Most supporters of President Obama believe his legacy should and will be defined by the passage of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare). That may or may not turn out to be true, but he has also left another legacy that is not much spoken of. It is evident in three distinct areas. First, the perceived level of racial injustice in the country and the polarization that stems from it was far greater when Obama left office then before he entered. Second, patriotism – pride and love of country – diminished greatly among Obama supporters during his two terms as President. Third, police officers around the country were regarded as racist villains almost overnight, with their usual respected roles in the community called into question. Obama was not the lone cause of this transformation, but he was both a catalyst and an enabler. Members of his administration, Eric Holder1 in particular, were also enablers. With passions being stirred by the three items above, an audience-hungry media took great advantage by exaggerating and excessively covering any event that had even a hint of racial overtones, anti-American sentiment, or questionable police action against people of color.
Obama’s Presidency started out on a positive note, riding a natural wave of enthusiasm generated by the fact that history was being made, a “good” kind of history, with his election2. When Obama took office, a strong strain of patriotism existed throughout the country with the 2001 terrorist attacks still resonating in many people’s hearts and minds. And while there had always been extreme racist and anti-American activist groups, their numbers were very small, and they were generally marginalized as their ideas were deemed out of the norm. The best social media estimates put ANTIFA and various white supremacist groups only in the low 1,000’s. Some of these groups, like Black Lives Matter, didn’t even exist until Obama became president. This was the starting point for Obama in January of 2009.
The first signs of what was to develop into pervasive anti-American sentiment and a general feeling of discontent with our country’s history came from Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jerimiah Wright. At first, Wright’s speech about 9/11, which included the comment “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”, as well as other sermons containing statements like “God Damn America” were on the fringe and not in the mainstream. That all changed when his close relationship with Obama became more well known. Like it or not, Wright’s extreme statements had become at least partly elevated by his association with Obama himself. It didn’t help matters that in Obama’s initial forays in foreign diplomacy, he presented himself as subservient to foreign leaders when greeting them3. He also struck a decidedly obsequious tone in his foreign policy speeches, casting the US as having previously been too overbearing and aggressive. This was the harbinger of a sea change in the way Obama wanted America to be perceived in the world. Patriotic pride in our history was no longer appropriate.
At the same time, Obama chose to insert himself in a series of urban police incidents in a manner to suggest and amplify a notion of racial bias in the country’s police departments. The first of these involved a Harvard professor (black) who was wrongly identified as taking part in a break-in and arrested by a police officer (white) for disorderly conduct (the professor was later released). Obama, who had no reason to involve himself in this petty case, referred to the white police officer as “stupid”, and made a public comment which included this statement – “…what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.” He then made a token attempt to diffuse the issue by holding a “beer summit” at the White House. His meddling served to blow a minor local incident way out of proportion and create a national spectacle. In hindsight, we believe this set the precedent for an unfortunate, and in our view unwarranted, assault on the nation’s police officers and departments. While it is true that African Americans and Latinos are stopped (and arrested) disproportionately by law enforcement, one reason is that they commit crimes disproportionately within the US population. Leaving that fact out clearly indicates Obama’s own bias. With this backdrop, the President then interjected himself into three other local police cases, the deaths of Trevon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddy Gray. The mindset displayed by Obama’s words above regarding the Harvard professor’s case were now taken to be actionable and instantly used for top cover in all three of these cases. The subsequent reaction to both the Brown and Gray cases spawned multiple days of riots and destruction in the cities of Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. An unspoken permission for people to “act out” flowed from Obama’s earlier words about disproportionate police action against African Americans. The Mayor of Baltimore (Stephanie Rawlings-Blake) perfectly encapsulated this carte blanche to pillage with her ridiculous statement during the Freddy Gray riots. Rawlings-Blake televised her consent to give “…those who wished to destroy, space to do that as well”. This was virtually an incitement to riot. The Eric Holder Justice Department then threw itself into the fray by investigating and criticizing the police departments in Ferguson and Baltimore, as well as several other cities, for “systemic racial bias”. Police officers became targets of derision and in many cases of fatal attacks (ambushes of officers up 167% in 2016 per USA today). All of this with an unspoken implication that a sort of racial justice was somehow being served.
