The Black Presidency

by Michael Eric Dyson

  Critical Black Patriotism

  Obama’s election certainly signified new American possibilities: a new day of American hope dawned, a new meaning of American identity was born, and a new beam of governance glowed in the dark of American empire. This nation can never go back to what it meant before Obama colored the face of America for the world. But Obama’s historic rise reveals flaws in the American character too. White America has shown little interest in the complicated ties of black folk to a land that has not always shown them love. Black Americans have weathered the downpour of spite from blind loyalists for their willingness to see the beauty and warts of the nation all at once. Many blacks criticize America with a patriot’s desire to see the country embrace its ideals. But even a tiny blush of black criticism turns many whites red-hot with resentment and often leads to the charge that blacks do not love America. Such alleged disloyalty links black critics of the nation to the enemies of America around the globe. The same irrational fear of disloyalty prompted the nation to send Japanese Americans to concentration camps during World War II and has led to unjustifiable assaults on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans during the “war on terror” today. But black folk have loved the country and remained loyal to it even when they could not enjoy the democracy for which they were willing to die.

  Claims of black disloyalty ring hollow when we consider that American citizenship rests on forced as well as free black labor, and the denial of black opportunity, in every realm. Leaders of the nation’s schools and religious institutions doubted the intelligence and humanity of black folk; the Supreme Court insisted on their legal and social inferiority. The myth of American individualism flowered despite clear evidence that Americans depended heavily as a group on black sweat and also ingenuity; the minds and spirits of black people deserve as much credit as their muscle in fashioning national culture. The same cultural soil that mythic individualism sprouted from also yielded the notion that black people were irresponsible and immoral and not to be trusted with the privileges of American citizenship. The key to American citizenship is locked inside a simple formula: the more black folk were denied the rights and protections that white citizens took for granted, the more natural it seemed to those white citizens that blacks should not enjoy them. American citizenship expanded as black privilege receded. The belief that black people were undeserving of a fair share in American life cemented the civic life of white citizens and made them fully American. Undeserving and untrustworthy blacks were seen as America’s greatest domestic threat; they had to be kept in line and out of democracy’s limelight.

  To be sure, other philosophies of governance distrust the democratic intelligence of the average citizen. But collective white guilt stirs exaggerated suspicion and fear of black citizens. In Obama’s case, it flared in a crude argument before his election: Obama cannot be trusted as the ultimate symbol of American identity and power because he might do to white folk all the bad things they had done to black folk for centuries. Such fear and suspicion rested on a bad reading of black history: black people have been the least likely among those crushed by American society to seek revenge. There have been too many blacks who have shown that they revere white life far more than they revere their own culture. A significant minority of blacks have even sabotaged their race to satisfy their love of whiteness; they have betrayed black communities and causes because they feared not being loved by whites. More than a few blacks have been so taken with the graceless deceit of white supremacy that they sold out their own to preserve ties with white culture. These are the blacks during slavery, for instance, who told whites how and when slaves intended to rebel. There is simply little reason to fear that substantial numbers of black folk will ever be unfaithful to the country or even to white America.

  None of this has kept blacks from trying to prove their patriotic mettle. Mainstream America has had little use or feel for the patriotism that a lot of black people practice. Black love of country is often far more robust and complicated than the lapel-pin nationalism of many white citizens.3 Barack Obama hinted at this when he declared in Montana during the 2008 campaign: “I love this country not because it’s perfect, but because we’ve always been able to move it closer to perfection. Because through revolution and slavery . . . generations of Americans have shown their love of country by struggling and sacrificing and risking their lives to bring us that much closer to our founding promise.”4 That is a far cry from the “my country right or wrong” credo that confuses blind boosterism with authentic loyalty. At their best, black folk battle the worst form of patriotic correctness. In its place they offer critical patriotism, an exacting devotion that carries on a lover’s quarrel with America while shedding blood in its defense.

  Perhaps it is easy to see why the words of black critics and leaders, taken out of context, can be read as cynical renunciations of love of nation. Abolitionist and runaway slave Frederick Douglass gave a famous oration on the meaning of Independence Day, asking, “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”5 Instead of joining the chorus of black voices swelling with nostalgia to return to their African roots, Douglass stayed put. Poet Langston Hughes grieved in verse, “There’s never been equality for me, / Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.’”6 But his lament is couched in a poem whose title, like its author, yearns for acceptance: “Let America Be America Again.” Even Martin Luther King Jr. was called a communist and branded a traitor to his country because he opposed the war in Vietnam. When King announced his opposition in a famous Riverside Church address in 1967, journalist Kenneth Crawford attacked King for his “demagoguery,” while black writer Carl Rowan bitterly concluded that King’s speech had created “the impression that the Negro is disloyal.”7 Black dissent over war has historically brought charges of disloyalty, despite the eagerness of blacks to defend a democracy on foreign soil that they could not enjoy back home.

