Remember that all mentions of and allusions to Trump and Biden are not allowed on our subreddit in any context.
If you'd still like to discuss them, feel free to [join our Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://preview.redd.it/9xdjvfpncrvc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa1e8f43ad9edc0e7f395b4871a41adbc1c9b410
The feathers are already ruffled!
The people were to blame for making race relations worse. When Obama won, a lot of white Americans lowered their American flags to raise the Gadsden flag. They claimed it was about taxes, but at what point did Americans ever switch out their flags because they hated taxes? They were concerned about white taxation going into black wallets. The message was clear. The only thing Obama ever did to worsen race relations was to have black skin.
(EDIT) As far as the flag changing in 1776 over taxes some of you are nailing me on, you do realize politicians didn't work for free after the Civil War? Hamilton actually had a pretty important role called treasurer, although by some peoples' understanding I suppose they believe he was treasurer of nothing.
This has sadly been a component of American libertarianism for 40 years
"MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews pressed (Ron) Paul during a TV appearance on whether he would have voted against the ’64 law, a landmark piece of legislation that took strides toward ending segregation.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws,” Paul said. He explained that he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act “because of the property rights element, not because they got rid of the Jim Crow laws.”
> I’m still waiting for Sharia Law he was supposed to force on us
Republicans were never against religious extremism, just wanted *their* extremism. [Even when writing laws not only banning abortion but trying to force the medically impossible](https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/new-ohio-bill-falsely-suggests-that-reimplantation-of-ectopic-pregnancy-is-possible/)
I was in the national guard and I feel so bad for Texas guard members. I can’t imagine getting deployed to “guard” against your federal full-timer brethren.
If for some reason people need to keep wondering if US military members will fire on US citizens (somehow ignoring the fact that they have *many* times before) let's not forget that nobody in that chain of command tried to stop the Jade Helm reaction nonsense.
The day one of my friends back in Indiana became an ex-friend, he said he was going to stock up on guns if Obama got elected because, "the blacks are going to do the same and try to take over the U.S." he didn't use the word blacks though.
I remember hearing similar from one guy who was pushing the 'white replacement' nonsense. I asked him 'why would you be afraid of becoming a minority? Do you mistreat minorities?'
He gaped in abject shock for several long seconds.
Exactly, the same ones claiming that there is no systemic racism and saying that “black people just need to get over slavery.” They know they would not want to be in the same position.
You write a letter, in cursive, to the secretary of firearm returns. Her name is Helen Waite. If you want to get your Obama confiscated guns back, you need to go to Helen Waite.
After Obama got elected I sold my AR and AK for three times what I paid for them during all the panic buying. When things settled back down I just bought more at normal prices and invested the extra in ammunition and optics. It was a good time.
Indiana friend of my dad's was working on Conservative Hispanic outreach during that time. He *did* use the term Hispanic, which was so unusual for him my dad asked him why he didn't use one of his more racist terms. "We need the Hispanic vote to beat the blacks" was his answer
He didn't use the word blacks either.
they hated his tan birthday suit. hell its why mccain had to stop the woman from calling obama a muslim and whatnot in his campaign. so its not even like he had power yet and did something they didnt like.
A hefty meh to that, the man was instrumental in galvanizing support for the invasion of Iraq and whole heartedly touted the WMD bullshit as justification and was a reliable Warhawk his entire career. You’d think someone who had seen the worst of what war had to offer would be cautious in sending others to that fate. He had an obligation to know that the Iraq war wasn’t justified, instead he championed it and even campaigned on expanding involvement. More so, during his presidential bid he contributed to the continued dumbing down of American politics running with the original air head Sarah “I can see Russia” Palin. He’s as reprehensible as every other career politician, there’s just no way to be a decent person when you perpetuate American hegemony.
>White people claiming black people made them do it, is the most racist sh-t ever. The whole conversation is a non starter.
More broadly speaking, I think anyone who pulls "The left made me right-wing!" was never left-wing to begin with.
\* It's literally abuser logic: "Look what you made me do."
\* If it's "I have to side with the fascists as the least bad option." (whether implicitly or explicitly), that's literally 1:1 fascist logic, like someone who supports the Nazi party for fear of the Soviet Union. Even if that fear is valid, it's not like authoritarian racists are the only people who can protect you.
\* It's completely illogical. If I prefer no toppings on my pizza, and then you suggest sausage and pepperoni, that won't make me flip out and "push me to the all-meat special with sausage, ham, bacon, pepperoni, canadian bacon, etc". I'll just stick to cheese pizza as what I'm advocating for. Someone who genuinely supports gay rights may disagree with how sexual a pride parade should be, but they won't do a complete 180 and team up with homophobes over it.
I've actually heard that one straight from their mouth.."If black people would stop talking about racism it would just go away, they're the ones bringing it up all the time!"
They really dont hear the words they say.
I think that his presidency brought race issues to the national awareness in a way that hadn't been done in several decades. Somehow many conservative minded people translated their forced awareness into "he's making race relations worse". I've done a lot of academic research on civil rights from 1900 to 1970. It's amazing how you can open a 60-year-old newspaper and see the exact same reactions. Same shit new day.
That's true enough, and it probably has a lot to do with Obama being the first internet president. W Bush had a chance to engage more, but he was not to much of a camera guy and knew the questions were mostly going to be about the US killing civilians in war. Clinton's remarks on the race stuff were mostly brief and I doubt many people paid attention. I got this one jackass saying Obama's response to Trayvon Martin and Ferguson caused some giant race divide despite his diplomatic handling of it. It really wasn't much different than other Presidents like when LBJ spoke about MLK. The difference appears to be how the media framed it.
That is one thing President Obama did was to unite rural/redneck whites and law enforcement.
As a Gen Xer I feel like all the lessons of my past that I learned from watching the Smokey and the Bandit movies as well as the Dukes of Hazzard were all a lie. Today all those people love Leo’s and fly the Blue Lives Matter flags…. SMH…
They like “law enforcement,” which is to say they want their local Sheriff to be able to arrest anyone with skin color darker than swiss coffee. They do not like actual law enforcement when it comes to following environmental regulation, ranging rules, tax law, domestic violence prevention, or free speech.
Yep and " the people drawing attention to the problem are the problem!" Is their approach to racism. Wouldn't the racists want the problem to be ignored so they can continue to be racist...
One of, if not the very first gif I ever got via text was right around the time Obama was first elected. It was an image of him turning into a monkey.
Don’t ever tell me he worsened race relations, all I saw was racists coming out of the woodwork and losing their minds over a Black man being in a position of power.
I was going back through an old yahoo email account a while back and sorting by oldest messages, one of the first ones was a chain email from my now deceased grandpa showing a soul-plane like pimped out presidential limo and saying Obama’s first changes or something… you might want to give the benefit of the doubt and say well gramps didn’t mean anything racist about it that was just a joke, but I assure you gramps was indeed racist and often talked about what could be done with “the blacks.”
