The Black Presidency
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I’m grateful to be part of the Georgetown faculty and for the collegiality of my fellow faculty in Sociology and African American Studies. I’m thankful for John DeGioia—one of the great university presidents in America, an unassuming, genuinely humble educational leader, whose spirit and heart are in the right place—and for his extraordinarily generous support of my work.
I’m also grateful to Susan Taylor and Khephra Burns—aka “the Queen of Black America” and “Smooth,” two noble embodiments of incredible black humanity and huge intelligence—for their unending well of friendship, love, and support. The same is true for my daughters of the heart Janaye and Janique Ingram, and Angela Rye—inspiring young leaders, thinkers, and activists. And huge thanks to Farah Jasmine Griffin and Obery Hendricks, a dynamic scholarly and intellectual duo, for their big brains and eloquent pens, for their love and support, and their timely discussions of politics and race.
Profound gratitude goes to my dear friend and brother Reverend Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, one of the most gifted sacred rhetoricians on the globe, who discussed many of these ideas with me over the years, and who permitted me to share them with his congregation, the Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas. And big thanks to my beloved pastor, Reverend Dr. Howard-John Wesley, of the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, a truly phenomenal preacher and exquisite wordsmith, who permitted me to try out these ideas on our congregation in a Sunday school setting. And deep appreciation to the remarkable Dean of Howard University’s Rankin Chapel, Dr. Bernard Richardson, a world-class spiritual leader in the mold of Howard Thurman, who has permitted me to preach these ideas to the good folk of Howard over the last decade.
Finally, I am grateful to my family: my wonderful mother, Addie Mae Dyson, still holding strong at seventy-eight as our matriarch; my splendid brothers, Anthony, Brian, Gregory, and Everett (prisoner #212687—Godspeed and hurry home!); my supremely talented children, Michael II, Maisha, and Mwata, and my lovely daughter-in-law, Wanda; and my beautiful grandchildren, Layla, Mosi, and Maxem.And to my loving wife, Marcia, to whom this book is dedicated: I am grateful for your undying love, your profound commitment to our family, and for your genius as a thinker of deep thoughts and profound ideas. You are one of the most remarkable women on earth. Thank you for being our family’s grace and glue.
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President Obama’s Speeches and Statements on Race
DNC keynote address (“There is not a white America . . .”), Boston, July 27, 2004
First Selma speech, Brown Chapel AME Church, Selma, Alabama, March 4, 2007
Speech at Essence Festival, July 5, 2007
“Yes We Can” campaign speech, New Hampshire primary, January 8, 2008
Campaign speech, Sumter, South Carolina, January 24, 2008
“A More Perfect Union,” Philadelphia, March 18, 2008
Father’s Day speech, Apostolic Church of God, Chicago, June 15, 2008
Nomination acceptance speech, DNC, Denver, August 28, 2008
First Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C., January 20, 2009
Speech in Strasbourg, April 3, 2009
Speech before Turkish parliament, April 6, 2009
Remarks by the President at Cairo University, June 4, 2009
Speech in Ghana, July 11, 2009
Speech at Congressional Black Caucus Dinner, September 24, 2011
“If I Had a Son, He Would Look Like Trayvon” (comments made at press conference to announce nomination of Jim Yong Kim to head World Bank), March 23, 2012
White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner speech, Washington, D.C., April 29, 2012
Speech in Chicago on gun violence, February 15, 2013
Commencement address, Morehouse College, Atlanta, May, 19, 2013
Speech about Trayvon Martin after Zimmerman verdict, White House, July 19, 2013
Speech at March on Washington Fiftieth Anniversary, Washington, D.C., August 28, 2013
First statement on Ferguson (during press conference in Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard), August 14, 2014
Second statement on Ferguson (during press conference in Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard), August 18, 2014
First statement on Ferguson after announcement of non-indictment by grand jury, White House, November, 24, 2014
Second statement on Ferguson after announcement of non-indictment by grand jury, during Chicago speech, November 25, 2014
Second Selma speech, Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015
White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner speech, Washington, D.C., April 25, 2015
Remarks on Freddie Gray (at joint press conference with Japanese prime minister Abe), April 28, 2015
Statement at White House on Charleston killings, Washington, D.C., June 18, 2015
Speech before U.S. Conference of Mayors (mention of Charleston), San Francisco, June 19, 2015
Speech honoring LGBT Pride Month (heckler speech), June 24, 2015
Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Charleston, South Carolina, June 26, 2015
Speech before the NAACP 2015 Convention on criminal justice reform, Philadelphia, July 15, 2015
Speech at Congressional Black Caucus Dinner, September 19, 2015.