It didn’t matter that not one single police officer involved in either the Brown or Gray cases was found guilty of any crime by a jury of peers. These incidents gave root to the accepted higher level of violence, disrespect, and hate we now see social justice protestors and activist groups promoting and conducting. This is a growing part of our culture today. Just last week, ANTIFA militants in Portland, Oregon violently attacked police officers and other peaceful protestors. A few days later, a customer in a Starbucks restaurant complained of feeling “unsafe” because several police officers were also drinking coffee in the shop. The officers were asked to leave by the staff. The level of absurdity that has now been reached in the name of social justice shows just how disastrous an effect this part of Obama’s legacy has been. Had the Michael Brown and Freddy Gray cases not become so histrionically nationalized by the media, with the headline-grabbing and exaggerated stories of both Brown and Gray “victimhood”4, the inflated narrative of universal systemic police brutality against African Americans would likely not have taken hold. The Justice department inserting itself into these local cases to “investigate” the police departments added the cover of legitimacy to that narrative.
Combining all the above with Obama’s intentional diminution of American stature in the world resulted in a new “politically correct” storyline that America had been founded on both racism and an aggressive stance toward the rest of the world and was not a country to be particularly proud of. A very public event occurred near the end of Obama’s 2nd term that perfectly embodied this theme. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem on the sideline of a pro football pre-season game. He claimed his reason was to protest systemic racism in police departments and police brutality against African Americans. His method of protest was to attack patriotism by showing disdain for the national anthem and American flag. Not unexpectedly, numerous other “woke” athletes copied Kaepernick’s method of protest. His actions were supported by most of the media and a portion of the public who had become hyper-sensitized by the Ferguson and Baltimore uprisings. We believe none of this would likely have ever happened, including the riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, had Obama not publicly proclaimed police bias, thus inflaming racial tensions.
Apart from whatever positive effect Kaepernick himself believed his protests had, the most visible result was a large reduction in NFL attendance/viewership and an end to his playing career. He had forever altered the calculation of his overall value. No team could justify his presence, athletically or otherwise, as an asset. He needn’t have worried though. There are always avaricious business partners ready to capitalize on a cultural flash point if money can be made. Enter Nike. When it was clear Kaepernick would never play in the NFL again and a small army of anti-American social justice warriors had formed around him, Nike offered Kaepernick a contract to be at the center of a new ad campaign. Believing they could make money off the altered (and now larger) celebrity status of Kaepernick, they cast him as hero who had given up everything for a worthy cause. What followed was weeks of memes (parodies and copycat ads) comically belittling Nike’s ad campaign. Nike was not to be perturbed. Just last week after Kaepernick complained that the Betsy Ross American flag was too offensive to adorn Nike’s newest pair of sneakers, Nike agreed and pulled them from production. We can only guess that Nike is attempting to mold itself into the same social justice warrior image as Kaepernick, but not because they believe in the cause – they believe it could be a cash cow. Kaepernick is merely a pawn. The dripping irony here is that this is good old American capitalism at work.
Once Obama left office, his supporters and the media began to stretch the racist narrative to ever more unlikely scenarios. Some of their targets are many of the statues and monuments commemorating different aspects of the Civil War and our country’s founding. These are now deemed too racist and offensive to be on display. Petitions and protests were started to have some of these statues removed. This clear over-reaction and dubious connection to today’s reality generated counter-protests by those wanting to preserve those symbols of the country’s history. The riots in Charlottesville, Va., where one person was tragically killed, should never have occurred in the first place. The passion that fueled it came from extending the racial injustice narrative to now include any historical figure who had even the remotest connection to slavery. The contributions of these people to our country’s founding and/or success as a nation are to be devalued in light of their racist ways. This is a needless stoking of racial tensions and robs us of windows into our past. American history is what it is, all the good with all the bad. America’s past will never change no matter how many statues, monuments or textbooks are destroyed or removed. Those wanting to hide the parts of our history that are difficult to discuss are cowards, plain and simple.