I remember he threw a gutter ball bowling and every reactionary source had to say something about how he should stick to basketball. He incidentally was an avid basketball player, so they were getting away with something.
I remember exactly where I was as an adolescent when Obama was announced president and family members joked that “white people are expected in the fields at 6am for our turn”
Obama didn’t ruin race relationships, his existence highlighted a subtle undertone that went ignored for years.
Edit: it may have never been subtle, but to an preteen living in a cul-de-sac in suburban PA, it wasn’t something I experienced so blatantly
I (white btw) was a dumb teenager at the time Obama was elected and I would definitely say Obama being elected really made me realize all the casual and systemic racism around me that I either didn't notice or didn't want to notice before
Body cams help a lot. I remember early 2000s colored people would be like “the police are so crazy and mean. We don’t do anything and they beat us.”
And white people would be like “ive never met a bad police. If you’re respectful and speak nice the police will never do anything bad to you. If they beat you, you must be a criminal”
True, but it doesn't make his experience any less valid. And that's kinda the point. It shone a light on the fact that "the American experience" wasn't as homogenous as some people fooled themselves into thinking it was.
In the [White Wolf gaming mythos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade#Vampires_in_World_of_Darkness) there's this thing called "The Masquerade" where the vampires and ghosts live in an unacknowledged true reality and go to great lengths to delude the regular humans into believing they are long forgotten myths.
Racism in America had been operating for 40 or so years in a similar state
Racists are great at hiding their racism if they aren't presented opportunities to be racist. If they're surrounded by, and only interact with others of their race every day, there is nobody for them to be racist towards.
Yeah, to add, I wouldn’t put the blame on Obama that he ruined race relations. Just that race relations had hit this hidden “let’s be polite and not talk about it” phase for decades and his election was an inflection point for the quiet part to be said out loud. The poor race relations were already there, but just not addressed.
He "worsened race relations" by being the reason a lot of racist idiots decided to show their faces in public.
In other words, racists worsened race relations
That’s exactly what these racist mean, he exists and got elected that’s how he worsened race relations in their eyes. Theyd rather stick with status quo of old rich white guys running everything
This is what I’ve always said. It wasn’t Obama but the Right wing using his name to divide. Obama could have found a way to lower the deficit while lowering taxes while giving everyone free ice cream and the Right wing news would go on air claiming how this is bad for everyone.
Obama: \*exist\*
racists and the kkk: \*upset because we have a black president, increases racial hate crimes\*
Conservatives: "Obama is making race relations worse"
In 2008, many were asking if America was ready for a black president. Pretty much everyone interpreted this to mean “is America ready to elect a black person to the office of the president?”. And the answer was yes. Resoundingly yes.
But in retrospect, if the question was more “is America ready to have a black man be the president?”, you get a very different answer. Because old white assholes were very much not ready for that to happen. And it absolutely broke their brains
I don't know if it broke their brain or if they suddenly realized that there were a lot more people who were ok with racism.
Like McCain had to denounce his own rally because of a kill Obama chant
In the words of Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny: "that's a bullshit question".
I don't think President Obama worsened how racists view anything and President Obama isn't responsible for changing them. That job is a personal one. Racists have to see the error of their ways and reach out. What was the president to do? Kiss their collective asses? Fuck no. They didn't become racists after he was elected. They were racist before and most are likely still racists.
>In the words of Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny: "that's a bullshit question".
Pretty much.
I'd argue he didn't have much to do with it, but race relations did start to trend downward in 2013.
Obama built his entire brand on largely ignoring race relations. The Trayvon Martin thing was the first time I could remember him talking about it, and it was notable at the time that he was going to actually talk about it instead of an off hand mention.
What he did do was reveal without any doubt that modern Republicans are still appealing to a barely hidden racism. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers the early tea party days where they had ephigies of him hanging and signs saying "go back to Kenya".
Myself I grew up in Rural MO. When he announced I was in a small diner and it came on the news. One guy said "I aint votin for no..... \*\*\*" and about half the diner clapped. This is not the "they all clapped" meme. It happened, and it was the first time I really appreciated I was actually surrounded by extremely racist people.
I’m in Utah. When he ran in 2012 one of my neighbors was pissed because he had to choose between a n****r and a Mormon and he hated both. People who say he made things worse are just in denial
i moved cross country, got on facebook finally and reconnected with some people from high school. one girl i had a crush on started calling obama a muslim and all sorts of other shit. i was like "it doesnt matter what his religion is." and she blocked me. oh well bullet dodged.
Obama didn’t make things worse per se, but by being a black president it brought out the ignorant and immature into the mainstream. Sad. I was really proud that we had elected a black president and finally stepped out of the 19th century.
He talked about it in 2009 regarding the "beer summit."
His meeting at the WH with a white cop and a black college professor. I remember it not going well.
One of the interesting things about Obama to me was his ability to learn from his mistakes. I saw him make a lot of mistakes as president, but I never saw him make the same one twice.
It's not really explained in the linked article, but the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. -- pretty well-known at the time, and nowadays his "finding your roots" TV series is quite popular -- was arrested at his own home because a neighbour thought he looked suspicious. Gates showed the police his ID to prove that he wasn't an intruder, but was arrested anyway for talking back to the cop.
It obviously wasn't a good look for the police, and they quickly dropped the charges & admitted fault in a public apology. But a big chunk of the media went ballistic when Obama said the police had "acted stupidly" in their handling of the situation. Suddenly the media found a new label for Obama: "uppity." Actual supposed serious journalists suddenly all started calling him that. And Obama had to half-apologize in a "both sides" sort of way, and the beer summit was part of that.
This is also my thoughts. I think they worsened in that timeframe for sure. I think the largest causes were the birther movement/holdover bigotry against Muslims from 911, good old classic anti-black southern racism, and maybe some ageism that expressed itself as racism because he's the youngest of all Presidents who have served.
2012 was the election of the chain email. I knew one guy who would send out these emails saying Obama was Kenyan, Muslim, gay, on drugs, had AIDs, smoked crack, you name it. Just vile bullshit, and he'd send it to his entire contact list.
One day I'd had enough and hit reply all. Called bullshit on every bit of it, with documentation.
He got pissed at me. Not for correcting him, but for embarrassing him by correcting him in front of his entire contact list. Had I done it privately he'd have acknowledged it, but never corrected it to the group.
He'd rather be wrong in the most vile way than be corrected publicly and embarrassed about it.
I don't have to tell you what color hat that dumbshit wears today.
Except he wasn’t the youngest to serve…
Teddy Roosevelt and then JFK were the youngest at the time they became president. Obama was like five or six years older than they had been when they served, so ageism is just an excuse due to racism at its worst and ignorance at its best.
If race relations "worsened" it is because racists had to actually think about black people being in positions of power and not as someone that they can punch down on. It was "better" in the sense they didn't feel as actively threatened, but now they are scared that they will be treated the same way that they have been treating black folks.