Remarks at White House Criminal Justice Reform Panel (where Obama defends “Black Lives Matter” movement), October 22, 2015.
Speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Chicago, Illinois, October 27, 2015.
Victory speech on becoming the 44th president of the United States, Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois, November 4, 2008.
“Ban the Box” speech on the Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative, Newark, New Jersey, November 2, 2015.
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Notes
Introduction: The Burden of Representation
1. Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” in The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union,” ed. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009), p. 237; Condoleezza Rice, interview on Face the Nation, CBS, November 27, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/condi-rice-us-will-never-be-race-blind/.
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2. Quoted in Henry Louis Gates Jr., Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 18.
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3. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, annotated ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 1998); James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963; repr., New York: Vintage, 1993).
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4. John Campbell, The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, from Grocer’s Daughter to Prime Minister, abridged ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011); Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013).
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5. Moore, Margaret Thatcher, pp. 298–333; Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (London: Verso Press, 1988).
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6. When Baroness Thatcher died in 2013, President Obama issued an official statement and noted her gender as a defining element of her legacy: “As a grocer’s daughter who rose to become Britain’s first female prime minister, she stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered.” “Statement from the President on the Passing of Baroness Margaret Thatcher,” April 8, 2013, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/08/statement-president-passing-baroness-margaret-thatcher.
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7. Although Disraeli was baptized into the Church of England at the age of twelve, his Jewish heritage remained a central feature of his existence and identity. See Adam Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli (New York: Schocken Books, 2008). Thanks to historian Gerald Horne for suggesting the parallel between Disraeli and Obama in a brief, serendipitous conversation in an airport.
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8. Thomas J. Carty, A Catholic in the White House? Religion, Politics, and John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). For a fascinating comparison of Obama
and Kennedy, see Robert C. Smith, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013).
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9. Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
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10. Dewayne Wickham, Bill Clinton and Black America (New York: One World/Ballantine, 2002).
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11. Toni Morrison, “The Talk of the Town: Comment,” The New Yorker, October 5, 1998, pp. 31–32. Chris Rock said in an interview in the August 1998 issue of Vanity Fair that Clinton was “the first black president.” He also said that Clinton was “the most scrutinized man in history, just as a black person would be. He spends a hundred dollar bill, they hold it up to the light.” See Jonathan Tilove, “Before Bill Clinton Was the ‘First Black President,’” Newhouse News Service, March 6, 2007, http://jonathantilove.com/before-bill-clinton-was-the-first-black-president/. In 2008, in Time magazine, when asked if she regretted referring to Clinton as the first black president, Morrison said that people “misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.” See Toni Morrison, “10 Questions for Toni Morrison, Time, May 7, 2008, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1738507,00.html. Indeed, in The New Yorker, Morrison wrote: “Years ago . . . one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.” According to Morrison, Clinton’s blackness became even clearer when “the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the [impeachment] persecution.” Morrison, “Talk of the Town,” p. 32. During a 2008 Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina televised live on CNN, journalist Joe Johns asked Obama if Clinton was the first black president.
“Well, I think Bill Clinton did have an enormous affinity with the African-American community, and still does,” Obama said. “And I think that’s well earned . . . [O]ne of the things that I’m always inspired by—no, I’m—this I’m serious about. I’m always inspired by young men and women who grew up in the South when segregation was still taking place, when, you know, the transformations that are still incomplete but at least had begun had not yet begun. And to see [those] transformations in their own lives[,] I think that is powerful, and it is hopeful, because what it indicates is that people can change.
“And each successive generation can, you know, create a different vision of how, you know, we have to treat each other. And I think Bill Clinton embodies that. I think he deserves credit for that. Now, I haven’t . . . I have to say that, you know, I would have to, you know, investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilities. You know, and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother.” Wolf Blitzer said, “Let’s let Senator Clinton weigh in on that.” Hillary Clinton then humorously retorted, “Well, I’m sure that can be arranged.” “Part 3 of CNN Democratic Presidential Debate,” January 21, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/21/debate.transcript3/.
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12. Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (New York: Free Press, 1995); Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy: Reconstructing Race and Politics in the 21st Century (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002), pp. 77–84.