How much of the legacy of inflated perceptions of racial injustice left by Obama will be part of the 2020 election process? Kamala Harris seemed quite willing to tap into it as she demonstrated in her back and forth with Joe Biden in the first debate. However, she is perilously close to the line of being disingenuous when she attempts to equate her own upbringing and heritage with the Obama/Kaepernick expressed acts of oppression against African Americans. Harris is not African American, nor did she have an oppressed upbringing. Many of the 2020 presidential candidates are also supporting the idea of “reparations” for slavery. The very idea that any kind of compensation or other sacrifice would satisfy, even in the slightest way, anyone wronged by slavery is absurd. Consider the fact that 500,000 American lives were lost in the Civil War – more than half of whom died fighting to end the practice of slavery. If that was not enough of a reparation, what would be?
This Obama legacy has only moved us backward, not forward. It is ugly and continues to be profoundly divisive and misrepresentative of the real world in which we live.
1Despite recent threats of a full House vote of contempt for our current Attorney General (William Barr), Eric Holder remains the only Attorney General in US history to be held in contempt of Congress.
2That fact alone overrode the usual main consideration in choosing a President – executive leadership experience. Obama had none, either in government or private industry.
3Tradition and protocol in the US Government advises the President not to bow to foreign leaders so as not to appear subservient. While this tradition had been broken a few times by Presidents over 210 years, President Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, the Queen of England, and the Emperor of Japan all in just his first year in office (all instances captured on video).
4“Hands up don’t shoot” was the instant rallying cry in defense of Michael Brown after he was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Multiple days of rioting and destruction followed in Ferguson proclaiming police bias and brutality on the part of the officer. After testimony from over 100 witnesses as well as video evidence, the US Department of Justice (led by Eric Holder) concluded that Brown never said “don’t shoot” and never put his hands up. Brown was the aggressor, not the victim. Nevertheless, the racial injustice narrative, amplified by Obama, allowed “hands up don’t shoot” to take on a life of its own despite the fact it never happened.
4 Responses
It’s a very sad time for our country. Obama and his horde of henchmen/women could have used positive messaging to diminish the struggle of racism that had been diminishing since the abolishment of slavery – albeit not fast enough. They chose to yell fire in the theater and people are dying because of it and those that help enforce laws are now vilified.
If they want to understand racism they need to look at slavery, which is the foundation of our selective racism in this country. They need to look at the root cause which NOBODY acknowledges – it changes the perspective of how it should be viewed and the real countries that provided the genesis of which we now suffer racism from.
When the first settlers came to this country there was NO SLAVERY. The following countries (many revered by the left as better than America) brought the cancer… The British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Arab countries, and African countries themselves. They all promoted slavery long long before it came here – and certainly all must be racist countries by today’s de facto standards. Actually their ancestors started slavery/racism back thousands of years before them. So, as a new country less than 100 years old we began a revolution to rid slavery propagated by the original settling countries that made the mix of immigrants here. Many of those founding countries continued slavery after we abolished it. Are the people of those countries (and many others) torturing themselves with guilt and racism claims going back thousands of years? Where is the outrage and reparation calls around the world?
So the irony is that one of the first countries to step up and revolt to abolish slavery and begin healing of global racism behavior is now the global signature for a racist country and we should pay reparations all the countries around the world before us that promoted slavery for thousands of years before us. Do they teach this history in our disgusting educational systems? No they don’t and the vast majority of people young and old believe slavery and it’s associated racism moniker started right here in the terrible USA – not that the USA was a country that began a revolution to abolish slavery and racism across the globe.
You nailed it Johnny – one of the best comments we’ve ever had on the theboxtravels.org. What’s also sad is that it may take at least a generation to heal the wound Obama ripped open with the law enforcement community. They did nothing to deserve that. Like the rest of us, they aren’t perfect and do make mistakes. But they aren’t all racists and are certainly not “brutal”. The uncomfortable truth of course is the disproportionately high crime rate among African American’s and Latino’s. Neither Obama nor anyone on his leadership team had the guts to even speak about this publicly let alone recommend any real solutions.
I very much hope the police continue to stop and arrest anyone committing a crime regardless of their skin color. The mandatory body cams most of them are required to now wear should end the kinds of charades that accompany cases like Michael Brown.
Does anyone remember the pronouncement made by Michele Obama ” this is the first time I was ever proud to be an american”.
Captain M, you are exactly right. We do remember Michelle Obama’s pronouncement and how disconcerted we were when she voiced it. The former First Lady’s sentiment pointed sharply to her and her husband’s truly negative take on America and its history.