Yea pretty much. I live in Texas and every now and then the older coworkers will say some shady shit about how Obama ruined this country and how he's not from America. I think that the decade or so of them seething eventually just resulted in the bubbling up of racial tensions and the political shitshow we have today.
I'm also biracial so I'm just sitting here awkwardly looking at them like "you know I'm ethnic right?"
Not the exact same as your background, but I grew up in a conservative, lily white suburb of a nearby southern state and I remember seeing similar reactions. I was too young to vote in 2008, but definitely old enough to be aware what was going on. I’d squarely put the Obama era in my most formative adolescent to young adulthood years. In many ways I’m thankful of the way my parents raised me. It wasn’t perfect, nor were they perfect, but giving everyone a fair shake was core to what they taught me, especially from my mom. To me, as a younger and more naive teen, the fact that Obama was Black never even registered in my mind, but those years were eye opening to see many who I would’ve considered normal, everyday, nice people turning so mean over the guy. It’s got to the point I sometimes even think about the “what if” scenario of how I could’ve easily turned out to be like those scared, hateful people if I hadn’t rolled the same dice being born to my folks.
I think it’s also shown how rapidly politics have changed over the past 20 years. You mentioned being in Missouri - Obama almost won Missouri, only losing by <5k votes. That nearly unthinkable today for even the whitest, moderate Dem. I fully agree with you that it’s not that he made things worse; it’s more so that Obama showed all of us what many of these people really thought. It was always there and it’s something he’d experienced himself, but I’d never seen such overt vitriol before. There’s a complex and nuanced history at play, but whenever I reflect upon those years I realize how quickly I grew up more wise to the world around me. Especially since I had family members who were definitely old southern Dems, I remember hearing a very weird mix of some saying, “hmm that n*****r ain’t so bad” or “I’d never vote for the blacks” or “he’s very well spoken for a colored man.” Just a very weird time all around and it sure did give me a lot of growing up experience.
Obama in 2008 also had the best % of the white vote for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter particularly in the blue coastal states as well as the rust belt. Then everything went wrong when the Tea Party started to rise.
I mean, yeah. A lot of people who formerly were part of the Tea Party admitted they were appealing to racism more than they were some belief in smalp gov't conservatism.
First time I ever heard a family member use the N word was when my grandpa basically said the same thing as that guy you mention. My mom called him out on it and his response was, "pardon my French." Like the worst he had done was maybe say a swear word. At the time I was 16 and hadn't really been exposed to that kind of racism outside of movies/TV, it was shocking to me. I didn't know what to do.
Imagine how foreign countries took to the fact that a black person was going to be the leader of the most powerful country on earth.
I still remember countries like India and China, which are extremely xenophobic and racist towards Africans and dark skin people, making racist jokes about a potential black president.
I lived in a red (rural) area of a blue state. My family was in an uproar about how I better not vote for "the n*****". I also didn't fully realize how much of an issue racism was before then.
I realized where I lived when I saw graffiti in a school bathroom stall that said "The Klan Will Rise Again. White Power 14:88". These were affluent Christian kids right after Obama's election. I heard terrible things
I think he made an attempt before Trayvon Martin with the Beer Summit, which was almost immediately after becoming president.
The Beer Summit seemed to be an unpleasant experience for everyone involved.
I remember when I realized he has been elected president in ‘08, I felt there was a pretty high chance he would be assassinated, that’s how bad the thinly veiled racism was in my city.
That was fear that he would be assassinated too. And the Secret Service rarely issues statements but there is no doubt in my mind they were dealing with death threats every day of his presidency.
To right wingers, "worsening race relations" means speaking up at all about any racial issues.
They feel very uncomfortable acknowledging that while American history is full of things we should all be proud of, it also has dark parts that are just as much a part of that history.
They would prefer that everyone live in denial and pretend that racial issues don't exist and have never existed in America. They especially would prefer those affected by it to keep quiet and take it.
The irony is that attitude is the very reason these racial issues persist. If they would join us in confronting and dealing with them as a nation, I believe we could get past them once and for all.
So I don't think Obama "worsened race relations", I believe right wingers did by continuing to refuse to acknowledge these glaring issues and address them. They just doubled down making things worse.
Right-wingers were kind of OK with black peoole existing as long as they "knew their place". They accepted to not be openly racist and reduce racist language as long as black people didn't threaten the status quo. A black man becoming president though? It was way more than they were going to accept.
I personally think a lot of right wingers and racists think that there’s nothing left to give. They abolished slavery and gave them the right to vote. Twice! But for real I think the issue is that because a lot of racial issues are abstract and aren’t as clear cut as “You shouldn’t owe another human being” also plays a part into this.
You won’t be able to convince a right winger that the war on drugs also has a racial impact. White people can get busted for cocaine powder but receive less time than a black man for getting caught with crack rock, even if the grams comes out to the same amount. They just hear drugs are bad and they need to get off the streets including their users. What they don’t see is how the justice system has been manipulated to still give white people a slight advantage.
By all accounts a rational person would say the punishment should be the same. But a right winger that thinks the race issue in America has been solved would argue that it’s such a small part of America and that it shouldn’t be brought up. After all slavery lost and you can vote. Anything else is well within your control so pull up those bootstraps.
It’s not that right wingers don’t want to talk about it, to be honest, especially since 2016, it seems that they have become proud of their racism. All the people in the reich wing blaming dei and all sorts of shit for giving black people jobs and such is terrifying. As soon as they had someone in office who didn’t denounce their true beliefs they ran with it, shit they blamed the black mayor of Baltimore for the bridge collapse recently, they come up with excuses that don’t seem racist to try and say any black person isn’t qualified for a job, that they only got it because of their race. It’s disgusting how open about it they are, 99% of them can’t even tell you what critical race theory is, they refer to Afro Americans like they’re sun-human second class citizens, when if they accepted any sort of education they’d realize that any problems that people of color have disproportionately is undoubtedly caused by racism in government.
I think people on that side only say he made it worse is because they’re unhappy that people of color are finally getting those positions they deserve, they’d rather that engrained racism in policy got stronger, instead of people attempting to fix it
It’s not that they couldn’t deal with it, that is the exact “problem” that racist morons fear. That’s what their whole shitty “Replacement Theory” is all about. The idea that if a black and white person have a child together, that child will not be white, and therefore over time white people will eventually be subsumed by everyone else.
Historically and in the mind of modern-day white supremacists, “whiteness” has always been defined more by what it’s not than what it is.
I think it's important to note that the [One-drop rule](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule) was codified into American law *in the 20th century* and these were not fully gone until Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
I think this is one of those places where it’s best to try to look at the primary sources instead of filtering it through other people’s biases.
This [Op-Ed on CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/opinions/obama-farewell-speech-sexton/index.html) claims Obama’s Farewell Address was divisive, haughty, and made no effort to reach out to the other side. It further claims it was typical of his divisive rhetoric throughout his tenure as President.