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13. President Clinton admitted, both in a foreword to a book on criminal justice and in a speech before the 2015 NAACP convention—the day after President Obama at the same convention offered his landmark speech denouncing mass incarceration—that his policies had been wrong and harmful. “Plainly, our nation has too many people in prison and for too long—we have overshot the mark. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, we now have 25 percent of its prison population, and an emerging bipartisan consensus now understands the need to do better.” Clinton also argued that it is “time to take a clear-eyed look at what worked, what didn’t, and what produced unintended, long-lasting consequences.” He said that “some are in prison who shouldn’t be, others are in for too long, and without a plan to educate, train, and reintegrate them into our communities, we all suffer.” See “William J. Clinton: Foreword,” April 27, 2015, https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/foreword (from the book Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice, ed. Inimai Chettiar and Michael Waldman [New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2015]). In his 2015 NAACP speech, Clinton conceded his error as president: “Yesterday, the president spoke a long time and very well on criminal justice reform. But I want to say a few words about it. Because I signed a bill that made the problem worse and I want to admit it.” See Eric Levitz, “Bill Clinton Admits His Crime Law Made Mass Incarceration ‘Worse,’” MSNBC.com, July 15, 2015, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clinton-admits-his-crime-bill-made-mass-incarceration-worse. For the deleterious (racial) consequences of welfare reform, see, by Peter Edelman (who resigned as the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services in September 1996 in protest of Clinton’s signing the welfare reform bill), “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,” The Atlantic, March 1997, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/the-worst-thing-bill-clinton-has-done/376797/. Also see Dylan Matthews, “Welfare Reform Took People Off the Rolls. It Might Have Also Shortened Their Lives,” Washington Post, June 18, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/18/welfare-reform-took-people-off-the-rolls-it-might-have-also-shortened-their-; Zenthia Prince, “Welfare Reform Garnered for Black Women a Hard Time and a Bad Name,” Afro, March 18, 2015, http://www.afro.com/welfare-reform-garnered-for-black-women-a-hard-time-and-a-bad-name/; and Bryce Covert, “Clinton Touts Welfare Reform. Here’s How It Failed,” The Nation, September 6, 2012, http://www.thenation.com/article/clinton-touts-welfare-reform-heres-how-it-failed/.
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1. How to Be a Black President:
“I Can’t Sound Like Martin”
1. Associated Press, “Jackson Calls for War on Poverty; Hart Raps Mondale’s Money Sources,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, April 23, 1984.
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2. Marshall Frady, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (1996; repr., New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
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3. In his autobiography An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America, foreword by Quincy Jones (1996; repr., Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), p. 285, Andrew Young recounts this colorful encounter. Referring to the other movement leaders, Young told King, “‘Listen, Martin, I’m sick of being the bad guy; if they’re such “geniuses” I’m tired of arguing with them all the time.’ This really made Martin angry. ‘I depend on you to bring a certain kind of common sense to staff meetings, and you know it,’ he said. ‘Now, if you decide you are going to start playing games, I don’t see why I need you. I need you to take as conservative a position as possible, then I can have plenty of room to come down in the middle where I want to.’”
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4. August Meier, “The Conservative Militant,” in Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Profile, ed. C. Eric Lincoln, rev. ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1985), pp. 144–156.
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5. Republican New York congressman Pete King made this claim to the Today show’s Matt Lauer in 2009. See David Edwards, “GOP Lawmaker: Obama Most Threatened President Ever,” Alternet, 2009, http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/98972/gop_lawmaker%3A_obama_most_threatened_president_ever. Also see therehastobeaway, “President Barack Obama Is the Most Threatened President in History,” Daily Kos,
November 25, 2012, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/26/1164628/--President-Barack-Obama-Is-the-Most-Threatened-President-In-History; and Nathaniel Patterson, “The Most Threatened President in History,” Reader Supported News, November 27, 2012, http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/14744-focus-the-most-threatened-president-in-history.
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6. Geoffrey R. Stone, “Obama Africanus the First,” Huffington Post, December 6, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/obama-africanus-the-first_b_6282036.html.
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7. Peter Wallsten, “Obama Struggles to Balance African Americans’ Hopes with Country’s as a Whole,” Washington Post, October 28, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/obama-after-making-history-has-faced-a-high-wire-on-racial-issues/2012/10/28/d8e25ff4-1939-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html.
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8. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches,” March 7, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/03/07/remarks-president-50th-anniversary-selma-montgomery-marches.