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Obama and the “Angry Black Man” Factor
From the New Yorker
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Here’s one thing I didn’t mention in my earlier post about Obama’s fiery showing last night. For years now, there has been a popular theory, albeit one recited more often over dinner tables than in op-ed columns, that the reason Obama plays it so cool is that he fears alienating white voters by coming across as an angry African-American male. Back in the summer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, broke with the reticence about discussing this subject publicly. In a widely discussed essay entitled “Fear of a Black President,” Coates wrote,
Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard.
After Obama’s subdued performance in the first debate, the reticence about promulgating the race theory seemed to go away, especially among liberal commentators—something noted in a piece on the conservative site FrontPageMag.com. Michael Moore suggested that the dredging up of an old video of Obama talking to a black crowd at Hampton University in 2007 had intimidated Obama. “For the past 2 days, the Right has been pounding their ‘Obama is an angry black man video.’ Did this affect O, that he had to appear timid?” Moore tweeted. Bill Maher seconded the race theory as an explanation for Obama’s low-key demeanor, saying, “Maybe what is in his mind is, ‘Look, I can never look like the angry black man.’ ” And Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown, told MSNBC, “Lest we forget this, lest we pretend this doesn’t make a difference, the specter hanging over him is: ‘I can’t come off as too vigorous because then it looks like I’m being an angry black man.’ ”
It isn’t my intention here to discuss how far the fear of alienating white voters goes in explaining Obama’s behavior, either in general or in Denver specifically. Until the President addresses the subject directly, which probably won’t be until he publishes his memoir, it is impossible to know. Even Obama himself might not be able to give a full answer. It is a simple fact of arithmetic that any politician from any minority group, not just an African-American, who aspires to national office has to avoid offending the majority. The obvious way to do this is by endeavoring not to appear too strident or bellicose. For most successful minority politicians, after a while, it becomes second nature.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/10/obama-and-the-angry-black-man-factor.html#ixzz29bGxRagN
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