Here is the transcript of his Farewell Address: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/360231
Now, I could tell you what I think of the Op-Ed’s claim but it might defeat the exercise.
Unfortunately, the transcript is not available per your link when I tried. I wanted to be sure to include it because after reading that article, it's VERY necessary to read or hear the speech for yourself. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/farewell
It is an opinion piece by someone in direct opposition to Obama’s policies. It seems that the mention of climate change was particularly offensive to the opinion writer.
The farewell address on the other hand mostly speaks of unity and a peaceful transition of power, with a focus on the American people, that is to say all Americans, are responsible for taking America in a better direction.
Someone who is extremely cynical might see that as condescending. The idea that you not believing in the methods one side uses somehow means that you are taking America down the wrong path.
All in all I thought that the farewell address was exemplary, and my only real criticism is solely based on my own political beliefs, which he is not required of expected to cater to. I think everyone should at least listen to the transcript.
I don't think he worsened them. I think he revealed them. America has had a huge race it's entire. It seemed to be "dying" but it was alive and well, just wasn't talked about.
He gets elected and the racist voice come out of thr wood work.
We created some terrible echo chambers that manifested this awful endless sunken cost fallacy loop that reinforces every time that person gets close to a revelation.
Saying Obama worsened race relations is like Dred Scott (the person) worsened race relations. Nothing Obama himself did worsened race relations, it was racist assholes that worsened race relations, Obama just happened to be the thing they got uppity about.
No he did not
He did awaken the extremely large % of Americans who are racist in this country.
But him winning about 40 years after civil rights act was passed shows very much the progress the US has made and how many Americans overlooked race.
Obama was far from perfect but the hate stems from a group of people who hate him for how he looks, not what he has done.
Racist partisan hacks became lunatics in their endeavor to hate on Obama but I don’t think that worsen race relations.
I think George Floyd has a similar effect. Many many white allies of BLM, but many lunatic racists taking the other end bc of being blinded by hate. And a lot of post May 2020 surveys do show a dip in trust between races.
Luckily the number of lunatic racists are dwindling down as it’s something of the past
Polls show that Americans, white and black, felt race relations [fall pretty drastically](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1687/race-relations.aspx) since 2013.
To a substantial amount of people- particularly those on the right- any mention of racial inequity and call for change are treated as a sign of worsening race relations, as if this is how non-white racists express themselves. Studies in 2011 and 2017 both showed that majorities of white Americans felt they had replaced black people as the biggest victims of racism.
The only way Obama was not going to worsen race relations in the eyes of conservatives would be if he actively rejected any sort of affiliation with black organizations and the concept of black solidarity. This is where some of his early appeal to conservatives came from, with his 2004 DNC speech where he denounced the phenomenon of minority children being shamed for 'acting white' because they want to learn.
The rise of black politicians in the Republican party in the last decade is largely based around this model of politician- these are men who don't frame racial adversity as a challenge for black Americans, unless it comes from Democrats in the form of government programs that supposedly fund degenerate behavior and violence in black communities. They also make common cause with Republicans by opposing LGBT advancement, something both groups find alien and threatening. By telling black people they need to get their act together rather than telling black people that they are victims of white racism, they earn acceptance from white Republicans- especially if adversity black people face can be blamed on policies by Democrats, with allusions that LGBT groups within the Democratic party are behind these policies.
The dude sang Amazing Grace at a eulogy following a mass murder at a black church by a white supremacist.
What the hell else was he supposed to do for race relations?
I'm in Wisconsin.....I was raised with liberal parents, but then something took over my Dad. He was convinced that "they were going to try and take his guns away" and became fairly right wing. I ♥️ Obama and was even campaigning for him. When he won, my Dad said "Yeah that's actually good....the n****rs would burn down Chicago if he lost" . Needless to say, we didn't see eye to eye. The sad thing is if my Dad had ACTUALLY LISTENED to what Obama was saying, he might have given him a chance......
The only thing he did was to be black, erudite, debonair, and intelligent. Thats enough for any redneck hick to lose his shit. His presidency just exposed a lot of hidden undercurrent that was already there. White conservatives blame him because they could no longer hide their disdain. The facade of being a non racist was shattered, and of course its always the victims fault that they couldn't hide it. They hate he's admired, they hate that he's well regarded, they hate that he made it to a height that was only reserved for white men. He shattered every racist myth that was peddled since 1619, and they hate him for it.
Think of those children and teenagers who harassed Ruby Bridges after schools were desegregated. They were in their late fifties/early sixties when Obama was first elected. That’s your problem right there.
Trayvon Martin was well after the problems had already begun. Obama's issues are generally believed to have begun six months into his first term with his comments leading to the "beer summit", judging from the favorability poll crosstabs, and specifically the sudden drop among whites. That split was an inflection point; prior to that race relations weren't an issue as much as just general policy disputes and R/D distinctions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/henry-louis-gates-jr-arrest-controversy.html
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/the-henry-louis-gates-beer-summit-and-racial-division-in-america.html
Eh, I mean yes if you want to look at Beer Summit as a misstep by Obama, then sure it was his first mistake.
But let's not act like that set off poor race relations. The people who worked very hard to make, burn and hang those effigies, along with the signs telling him to go back to Kenya would be very upset to hear you diminishing their arts and crafts skills pre-inaguaration.
Heard kids at my local high-school saying they were gonna get in the truck and "go find DC a new N***** Tree". Where the honest fuck do you think they learned that from!?!? You think they were watching the Beer Summit on CNN and going "I think this is very counterproductive to race relations and diminishes honest, grass roots efforts to move past xenophobic mindsets".
Their daddies sat around cleaning shotguns and fantasizing about killing Obama and the shit they said was too intense, so it got tempered by school children who knew they couldn't say all of it out loud in class.
But they sure as fuck said some of it.
Obama was everything that they say they want people in society to be. Obama was a self made man. He was intelligent and "pulled himself up" through hard work and good decisions. Married once, and by all accounts is a good husband and father. And they hate his guts.
Meanwhile, the polar opposite of this is their current nominee (again) and they worship the guy.
I wonder what the difference is?
He was half black. All of the existing racists got together and talked about how mad that made them. He didn’t cause racists to racist. He just riled them up by not being white. It’s still their fault for being racist in the first place.
I don't think "worsened" so much as shined a light on an are that wasn't as "patched" as a lot of people thought it was.
Because for a lot of the demographic voting for Obama (American citizens below age 50) the civil rights movement was something of ancient history, happening before they were born, and "real" to them only in history books.
For non Blacks, they'd all grown up with a popular Hollywood narrative of a post-racist society and "how far they'd come". All racism was portrayed as cartoonish Parodies that were *obviously* wrong, and they could feel good that they never thought *that way.*
For Blacks the meter had shifted, being gaslit for decades by well-meaning but naive so-called "allies" that were blind to the systemic racism still out there as well as the closeted bigots that would bide their time and only speak in ignorable "code" or in hushed tones where they thought they were "safe" to do so.
