that Obama should not target black communities because he is every citizen’s president and that such treatment might suggest favoritism. Obama has argued, “I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks.”9 Such sentiments betray a false duality and a political naïveté. It is not that Obama should either help black folk or help all Americans. Blacks are Americans who constitute a subgroup, and a political constituency, within the nation, just as do, among others, gays and lesbians, Jews, and environmentalists. Obama has favorably responded to pressure from gays and lesbians to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibited gays from serving openly in the military. Obama has yielded to pressure from Jewish advocates to boycott the 2009 UN Conference on Racism and to strike up new negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Environmentalists encouraged Obama to reduce our carbon footprint by cutting vehicle emissions and raising fuel efficiency standards. They also pressured him to attend the 2009 UN Climate Control Conference in Copenhagen, which he had planned to skip. Obama acted in the national interest in addressing the concerns of gays and lesbians, Jews, and environmentalists, since what affects them affects us all. He acts in the nation’s interest whenever he addresses the plight of black Americans, who also happen to be Obama’s, and the Democratic Party’s, most loyal constituency. Obama’s logic, like that of other critics, should be reversed. It is not that in helping everybody he helps black folk; it is that in helping black folk he helps America. Tackling race and solving the problems of the black and the poor makes America a stronger nation.

  Obama’s ideas about race neutrality and public policy are philosophically and politically flawed. If the universal approach were the most successful way to incorporate black interests, the ultimate expression of such universality—embodied in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights—should have guaranteed the rights of blacks.10 In Obama’s view, helping all Americans helps black Americans. And yet that has proved an elusive ideal. In the 1964 Civil Rights Act, for instance, discrimination based on race was outlawed. Black folk got citizenship rights that were framed in the universal language that should have given those rights to blacks from the start because of the founders’ original intent of freedom for “all men”—a questionable universality that excluded blacks and women. A huge paradox loomed: in order to establish and protect the legal and civil rights of black citizens—the same protection that had been granted to white citizens—such protection was framed in the language of universal application. By helping black folk, the entire nation was helped: the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on race—and on color, religion, sex, and national origin. Expanding black rights also secured the rights of many other groups.

  The struggle for black rights in the sixties brought three salient facts about the universal into view. One, the universal was not a given since it had to be fought for. Two, the universal was not self-evident because it had to be argued for. And three, universality was not inalienable since it had to be reaffirmed time and again.11

  Obama’s race-neutral political strategy obscures the telling racial differences that existed in the sort of universalism he seeks to adapt to our era, even if there are unintended good consequences for black folk. But there is another philosophical conflict: if Obama is serious about bringing black suffering into focus, and relieving black pain by universal policies, the best strategy cannot be one that ignores the history of how the universal has failed black interests. The notion of the universal did not become politically viable for blacks until it was put to work in the war against racial oppression. The language of the universal in black struggle targeted black communities not by promising undue uplift but by framing politics in terms of racial history on the ground. In the past, that has meant acknowledging the racial obstacles that prevented the application of the universal. Obama’s approach affirms the universal ideal without embracing the politics that should drive it. He is left with a bruising paradox: Obama aims for a racially uplifting policy by removing race from consideration. That approach is of little benefit to black folk. The proof resides in a brief empirical survey of how blacks stand under Obama.12

  Are You Better Off?

  At a press conference in 2014—where, it was proudly noted, the president fielded queries only from women, fearlessly targeting gender to make a point—true to form, blackness, but not race, took a backseat (all the reporters called on were white). When, finally, at the end of the press conference, African American reporter April Ryan forced a question about the state of black America in light of the nation’s racial issues, Obama replied, “Like the rest of America, black America in the aggregate is better off now than it was when I came into office.” That assertion does not hold up under even cursory examination.13

  Under Obama, blacks have experienced their highest unemployment rates since Bill Clinton was in office. Obama doesn’t even compare favorably to his i
mmediate predecessor: the average black unemployment rate under George W. Bush was 10 percent, and under Obama it has been 14 percent. The Obama administration said or did nothing when black unemployment rose to 16 percent in 2011, a twenty-seven-year high. The economic picture is no rosier, as the median black household income dropped 11.1 percent—from $36,567 to $32,498—during the recession, more than double the figure for whites, whose inflation-adjusted decrease was only 5.2 percent. The ranks of the black poor have also swollen under Obama, from 25.8 percent in 2009 to 27.2 percent in 2012. Since education helps to combat some forms of economic inequality, the Obama administration’s decision to change Parent PLUS loan requirements cost historically black colleges and universities more than $150 million and hampered the education of more than 28,000 of their students.

  In Obama’s administration the disparity in wealth between blacks and whites nearly doubled. The median net worth of the average white citizen is now twenty-two times the average black person’s wealth—$110,729 to $4,995. Sadly, Obama has embraced policies, such as extending the Bush tax cuts, that have widened income inequality even more. The top 1 percent got tax breaks; had Obama let those breaks expire, he would have added $4 trillion of revenue to the national till. Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that only 1.7 percent of $23 billion in Small Business Administration loans went to black-owned businesses, in contrast to 8 percent under Bush, more than four times the rate under Obama.14 After Obama made Bush’s tax cuts permanent in 2013, he cut community block grants and gave a budget increase to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.15

  Neither do public policies that reflect Obama’s strategic inadvertence successfully offset persistent racial bias in the marketplace. Take the Fair Housing Act, the last piece of LBJ’s monumental trifecta of civil rights legislation, which passed Congress in 1968 in homage to the murdered Martin Luther King Jr. and was broadened in 1988. The FHA makes it illegal to refuse to sell or rent “or otherwise make unavailable or deny” a property to any person because of race, sex, or other protected categories of identity. The Supreme Court in 2014 took up the question of whether the language of the FHA requires that intent to discriminate be proved, or whether victims of housing discrimination can claim discriminatory effect regardless of intent, ruling in 2015 that racial discrimination claims in housing cases should not be limited to questions of intent. But if public policymakers avoid the issue of race through strategic inadvertence, there is little reason to believe that housing discrimination of any sort can be eliminated without being acknowledged as structural and persistent.16