  As the nation flexed its muscles as a global empire, it created an even more complicated situation for black citizens: as they were being eyed suspiciously by white citizens, America’s growing global presence inspired black folk to become even more empathetic toward international struggles for human rights. The sense that they were citizens of the world often gave them the courage to fight for their rights at home. It also gave blacks moral leverage to highlight the hypocrisy of America’s playing moral cop for the world while denying basic human rights to its black citizens. Blacks could now portray racism as incompatible with America’s civic ideals; treating black folk right strengthened democratic culture. Black criticism of racial injustice is a valiant patriotic gesture.

  When black activists criticized America for unjustly mistreating black folk, just as it mistreated other nations, they gained global allies but alienated many fellow Americans, who deemed such criticism treasonous. Black critics argued that if America wanted to preserve its democratic reputation, it had to be international but not imperial. Blacks made their native land nervous as they forged ties with other anti-imperial and anticolonial critics of American foreign policy around the world. Such efforts exposed imperialism and colonialism as racism in global drag. When blacks criticized American empire, it tore at the scab of black loyalty—and put black folk under a hyper-patriotic microscope like the one wielded by Joseph McCarthy against Paul Robeson, or the ungainly apparatus applied to Martin Luther King Jr. by J. Edgar Hoover.8 The red-baiting of selected Americans mirrored the long-standing suspicion of black people as unreliable citizens. America’s mistreatment of black folk surely made them more sympathetic to various victims of American foreign policy. Black critics were not being disloyal to America by insisting that the nation live up to its ideals at home and abroad; instead, they were exhorting the country, as Martin Luther King did in his last speech, to “be true to what you said on paper.”9 Black critics love America enough to tell it the truth and
to encourage the nation to steadily enliven its democratic principles. It is not disdain but the love of America that inspires soulful criticism; as James Baldwin wrote, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”10

  Even the angry comments of Jeremiah Wright have to be read as the bitter complaint of a spurned lover.11 Like millions of other blacks, Wright was willing to serve the country while suffering rejection. He surrendered his student deferment in 1963 and voluntarily joined the marines, and after a two-year stint volunteered to become a navy corpsman. He excelled at the Corpsman School, becoming valedictorian, and later a cardiopulmonary technician, and eventually became a member of the commander in chief’s medical team and cared for Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery, for which Wright earned three White House letters of commendation. Dick Cheney, born the same year as Wright, received five draft deferments, four while an undergraduate and graduate student, and one as a prospective father. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush used their student deferments to remain in college until 1968 and exploited family connections to avoid active duty.12 Judged by the standard of military duty that so many claim is undeniable evidence of patriotism, Wright, much more than Cheney, Clinton, or Bush, embodies Obama’s ideal of “Americans [who] have shown their love of country by struggling and sacrificing and risking their lives to bring us that much closer to our founding promise.” Wright’s critics have confused nationalism with patriotism.13 Nationalism is the uncritical support of one’s country regardless of its moral or political bearing. Patriotism is the critical affirmation of one’s country in light of its best values, including the attempt to correct it when it is in error. In that light, Wright’s words are the tough love of a war-tested patriot speaking his mind; the ability to do so is one of the great virtues of our democracy. The most patriotic gesture his nation can make is to extend to Wright and other critics the same right for which he was willing to die.

  True to His Native Land

  The shrinking gulf between American ideals and practices, what Obama praised as the nation’s ability to move closer to perfection, led Michelle Obama to declare in February 2008 that for “the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.”14 Ironically, many critics bashed the future first lady and said she was ungrateful for the good things America had done for her and her husband, especially the opportunity to thrive as a member of the black middle class and even to run for president. Black folk are nearly always charged with ingratitude and disloyalty whenever they acknowledge the tattered history of race as they offer critical love for the nation—a trait Hubert Humphrey deemed vital to America since “critical lovers . . . express their faith in the country by working to improve it.”15 The charge of ingratitude is leveled even when, as in Michelle Obama’s case, blacks point to their abominable racial history to draw attention to how much progress has been made. Some Americans think that the admission that we have made errors in the past is worse than the denial of patriotism’s benefits to all citizens.