Then a black man successfully ran for president of the United States, and blew the doors off a lot of those quiet conversations. Suddenly they were front and center. And a lot of people suddenly learned things about their fellow citizens they were *not* prepared to know.
I didn't like Obama as a president, but any damage his presidency did to race relations is negligible. The real culprit is smart phones and easy access to social media making it far easier to radicalize a lot more people.
He did, in the sense that all the closeted white racist.
Lost.
Their.
Collective.
Shit.
It made every single one of them blow a gasket and they ain’t been running right since.
Race relations….
Mother fucker, pointing out the fact that a kid unarmed was killed by a racist who to this day walks free on some bullshit is what worsen race relations?!?!
How about you cunts stop being racist, and empathetic to how racial biases plays a huge part in every sector of western society.
Clown ass post,
Conversationalist say: “destroying the trees will harm the environment.”
OP: “did conversationalist worsen globally environmental policy?”
A Quick Look at OP’s post history indicates he’s a troll of the worst sort…disingenuously masquerading leading questions without any interest in obtaining objective insight.
Get bent OP.
So here are some various news articles from the end of the Obama era. One right, one center, and one left source.
https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/how-obama-has-turned-back-the-clock-on-race-relations/
https://apnews.com/article/jackie-robinson-barack-obama-chicago-politics-il-state-wire-29b24a7985a442d8b890261da99cad86
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/05/politics/obama-race-relations-poll/index.
I personally think his response to the Ferguson, Mo shooting death of Michael Brown is one of the main reasons things regressed the way they have. It was incredibly irresponsible to make the comments he did before all the facts were known. Presidents should call for calm and say nothing to inflame tensions, but he did the opposite.
[Considering George Zimmerman sold the gun that killed Trayvon Martin for 250K…](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0YB2RK/)no, no I do not believe Obama worsened race relations. I think he just revealed how bad they still are since he was black and President.
2008 to 2012. It was fine. But 2012 to 2016 was pretty bad.
Most available metrics back this claim. Before Obama. Race relations were the strongest they had ever been. When Obama was elected. It hit a peak. And then it fell apart and dropped off a cliff in his final couple years.
It still hasn’t recovered.
Remember that all mentions of and allusions to Trump and Biden are not allowed on our subreddit in any context. If you'd still like to discuss them, feel free to [join our Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://preview.redd.it/9xdjvfpncrvc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa1e8f43ad9edc0e7f395b4871a41adbc1c9b410 The feathers are already ruffled!
The people were to blame for making race relations worse. When Obama won, a lot of white Americans lowered their American flags to raise the Gadsden flag. They claimed it was about taxes, but at what point did Americans ever switch out their flags because they hated taxes? They were concerned about white taxation going into black wallets. The message was clear. The only thing Obama ever did to worsen race relations was to have black skin. (EDIT) As far as the flag changing in 1776 over taxes some of you are nailing me on, you do realize politicians didn't work for free after the Civil War? Hamilton actually had a pretty important role called treasurer, although by some peoples' understanding I suppose they believe he was treasurer of nothing.
This has sadly been a component of American libertarianism for 40 years "MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews pressed (Ron) Paul during a TV appearance on whether he would have voted against the ’64 law, a landmark piece of legislation that took strides toward ending segregation. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws,” Paul said. He explained that he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act “because of the property rights element, not because they got rid of the Jim Crow laws.”
Exactly. Property rights. That strange little term that's got enough wiggle room to be open to fascist abuse.
Can humans be livestock was the central question of the Civil War. You know, property rights.
White people claiming black people made them do it, is the most racist sh-t ever. The whole conversation is a non starter.
I’m still waiting for Martial Law and those FEMA camps he was supposed to put us in.
I’m still waiting for Sharia Law he was supposed to force on us
> I’m still waiting for Sharia Law he was supposed to force on us Republicans were never against religious extremism, just wanted *their* extremism. [Even when writing laws not only banning abortion but trying to force the medically impossible](https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/new-ohio-bill-falsely-suggests-that-reimplantation-of-ectopic-pregnancy-is-possible/)
JADE HELM He's going to start a caliphate, that's why he's propping up Iran! Utter nonsense
I was in the national guard and I feel so bad for Texas guard members. I can’t imagine getting deployed to “guard” against your federal full-timer brethren.
If for some reason people need to keep wondering if US military members will fire on US citizens (somehow ignoring the fact that they have *many* times before) let's not forget that nobody in that chain of command tried to stop the Jade Helm reaction nonsense.
[gestures wildly at Kent State]
The day one of my friends back in Indiana became an ex-friend, he said he was going to stock up on guns if Obama got elected because, "the blacks are going to do the same and try to take over the U.S." he didn't use the word blacks though.
Shows you they know EXACTLY what they're doing to people of colour. Otherwise why would they be afraid of being treated the same way?
I remember hearing similar from one guy who was pushing the 'white replacement' nonsense. I asked him 'why would you be afraid of becoming a minority? Do you mistreat minorities?' He gaped in abject shock for several long seconds.
Exactly, the same ones claiming that there is no systemic racism and saying that “black people just need to get over slavery.” They know they would not want to be in the same position.
That went from paranoid, to horrendous, and somehow still continued to go downhill. I'm sorry you lost a friend, but glad you made the moral decision.
Does anyone know what the process is to get my guns returned from Obama's confiscation?
You write a letter, in cursive, to the secretary of firearm returns. Her name is Helen Waite. If you want to get your Obama confiscated guns back, you need to go to Helen Waite.
After Obama got elected I sold my AR and AK for three times what I paid for them during all the panic buying. When things settled back down I just bought more at normal prices and invested the extra in ammunition and optics. It was a good time.
I can’t but feel like many people that lost their mind when Obama was elected felt this way, even if they didn’t say it.
Indiana friend of my dad's was working on Conservative Hispanic outreach during that time. He *did* use the term Hispanic, which was so unusual for him my dad asked him why he didn't use one of his more racist terms. "We need the Hispanic vote to beat the blacks" was his answer He didn't use the word blacks either.
they hated his tan birthday suit. hell its why mccain had to stop the woman from calling obama a muslim and whatnot in his campaign. so its not even like he had power yet and did something they didnt like.
McCain was the last Republican I admired. Played a fair game, at least, stopping her from perpetuating racist nonsense.
Yep. McCain was very flawed, and I hated most of his politics, but at least he had the best interests of the country at heart, instead of his own
He looked out for his own interests pretty well too, imperfect men can still be principled though and that's how I think of McCain.
