“Look all of this othering of Obama, like he’s from some other planet. Everything he does is subject to a different lens and seen through a microscope that really tends to pick him apart. I think it’s indivisible from the broader issue of his race, of his being a black man with a certain kind of authority. These are impolite things we don’t want to talk about. We think that they’re being extraordinary ratcheted up. But I don’t see any other way to explain it but a remarkable resistance to the integrity of this man that has no other explanation”
—-Prof. Michael Eric Dyson, discussing criticism of President Obama’s comments on the Supreme Court during Sunday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
Prof. Dyson
When we look at why it is that there is a vast divide between black and white Americans regarding such incidents as the Trayvon Martin tragedy, the irresponsible comments of supposedly respectable commentators like Dyson must be given due weight. How all previous presidents must envy President Obama, whose defenders have a ready and versatile, if disgraceful, defense for any misstep, error, mistake, misstatement or policy that goes awry: it’s just racism. What a wonderful tool to deflect criticism! Of course, it is ethically indefensible and contributes to racial divisions in the nation and society, which President Obama supposedly sought to heal, but polls must be telling the Democrats, and their flacks in the media, that it is effective.
Prof. Dyson is a scholar at a major university, and his race-baiting to discourage open and fair political discourse is thus more despicable and harmful than that of celebrities like Morgan Freeman and professional race-card dealers like Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee and Maxine Waters. Astoundingly, his outburst occurred during a discussion of President Obama’s almost universally derided and shockingly inaccurate comments about the possibility that a majority of the Supreme Court would find Obamacare’s individual mandate unconstitutional. The criticism of the President was legitimate, substantive, and richly deserved: if that criticism was based on race, than all criticism of Obama is motivated by race. That, of course, is exactly the message that Prof. Dyson wants to deliver.
Ethics Alarms 
I won’t defend Mr. Obama on his policies. I give the SCOTUS more credit than to decide any case of magnitude based on race or otherwise. There are minorities on the court. However to say that race, religion, or previous positions has not entered into anyone’s mind to judge this president is naive. There is proof that people have judged on his race, religion, etc without a legitimate complaint on his policies. I disagree with many of his policies but I will give legitimate reasons. I don’t think he a socialist, a racist, a muslim, or is anthing but American. Was any other president thought to be un-American because of his race, religion or major political party?
“There is proof that people have judged on his race, religion, etc without a legitimate complaint on his policies.”
I’m sure there are citizens who are hostile to Obama because of his race. That isn’t germane to the post at hand, which has to do with criticism well within limits of normal political discourse I’d like to see an example of specific criticism that you can “prove” arises only from racial bias.
The John Birch Society thought Eisenhower was a Communist. If Ike had been black, would earlier era Dysons et al. have attributed their absurd charges to racism? Is there any question about it?
I guess a better question would have been: Why has it taken so long to elect a black president? And what other president has been under the same amount of scrutiny to cater to the white population to prove he isn’t racist? I don’t think Professor Dyson should have made those statements in public with his position in academics. But it his opinion, not the university’s position. Has their been another president who has had sloppy opinions of the legislature or Supreme court?
1. What difference does that make? This President is here now. Inappropriate and dishonest is inappropriate and dishonest. I haven’t had an opportunity to criticize any other POTUS on this basis—I’m hardly bound by what someone else did or didn’t do during LBJ’s administration.
2. “So long”? The Civil Rights Act was passed less than 50 years ago. Blacks couldn’t play major league baseball until 1947. Clarence Thomas is only the second black Supreme Court Justice. No woman or Jew or Asian has been elected President. Obama is the first President with BROWN EYES, or a foreign sounding name.
3. Being the trailblazer is tough; witness one of my heroes, Jackie Robinson. If you’re not ready for it, don’t do it.
Answer: Bill Clinton. He was viewed by suspicion because of his previous antiwar activities, (compare to Obama’s associates) his time in England and Russia, and his attempts to circumvent the draft. I remember many comments that his universal health care and antigun proposals would seem perfectly at home in Cuba. The whole unfairly prosecute people you want out of the way (White House Travel Office), use the police to order women to your hotel room (Flowers?), and leak the contents of your political opponents’ FBI files to the press were held up as comparable to the tactics of a totalitarian despot as well. My grandmother was convinced that he was going to use Y2K as a pretense to declare martial law and establish a dictatorship based on what she heard from talk radio.
You seem to have amnesia. You don’t realize that ALL presidents are criticized and all presidents are criticiszd unfairly. The level of criticism President Obama has endured hasn’t come close to that of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, or even President Reagan. Obama has made a lot of bad and controversial decisions in his time in office, and has accomplished very little. He has been one of the most secretive presidents, while proclaiming to be transparent. If anything, his race has allowed him to avoid being criticized. George Washington endured more frequent and more vicious criticism than Barack Obama.
Paragraph 1: good.
Paragraph 2 sentence 1 and 2: good.
The rest of Paragraph 2: Absolute junk, well, except the comment about transparency. Insert generic blind squirrel comment.
I am well aware of criticisms of past presidents. Lincoln and T.R. were criticized unfairly as well.
“The level of criticism President Obama has endured hasn’t come close to that of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, or even President Reagan. Obama has made a lot of bad and controversial decisions in his time in office, and has accomplished very little. ”
That is debatable.
Remember Ronald Reagan’s “Cash for Clunker’s” program? He found that most of the pollution from cars came from the pre-1976 (pre-catalytic converter) cars. He proposed giving the owners of such cars ~$1000 (in early 1980’s money) for their cars and then crushing them. The outcry from the left about this ‘racist’ initiative killed the program before it began. My parent’s and many of their friends were bummed because they were looking forward to an automotive upgrade. Likewise, Reagan’s call for a ‘colorblind society’ was decried as racist from the left.