  During the 2008 campaign Michelle Obama was seen as a divisive force who could severely damage her husband’s chances to become president. Michelle Obama had in fact simply confirmed her husband’s hunch: America could correct itself and get things right once it had the courage to confront its past. She read the willingness of citizens to put her husband in the White House as a sign that such a day had arrived. Yet millions of Americans, spurred on by right-wing interests, concluded that Michelle Obama was ungrateful for her opportunities and oblivious to the progress that has been made. Her comments revived the suspicion about black folk as disloyal citizens and untrustworthy members of our democracy. The masses of black folk, though, agreed with Michelle Obama’s sentiment. She gave voice to the agony of being patriotically bipolar, of feeling, as W. E. B. Du Bois phrased it, one’s black and American identities in constant tension. Michelle Obama seized the moment to speak for the black folk whose voices had only partially been heard in her husband’s campaign. Barack Obama expressed the desire of blacks to be viewed as legitimate citizens, but Michelle Obama honored a political ambivalence—premised on what cultural critic Salamishah Tillet terms “civic estrangement”—that is the bedrock of black patriotism.16

  Michelle Obama was virtually silenced after “Pride-gate” and recast by handlers as a benign presence—a woman who, despite rumors, did not secretly hate whites. If Michelle got drubbed for her comments, Barack got berated even more. Obama’s patriotism was challenged early on in his first presidential campaign. When he was asked by a reporter in Iowa in October 2007 about his absent flag lapel pin, which had become standard for politicians to wear after 9/11, Obama offered unusual candor in defense of his alternative sartorial patriotism. “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11 . . . that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, [and] I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.” After conservative talk show hosts like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity pounced on him, Obama claimed: “I’m less concerned with what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart. You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. And you show your patriotism by being true to your values and ideals. And that’s what we have to lead with, our values and ideals.”17 The firestorm of controversy eventually forced Obama to adopt the lapel pin as patriotic asbestos to shield himself from aggressive attacks on his love of country.

  Obama’s name conjured xenophobic passions during the 2008 campaign. Some opponents believed that his middle name, Hussein, suggested that Obama was an alien force out to harm the nation. Obama was blanketed by mysterious e-mails and Internet rumors that he was secretly a Muslim. Only in a climate of ignorance and paranoia about Islam in the wake of 9/11 would such charges threaten to disqualify a candidate for the Oval Office.

  Bill Cunningham, a Cincinnati talk show host and John McCain supporter, played on Obama’s middle name at a February 2008 campaign event by repeatedly emphasizing “Hussein” and underscoring Obama’s foreignness and inherent unfitness for office. “At some point in the near future the media . . . is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama,” Cunningham derisively declared. This was not a racially charged comment on its surface; the racial undertones lurked in the historic reference to Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater’s infamous 1988 threat against Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis: “I’ll strip the bark off that little bastard and make Willie Horton his running mate.” Horton is the black convicted felon who got released through a Massachusetts weekend furlough program while serving a life sentence for murder without the possibility of parole. Horton failed to return from his furlough, and nearly a year later he committed assault, armed robbery, and rape. The 1988 presidential campaign became roiled in racial drama when political ads associated the furlough program with Dukakis because Horton had disappeared during his term in office as governor. Dukakis did not start the program but strongly supported it and vetoed a bill that denied the extension of such privileges to first-degree murderers.18 Cunningham thus scored two bigotries for the price of one when he also signified on Obama’s middle name through dramatic overemphasis. To his credit, Obama’s Republican opponent, McCain, immediately repudiated Cunningham’s comments.19

  Next, a widely distributed photo was alleged to portray Obama refusing to place his hand over his heart as he recited the Pledge of Allegiance. It was later revealed that the picture was taken at Senator Tom Harkin’s traditional steak fry in Iowa in September 2007, where, like many Americans at sporting events, Obama kept his hands by his side during the singing of the national anthem. Less than a year later, on July 24, 2008, a teeming crowd of 200,000 packed the area
around the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park to witness candidate Obama flash his foreign policy chops and demonstrate that he had greater worldwide appeal than the sitting U.S. president. Obama was nevertheless taken to task for saying that he spoke “not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen—a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.”20 The statement indicated Obama’s debt to a vibrant black internationalism that was a far cry from American imperialism. But with his own patriotism in question, many deemed it unwise for Obama to embrace his world citizenship.

  Obama patiently and relentlessly fought rumors of Muslim identity and a lack of love for America. “Nobody thinks that [then-president George W.] Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face,” Obama said during a campaign stop in Missouri. “So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’”21 The McCain campaign accused Obama of playing the race card as Obama’s campaign unpersuasively insisted that Obama had merely been referring to his being a political newcomer. In truth Obama was fighting innuendo with innuendo and meeting political chicanery and racial signification on its own slippery terrain. Obama fought these forces most strongly less than a month after securing the Democratic presidential nomination in June 2008 when he spoke at the Truman Center in Harry Truman’s hometown of Independence, Missouri:

  Throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given. It was how I was raised; it is what propelled me into public service; it is why I am running for president. And yet, at certain times over the last sixteen months, I have found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged—at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears and doubts about who I am and what I stand for. So let me say this at the outset of my remarks. I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine.22