The Good Negro

By Deauwand Myers

With the American mid-terms upon us, let's explore what is partially on the ballot today, November 4.

President Obama presents to the American zeitgeist a kind of conundrum. He is, literally, an African-American: his mother was white; his father was African. President Obama encapsulates the lingering friction between American ideals and its social realities.

America's democratic experiment of a representative government that successfully integrates a plethora of religions, cultures, races, political ideologies, ethnic, and national identities is incomplete. We strive for a more perfect union. President Obama, in many ways, symbolizes both the promise and perils of this experiment.

During the presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012, forests of paper and oceans of ink were used in an attempt to categorize the 44thAmerican president: Ivy leaguer, constitutional lawyer, secret Muslim, socialist, communist, apologizer-in-chief, too cool, too conciliatory, too ideological, elitist, dangerous, milk toast.

Some folks romanticized Obama's meteoric political rise as a "post-racial" phenomenon: if President Obama can be elected in America, whose history includes the genocide of its indigenous people, the peripheral genocide of Africans, slavery, and Jim Crow, surely, America has defeated the evil at its heart: racism.

Now, any sane-thinking person knows this is untrue. The recent rash of incidents of unarmed blacks being murdered and maimed by predominantly white police, continued colored overrepresentation in incarceration, poor or no access to healthcare, limited access to quality secondary and tertiary education, unemployment routinely higher than the national average (for decades), lower life expectancy, underrepresentation in corporate governance, representative government and many other socio-economic or socio-political metrics would tell even a cursory observer that we are not post-racial at all.

But Obama is the classic Caucasian fantasy of The Good Negro, re-imagined for the 21st century. He' is tall and handsome. He is married and has two children he knows and provides for. He has an advanced education with excellent pedigree. He can speak well and walk upright. He has no tattoos, no baby mamas, no criminal record. He prefers spam sushi to fried chicken. His wife is equally miraculous. She takes care of her children. She knows her children's father and is married to him. She dresses well and can conjugate verbs.

There are two bigotries working in exquisite tandem here. First, that most black Americans are not educated, employed and law-abiding. And so, any black person performing within the parameters of what is considered good citizenry is somehow remarkable. The other is a kind of soft-bigotry that says: ''Well isn't that nice? He/she is a credit to his/her people."

I yhave been on the receiving end of such bigotries all of my life, though only now am I seeing it for what it really is. I am thin. I do not wear ''urban attire." I went to good schools. My teeth are straight and white. The tenor and texture of my voice is non-threatening. I carry myself differently than the stereotypes associated with colored young men in American society.

I' am not ''scary." I pay my taxes. I am gainfully employed. I have good credit. Unbeknown to me, perhaps due to my middle-class background, personality, and the like, I have been fortunate enough not to have policemen shoot me. In fact, all of my interactions with policemen, the few that I have had, have been pleasant. Some have even been heartening: in the cold rain, a police officer changed my tire without an umbrella between us. This was in Vermont in graduate school, years and years ago.

It should be irrelevant if I have tattoos, or wear urban attire, or look like some character off "The Wire." It should not matter if I am Obama-esque, or a rapper or just a regular, ordinary shmuck _ my life is just as valuable and worthy as anyone else's. Human dignity, I am sorry, cannot be dependent on personal biographies, known or unknown.

And yet, President Obama will be judged by different standards than other presidents, partly because too many people juxtapose him to the ideal of The Good Negro. Imagine if President Obama was white, Republican, or some variation thereof: ten million jobs created since the Great Recession, unemployment below 6 percent, the stock market tripling in under six years, millions covered with health insurance who were previously uninsured, Osama Bin Laden eliminated, the American auto industry thriving …we would be calling this America's Second Act.

But none of these accomplishments are good enough. Stagnant wages, uncommonly low job participation, weak economic growth (compared to historical trends), international crises like ISIS, Syria, Iraq, ebola, Ukraine, etc. are all problems, (a lot of which are not any one man's responsibility), but Obama being called the worst president in modern history by some detractors is laughably ridiculous and lacks credulity, even in this hyper-partisan era.

Take it from another good Negro… it is not copacetic.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.

Site Map E-paper Subscribe Register LogIn
Site Map E-paper Subscribe Register LogIn