Racial politics did not begin when President Obama took office.
As for Bill Clinton, I don’t see how anyone can claim Obama has faced criticism at the level of Bill Clinton and keep a straight face. Bill Clinton was perpetually in a scandal (of one type or another) or controversial legislation with the level of criticism Obama had during the health care bill. White House Travel office scandal, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, FBI files scandal, Vince Foster ‘suicide’, Vince Foster’s files later found in the White House, Whitewater, tax evasion, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, NAFTA, Health Care Reform…Each of these dragged on for months or longer. Many of them only ended when Clinton sent troops overseas and the media got distracted (they really never have been good at multitasking).
Obama has health care reform as the only accomplishment I can think of. (I don’t think anyone counts the stimulus package as an ‘accomplishment’). He seems to have staked his entire first term on it passing. He went to great lengths to get it passed (earning some criticism with the methods as well as the message). He has stuck his nose into local matters with half-cocked preparation, always siding along racial lines. If Clinton had been caught begging for time from the Russian premier like a gambler pleading with his bookie, you know the fallout would have been far worse. Why wasn’t it? Where were the ‘racists’ ready to pounce?
Sorry Michael, Missed your reply. I wasn’t talking about his policies. I am talking about the unfair accusations that the president has taken. He isn’t a Muslim, an Arab, racist or a socialist. He isn’t a babykiller, antigun, or a fascist. If he a poor president, ok. If you don’t agree with his policies, ok. But he is an American, a Christian and a democrat. I don’t remember any bumper stickers as racist as -“Don’t renig in 2012.”- for any other president. Maybe other presidents have been called dumb, out of touch etc. But very little ignorant attacks as this president. I do remember much of your history of presidential criticisms. Most of that was on policy. But just to throw untruths out there because you diagre with his policy is wrong. There have been presidents who I have disagreed with and maybe they are stupid or out of touch but never a racist, socialist, or un-American. They just have different fundamental policy ideas. I’m not a fan of Mr. Obama, But he isn’t un-American.
It strikes me that President Obama has come in for at least his share of sniping—legitimate and otherwise. But that isn’t the issue here. Rather, how much of that criticism is based on race? The honest answer is that we can’t say with certainty, but we can make some pretty fair conjectures.
It is beyond stupid to assert that either all of none of the commentary is race-based. To say that all is would be to make him the Messiah that the right accuses the left of claiming him to be: I honestly know of no one on the left who thinks that, but it’s a common trope of the right to allege that the left has pledged blind allegiance… whereas in fact a good share of the left kind of wishes President Obama were indeed anything like the radical socialist portrayed by the Hannitys and Limbaughs of the world.
Similarly, much of the birther movement can legitimately be traced to racial animus. And no small number of protest signs carried by Tea Partiers would indeed be viewed as racist by a dispassionate observer. That doesn’t mean that the Tea Party as a whole is racist. It does mean that some of its members are.
There’s a case to be made that the current GOP leadership will oppose any initiative supported by President Obama, even those they’d hitherto supported (e.g., the individual mandate), to a greater degree than any previous opposition party had done. Is this because of race? Chances are, the answer depends on the individual politician and the individual issue, and is more likely to be found along a continuum of thinking rather than a disjunctive yes/no dichotomy. That is, 60% of Senator A’s antagonism on Issue B is race-based, but Representative X had an honest change of heart and now opposes Initiative Y for reasons completely apart from any racial dimension. More importantly, there are cases—the majority, in fact—in which racism might be a factor, but we have no way of knowing. In these circumstances, we can but place our faith in the good will of our fellow travelers, all the while remaining wary. Trust, but verify, as President Reagan famously said.
All of which leads us to this particular incident. President Obama said something remarkably stupid—surely, he knows better—and soon walked it back, the way he and countless other politicians have done in the past. His initial comments drew criticism, and should have, from a broad spectrum of commentators. To suggest that such analyses are inherently racially inspired is damaging in two significant ways: first, it diminishes the discourse. Everyone, politician, pundit, and private citizen alike, makes mistakes. No one ought to be immune from criticism, and it is unworthy of the democratic system we try to uphold to suggest that every argument advanced by one’s political rivals is based on unethical or nefarious motives.
Equally important, however, is the Crying Wolf Syndrome. I stopped believing any evidence distributed by Andrew Breitbart after his duplicitous editing smeared everyone from innocent ACORN workers to Shirley Sherrod to University of Missouri faculty, only to have him actually be right about Anthony Weiner. Similarly, silly charges of racism—and those of Professor Dyson in this case will indeed be perceived as silly by the overwhelming majority of thinking people—will ultimately detract from the rightful scrutiny of remarks which really are (or could be understandably construed as) racist.
The polarization you’ve written about in the Trayvon Martin case, Jack, is an ideal case in point. Were George Zimmerman’s actions racially inspired? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else except Mr. Zimmerman himself. We can but look at the evidence—the real evidence, not the stuff of Geraldo Rivera’s musings—and do our best to figure out what happened and why. Is it possible that Zimmerman is a bigoted jackass who initiated a confrontation just because Martin was black? Yep. Is it possible that Zimmerman was really acting in self-defense, just as he said he was? Yep.
One of the most valuable words in a free society is “maybe.” Professor Dyson and his ilk, left and right, black and white, male and female, straight and gay, threaten to take that word, that concept, away from us. This cannot be allowed to happen.
What an excellent comment, Rick. Thank you. It’s the Comment of the Day.