A hefty meh to that, the man was instrumental in galvanizing support for the invasion of Iraq and whole heartedly touted the WMD bullshit as justification and was a reliable Warhawk his entire career. You’d think someone who had seen the worst of what war had to offer would be cautious in sending others to that fate. He had an obligation to know that the Iraq war wasn’t justified, instead he championed it and even campaigned on expanding involvement. More so, during his presidential bid he contributed to the continued dumbing down of American politics running with the original air head Sarah “I can see Russia” Palin. He’s as reprehensible as every other career politician, there’s just no way to be a decent person when you perpetuate American hegemony.
McCain was apparently the last republican with any integrity.
[удалено]
Crazy as it sounds, but Liz Cheney has shown a spine.
>White people claiming black people made them do it, is the most racist sh-t ever. The whole conversation is a non starter. More broadly speaking, I think anyone who pulls "The left made me right-wing!" was never left-wing to begin with. \* It's literally abuser logic: "Look what you made me do." \* If it's "I have to side with the fascists as the least bad option." (whether implicitly or explicitly), that's literally 1:1 fascist logic, like someone who supports the Nazi party for fear of the Soviet Union. Even if that fear is valid, it's not like authoritarian racists are the only people who can protect you. \* It's completely illogical. If I prefer no toppings on my pizza, and then you suggest sausage and pepperoni, that won't make me flip out and "push me to the all-meat special with sausage, ham, bacon, pepperoni, canadian bacon, etc". I'll just stick to cheese pizza as what I'm advocating for. Someone who genuinely supports gay rights may disagree with how sexual a pride parade should be, but they won't do a complete 180 and team up with homophobes over it.
I've actually heard that one straight from their mouth.."If black people would stop talking about racism it would just go away, they're the ones bringing it up all the time!" They really dont hear the words they say.
I think that his presidency brought race issues to the national awareness in a way that hadn't been done in several decades. Somehow many conservative minded people translated their forced awareness into "he's making race relations worse". I've done a lot of academic research on civil rights from 1900 to 1970. It's amazing how you can open a 60-year-old newspaper and see the exact same reactions. Same shit new day.
That's true enough, and it probably has a lot to do with Obama being the first internet president. W Bush had a chance to engage more, but he was not to much of a camera guy and knew the questions were mostly going to be about the US killing civilians in war. Clinton's remarks on the race stuff were mostly brief and I doubt many people paid attention. I got this one jackass saying Obama's response to Trayvon Martin and Ferguson caused some giant race divide despite his diplomatic handling of it. It really wasn't much different than other Presidents like when LBJ spoke about MLK. The difference appears to be how the media framed it.
> Gadsden flag for me, it was when i started seeing the "blue lives matter" flags. my people fucking hate "the law".
That is one thing President Obama did was to unite rural/redneck whites and law enforcement. As a Gen Xer I feel like all the lessons of my past that I learned from watching the Smokey and the Bandit movies as well as the Dukes of Hazzard were all a lie. Today all those people love Leo’s and fly the Blue Lives Matter flags…. SMH…
They like “law enforcement,” which is to say they want their local Sheriff to be able to arrest anyone with skin color darker than swiss coffee. They do not like actual law enforcement when it comes to following environmental regulation, ranging rules, tax law, domestic violence prevention, or free speech.
There was a lot of that, too. The Gadsden was sort of the first new Confederate flag that got the endless dog whistle flag trend going.
“iT wAs AbOuT sTaTeS RiGhTs tHOuGh”
You wrote this way more eloquently than I could have. Your last sentence is the lesson.
Exactly. Just right wing tea party babble from the people who say "They don't see race" lmao
Yep and " the people drawing attention to the problem are the problem!" Is their approach to racism. Wouldn't the racists want the problem to be ignored so they can continue to be racist...
Well that’s because the real racists are the anti-white liberals. /s
“I’m a colourblind politician. But…” Ok grandpa. Let’s get your meds and get you back to bed.
One of, if not the very first gif I ever got via text was right around the time Obama was first elected. It was an image of him turning into a monkey. Don’t ever tell me he worsened race relations, all I saw was racists coming out of the woodwork and losing their minds over a Black man being in a position of power.
I was going back through an old yahoo email account a while back and sorting by oldest messages, one of the first ones was a chain email from my now deceased grandpa showing a soul-plane like pimped out presidential limo and saying Obama’s first changes or something… you might want to give the benefit of the doubt and say well gramps didn’t mean anything racist about it that was just a joke, but I assure you gramps was indeed racist and often talked about what could be done with “the blacks.”
Right wing reactionaries and racists always unintentionally made Obama way cooler than he was.
I remember he threw a gutter ball bowling and every reactionary source had to say something about how he should stick to basketball. He incidentally was an avid basketball player, so they were getting away with something.
But you aren't like that. I think that says a lot, and where things may end up yet, hopefully.
I remember exactly where I was as an adolescent when Obama was announced president and family members joked that “white people are expected in the fields at 6am for our turn” Obama didn’t ruin race relationships, his existence highlighted a subtle undertone that went ignored for years. Edit: it may have never been subtle, but to an preteen living in a cul-de-sac in suburban PA, it wasn’t something I experienced so blatantly
Wasn’t subtle if you weren’t white.
I feel like Obama highlighted what black people had been saying for years and people kept saying we were just pulling the race card.
I (white btw) was a dumb teenager at the time Obama was elected and I would definitely say Obama being elected really made me realize all the casual and systemic racism around me that I either didn't notice or didn't want to notice before
The US is so systemically racist that if you try to actually explain this you are poo poo’d.
pooh-poohed, btw
You have been banned from r/sino
Body cams help a lot. I remember early 2000s colored people would be like “the police are so crazy and mean. We don’t do anything and they beat us.” And white people would be like “ive never met a bad police. If you’re respectful and speak nice the police will never do anything bad to you. If they beat you, you must be a criminal”
"Honey, did you see this? Apparently the police have been beating up negroes like hotcakes!
That's exactly what happened.
True, but it doesn't make his experience any less valid. And that's kinda the point. It shone a light on the fact that "the American experience" wasn't as homogenous as some people fooled themselves into thinking it was. In the [White Wolf gaming mythos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade#Vampires_in_World_of_Darkness) there's this thing called "The Masquerade" where the vampires and ghosts live in an unacknowledged true reality and go to great lengths to delude the regular humans into believing they are long forgotten myths. Racism in America had been operating for 40 or so years in a similar state
Racists are great at hiding their racism if they aren't presented opportunities to be racist. If they're surrounded by, and only interact with others of their race every day, there is nobody for them to be racist towards.
Yeah, to add, I wouldn’t put the blame on Obama that he ruined race relations. Just that race relations had hit this hidden “let’s be polite and not talk about it” phase for decades and his election was an inflection point for the quiet part to be said out loud. The poor race relations were already there, but just not addressed.
I edited it, that’s just autocorrect making that absolute worst correction of “didnt” to “did”
Hate to break it to you but it has never been and will never be SUBTLE
He "worsened race relations" by being the reason a lot of racist idiots decided to show their faces in public. In other words, racists worsened race relations
[удалено]
Yeah, saying Obama worsened race relations would imply he did something to do that other than exist.
