CNN’s John Blake perfectly encapsulated one thing that outrages white Americans in the Obama era. The country elects a black president, and yet this only proves that racism is just as bad now...as when Emmett Till was beaten to death and then shot in the Jim Crow era for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
Blake, a "CNN Enterprise writer/producer," wrote a very tendentious commentary titled “What black America won't miss about Obama.” The answer is they won’t miss a massive outpouring of white racism attached to Obama. The article featured these “story highlights”:
Black America: We didn't know how racist America was until it elected its first black president
Obama's presidency caused some blacks to "unfriend White America"
Will racism stop being 'normal' after Obama leaves office?
It gets utterly ridiculous under the headline “Reliving parents’ nightmares.” Allegedly, anti-Obama whites are spreading a virtual cyber-epidemic of black-Sambo imagery and other images out of “America’s slave era.” It’s like Emmett Till being executed all over again:
Imagine Till's death in the age of social media, images of his battered body being shared and tweeted constantly. Now combine that with racist imagery from the Jim Crow era Till lived in -- Sambo dolls with jet black skin and bulbous red lips, blacks eating watermelon -- being spread through popular culture every day.
That's the equivalent of what some blacks say they've been seeing for the past eight years.
Obama presided over the nation during the rise of social media. He came into office just as Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms exploded in popularity. Those tools, though, have resurrected some of the most painful memories of black America.Google "Obama racism" and you'll see images of Obama being lynched or labeled "Primate in Chief." Michelle Obama was recently depicted by one cartoonist with a penis bulge under her skirt. These are images straight out of America's slave era. And many are not tucked away in ugly corners of the Internet. They are publicly displayed at political rallies and in front of homes.
Open displays of racism have become normal again, some say. More Americans are comfortable publicly expressing racially inflammatory rhetoric, according to some political scientists. Some blacks have noticed. They say they feel like they've been caught in a time warp. They're constantly seeing images and hearing racist language that they thought were relics....
If blacks saw the rebirth of Jim Crow under Obama, some Latinos saw a rebirth of "Juan Crow" -- the denigration of Latino people and systematic attempts to stifle their political power, says Francisco Ramos, who manages graduate programs at Duke University and writes about multiculturalism and the politics of identity. Ramos says he knows some Latinos who have been Republican since the 1960s but may never vote Republican again.
And yet, Blake descends into mocking whites for having a butt-clenched walk: “Some blacks now see themselves in Obama's stride. He doesn't walk with the stiff, chest-thrust-outward, buttocks-clenched-tight stroll of some white politicians. He struts.”
Blake only briefly allowed that "some" people disagreed, that perhaps criticism of Obama isn't all that different than rough criticism of other presidents. But they would be absolutely wrong:
For some people he was being treated the same way as previous presidents -- roughly. President George W. Bush was called a war criminal and compared to a chimp. President Bill Clinton was impeached. President Lyndon B. Johnson was dubbed a "baby killer."
But some blacks saw racial venom in the way Obama was treated. White public figures called him "boy," a "food-stamp president," an "animal" and a "tar baby." One governor wagged her finger in his face. The President was even forced to "show his papers" -- release his original long-form birth certificate -- after "birthers" led by Trump questioned whether he was born in the United States.
Trump's demands that Obama prove his citizenship evoked the slave era when freed blacks were often forced to show their "certificate of freedom" to justify moving freely in public.
This commentary was illustrated by Jan Brewer pointing a finger at Obama on the tarmac at an airport in Phoenix, which liberal journalists emphasized and strongly condemned. Other images in CNN's photo album on Obama racism included Sen. Mitch McConnell pledging to make him a one-term president and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking before a joint session of Congress without Obama's permission.
Earlier: John Blake on the new white threat: "Racism without racists"
