By Lori Latrice Martin | with thanks to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Friday, November 2, 2012.
With Election
Day a few days away, many are reflecting upon the nation’s past and contemplating
the nation’s future. The subject of whether or not President Obama can capture
the hearts, minds, and imagination of enough Americans to win a second term has
garnered a great deal of attention and print in some of the country’s leading
newspapers.
One subject receiving a great
deal of attention is whether or not President Obama has taken blacks for
granted and whether the loyalty that blacks have shown to the Democratic Party,
specifically to the nation’s first black president, has come at a cost.
President Obama’s attention, or
lack thereof, to a laundry list of issues facing blacks is routinely compared
with that of past administrations. At the same time, blacks scholars critique
other black scholars for what they say is a failure to call out the president
for turning the proverbial blind eye to matters, including: racial wealth
inequality; racial health disparities; the mass incarceration of men of color;
unemployment and employment discrimination; and racial differences in academic
achievement and educational attainment; to name a few.
Such critiques are often limited
in focus and misguided as they involve the comparison of what amounts to
political apples and oranges. Not only are comparisons made between the current
administration and previous administrations, but also between the days leading
up to Election Day 2008 and Election Day 2012.
For one, this
president and this presidency is unlike any other in history. The significance
of the ascension of a black man to the highest office in the land cannot be
overstated, muted, or overlooked. Race is as significant today as it has been
in the past. Racism today is alive and well. It may not look like the racism of
the days of old, but it is certainly not dead.
To say that race remains very
visible marker in America society, is an understatement. Moreover, we must not
forget that race is a social construct and as such we continue to give meaning
to what it means to have membership in a particular racial group.
Membership is no more voluntary
for the president than it is for anyone else. Thus, “the price of a black
presidency,” includes the mistrust of a segment of the population still
beholden to a narrative that says certain groups are more deserving of benefits
and others more deserving of society’s burdens. Consequently, we continue to
live in a society that differentiates access to wealth, status, and power on
the bases of a number of sociological factors, including race. This system not
only predated President Obama’s historic victory in 2008, but also his birth
and the births of every one of us in this country.
This country was built upon a
very powerful racialized social system that no one election or administration
can dismantle, no matter how loud black intellectuals shout or no matter how
silent they remain. Whether President Obama yells from his bully pulpit, with
his fingers clutched and raised in the air, the system that privileges members
of the dominant racial group in this society, over and above other groups, will
remain intact.
Election Day 2012 will not be
like Election Day 2008, not because President Obama has failed the nation or
the black community, but because Election Day 2008 was an historic and unprecedented
event, the likes of which may only be comparable to the election of Nelson
Mandela after the dismantling of the oppressive Apartheid system in South
Africa. No one expected that Mandela would be able to turn right-side up, what
had been upside-down for some many years. Similarly, President Obama should not
be saddled with the same unattainable expectations. The list of problems
President Obama inherited from the previous administration are well documented,
as are the list of inequalities, between blacks and whites, the rich and the
poor, and men and women, which were written into the nation’s founding
documents and principles.
Thus, comparing this president
and this election to any other is tantamount to comparing political apples and
oranges. Efforts to change societal patterns in fundamental ways will require a
radical transformation, not attainable in four-, or even eight years. The
groundwork is being laid however, in the uprisings we’ve seen spring up over
worker’s rights, health care, education, equal pay, and the like.
Lori Latrice Martin
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay
College of Criminal Justice and author of the forthcoming, Black
Asset Poverty and the Enduring Racial Divide (First Forum Press,
a Division of Lynne Reinner Publishers).