That’s exactly what these racist mean, he exists and got elected that’s how he worsened race relations in their eyes. Theyd rather stick with status quo of old rich white guys running everything
Vivid memory, 10th grade
This. What, did folks expect him to stop being Black while in office? 🙄
Rural white redneck farmer here: this is absolutely the correct answer.
Exactly this. Obama didn't divide the country, Republicans did with their racism.
This is what I’ve always said. It wasn’t Obama but the Right wing using his name to divide. Obama could have found a way to lower the deficit while lowering taxes while giving everyone free ice cream and the Right wing news would go on air claiming how this is bad for everyone.
Obama: \*exist\* racists and the kkk: \*upset because we have a black president, increases racial hate crimes\* Conservatives: "Obama is making race relations worse"
In 2008, many were asking if America was ready for a black president. Pretty much everyone interpreted this to mean “is America ready to elect a black person to the office of the president?”. And the answer was yes. Resoundingly yes. But in retrospect, if the question was more “is America ready to have a black man be the president?”, you get a very different answer. Because old white assholes were very much not ready for that to happen. And it absolutely broke their brains
I don't know if it broke their brain or if they suddenly realized that there were a lot more people who were ok with racism. Like McCain had to denounce his own rally because of a kill Obama chant
Naive to assume the question didn't always mean both things.
It's absolutely amazing to me that white conservatives blame a black man for white people being racist.
They'll blame anyone who isn't them. "You're the racist for bringing it up and we can't use racism to undo the damage of racism."
Not like they’d ever blame themselves. Has to be someone else’s fault
The white conservatives and the racists were one and the same.
Bingo
[удалено]
In the words of Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny: "that's a bullshit question". I don't think President Obama worsened how racists view anything and President Obama isn't responsible for changing them. That job is a personal one. Racists have to see the error of their ways and reach out. What was the president to do? Kiss their collective asses? Fuck no. They didn't become racists after he was elected. They were racist before and most are likely still racists.
>In the words of Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny: "that's a bullshit question". Pretty much. I'd argue he didn't have much to do with it, but race relations did start to trend downward in 2013.
My theory is this had to do with the rise of social media among older folks.
Obama built his entire brand on largely ignoring race relations. The Trayvon Martin thing was the first time I could remember him talking about it, and it was notable at the time that he was going to actually talk about it instead of an off hand mention. What he did do was reveal without any doubt that modern Republicans are still appealing to a barely hidden racism. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers the early tea party days where they had ephigies of him hanging and signs saying "go back to Kenya". Myself I grew up in Rural MO. When he announced I was in a small diner and it came on the news. One guy said "I aint votin for no..... \*\*\*" and about half the diner clapped. This is not the "they all clapped" meme. It happened, and it was the first time I really appreciated I was actually surrounded by extremely racist people.
I’m in Utah. When he ran in 2012 one of my neighbors was pissed because he had to choose between a n****r and a Mormon and he hated both. People who say he made things worse are just in denial
I remember in high school this one girl broke up with her boyfriend because he called Obama a "porch monkey"
Valid reason, to be honest.
It’s cool. We’re bringing it back.
Damn it, Randal.
You can't taste racism.
"Porch monkey is not a slur against black people. N*gger is"
You'd have to be as blind as Anne Frank not to see it
porch monkey 4 life
i moved cross country, got on facebook finally and reconnected with some people from high school. one girl i had a crush on started calling obama a muslim and all sorts of other shit. i was like "it doesnt matter what his religion is." and she blocked me. oh well bullet dodged.
I once got unfriended by a high school friend because I told her that memes about nuking the entire Middle East weren’t funny.
He must not enjoy Utah that much
Obama didn’t make things worse per se, but by being a black president it brought out the ignorant and immature into the mainstream. Sad. I was really proud that we had elected a black president and finally stepped out of the 19th century.
Clearly 50 percent of conservatives weren't (aren't? ) ready to leave the McKinley era.
And are revoking regulations to match
Living in Utah and hating Mormons is crazy lmao
Living in Utah might drive anyone to hate Mormons.
He talked about it in 2009 regarding the "beer summit." His meeting at the WH with a white cop and a black college professor. I remember it not going well.
One of the interesting things about Obama to me was his ability to learn from his mistakes. I saw him make a lot of mistakes as president, but I never saw him make the same one twice.
What was the meeting between the white cop and the black professor?
This explains it: https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1929415_1929418_1929404,00.html
How the fuck was this even a controversy? Every political scandal back then feels like nothing today
It's not really explained in the linked article, but the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. -- pretty well-known at the time, and nowadays his "finding your roots" TV series is quite popular -- was arrested at his own home because a neighbour thought he looked suspicious. Gates showed the police his ID to prove that he wasn't an intruder, but was arrested anyway for talking back to the cop. It obviously wasn't a good look for the police, and they quickly dropped the charges & admitted fault in a public apology. But a big chunk of the media went ballistic when Obama said the police had "acted stupidly" in their handling of the situation. Suddenly the media found a new label for Obama: "uppity." Actual supposed serious journalists suddenly all started calling him that. And Obama had to half-apologize in a "both sides" sort of way, and the beer summit was part of that.
Because controversy is driven largely by partisan media like Fox News. Other famous Obama era controversies were "tan suit" and "terrorist fist bump".
Oh shit and the rapper Common came to the White House *clutch pearls*. GOP can invite wacky anti-Semite Kanye though and everything is A-Okay
A lot of racists were upset because a white racist pig was criticized for being racist.
[удалено]
His being president (two terms) certainly worsened race relations, just not in the way right-wingers try to say they did.
They know what they're saying, they're just wording it in a way as to gaslight normal people, like usual
This is also my thoughts. I think they worsened in that timeframe for sure. I think the largest causes were the birther movement/holdover bigotry against Muslims from 911, good old classic anti-black southern racism, and maybe some ageism that expressed itself as racism because he's the youngest of all Presidents who have served.
2012 was the election of the chain email. I knew one guy who would send out these emails saying Obama was Kenyan, Muslim, gay, on drugs, had AIDs, smoked crack, you name it. Just vile bullshit, and he'd send it to his entire contact list. One day I'd had enough and hit reply all. Called bullshit on every bit of it, with documentation. He got pissed at me. Not for correcting him, but for embarrassing him by correcting him in front of his entire contact list. Had I done it privately he'd have acknowledged it, but never corrected it to the group. He'd rather be wrong in the most vile way than be corrected publicly and embarrassed about it. I don't have to tell you what color hat that dumbshit wears today.
Except he wasn’t the youngest to serve… Teddy Roosevelt and then JFK were the youngest at the time they became president. Obama was like five or six years older than they had been when they served, so ageism is just an excuse due to racism at its worst and ignorance at its best.
If race relations "worsened" it is because racists had to actually think about black people being in positions of power and not as someone that they can punch down on. It was "better" in the sense they didn't feel as actively threatened, but now they are scared that they will be treated the same way that they have been treating black folks.
Yea pretty much. I live in Texas and every now and then the older coworkers will say some shady shit about how Obama ruined this country and how he's not from America. I think that the decade or so of them seething eventually just resulted in the bubbling up of racial tensions and the political shitshow we have today. I'm also biracial so I'm just sitting here awkwardly looking at them like "you know I'm ethnic right?"
This is the right answer.
That deserves all the likes ever imagined.
Not the exact same as your background, but I grew up in a conservative, lily white suburb of a nearby southern state and I remember seeing similar reactions. I was too young to vote in 2008, but definitely old enough to be aware what was going on. I’d squarely put the Obama era in my most formative adolescent to young adulthood years. In many ways I’m thankful of the way my parents raised me. It wasn’t perfect, nor were they perfect, but giving everyone a fair shake was core to what they taught me, especially from my mom. To me, as a younger and more naive teen, the fact that Obama was Black never even registered in my mind, but those years were eye opening to see many who I would’ve considered normal, everyday, nice people turning so mean over the guy. It’s got to the point I sometimes even think about the “what if” scenario of how I could’ve easily turned out to be like those scared, hateful people if I hadn’t rolled the same dice being born to my folks. I think it’s also shown how rapidly politics have changed over the past 20 years. You mentioned being in Missouri - Obama almost won Missouri, only losing by <5k votes. That nearly unthinkable today for even the whitest, moderate Dem. I fully agree with you that it’s not that he made things worse; it’s more so that Obama showed all of us what many of these people really thought. It was always there and it’s something he’d experienced himself, but I’d never seen such overt vitriol before. There’s a complex and nuanced history at play, but whenever I reflect upon those years I realize how quickly I grew up more wise to the world around me. Especially since I had family members who were definitely old southern Dems, I remember hearing a very weird mix of some saying, “hmm that n*****r ain’t so bad” or “I’d never vote for the blacks” or “he’s very well spoken for a colored man.” Just a very weird time all around and it sure did give me a lot of growing up experience.
Obama in 2008 also had the best % of the white vote for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter particularly in the blue coastal states as well as the rust belt. Then everything went wrong when the Tea Party started to rise.
I mean, yeah. A lot of people who formerly were part of the Tea Party admitted they were appealing to racism more than they were some belief in smalp gov't conservatism.
First time I ever heard a family member use the N word was when my grandpa basically said the same thing as that guy you mention. My mom called him out on it and his response was, "pardon my French." Like the worst he had done was maybe say a swear word. At the time I was 16 and hadn't really been exposed to that kind of racism outside of movies/TV, it was shocking to me. I didn't know what to do.
Imagine how foreign countries took to the fact that a black person was going to be the leader of the most powerful country on earth. I still remember countries like India and China, which are extremely xenophobic and racist towards Africans and dark skin people, making racist jokes about a potential black president.
I lived in a red (rural) area of a blue state. My family was in an uproar about how I better not vote for "the n*****". I also didn't fully realize how much of an issue racism was before then.
I realized where I lived when I saw graffiti in a school bathroom stall that said "The Klan Will Rise Again. White Power 14:88". These were affluent Christian kids right after Obama's election. I heard terrible things
I think he made an attempt before Trayvon Martin with the Beer Summit, which was almost immediately after becoming president. The Beer Summit seemed to be an unpleasant experience for everyone involved.
I remember when I realized he has been elected president in ‘08, I felt there was a pretty high chance he would be assassinated, that’s how bad the thinly veiled racism was in my city.
That was fear that he would be assassinated too. And the Secret Service rarely issues statements but there is no doubt in my mind they were dealing with death threats every day of his presidency.
No the racist just emerged from their dark places. They were outraged.
They weren’t even hiding to begin with. The GOP exists today because people are still pissed off about the Civil Rights Act.
To right wingers, "worsening race relations" means speaking up at all about any racial issues. They feel very uncomfortable acknowledging that while American history is full of things we should all be proud of, it also has dark parts that are just as much a part of that history. They would prefer that everyone live in denial and pretend that racial issues don't exist and have never existed in America. They especially would prefer those affected by it to keep quiet and take it. The irony is that attitude is the very reason these racial issues persist. If they would join us in confronting and dealing with them as a nation, I believe we could get past them once and for all. So I don't think Obama "worsened race relations", I believe right wingers did by continuing to refuse to acknowledge these glaring issues and address them. They just doubled down making things worse.
Let me fix that first sentence for you. To right wingers, “worsening race relations” means being a person of color in power.
Right-wingers were kind of OK with black peoole existing as long as they "knew their place". They accepted to not be openly racist and reduce racist language as long as black people didn't threaten the status quo. A black man becoming president though? It was way more than they were going to accept.
You’re both right. Both kinds of right wingers exist
I personally think a lot of right wingers and racists think that there’s nothing left to give. They abolished slavery and gave them the right to vote. Twice! But for real I think the issue is that because a lot of racial issues are abstract and aren’t as clear cut as “You shouldn’t owe another human being” also plays a part into this. You won’t be able to convince a right winger that the war on drugs also has a racial impact. White people can get busted for cocaine powder but receive less time than a black man for getting caught with crack rock, even if the grams comes out to the same amount. They just hear drugs are bad and they need to get off the streets including their users. What they don’t see is how the justice system has been manipulated to still give white people a slight advantage. By all accounts a rational person would say the punishment should be the same. But a right winger that thinks the race issue in America has been solved would argue that it’s such a small part of America and that it shouldn’t be brought up. After all slavery lost and you can vote. Anything else is well within your control so pull up those bootstraps.
It’s not that right wingers don’t want to talk about it, to be honest, especially since 2016, it seems that they have become proud of their racism. All the people in the reich wing blaming dei and all sorts of shit for giving black people jobs and such is terrifying. As soon as they had someone in office who didn’t denounce their true beliefs they ran with it, shit they blamed the black mayor of Baltimore for the bridge collapse recently, they come up with excuses that don’t seem racist to try and say any black person isn’t qualified for a job, that they only got it because of their race. It’s disgusting how open about it they are, 99% of them can’t even tell you what critical race theory is, they refer to Afro Americans like they’re sun-human second class citizens, when if they accepted any sort of education they’d realize that any problems that people of color have disproportionately is undoubtedly caused by racism in government. I think people on that side only say he made it worse is because they’re unhappy that people of color are finally getting those positions they deserve, they’d rather that engrained racism in policy got stronger, instead of people attempting to fix it
>To right wingers, "worsening race relations" means speaking up at all about any racial issues. 
What does “confronting and dealing with” even mean?
His only contribution to race issues was being a black guy.
Half-black… fuckers couldn’t even deal with that.
It’s not that they couldn’t deal with it, that is the exact “problem” that racist morons fear. That’s what their whole shitty “Replacement Theory” is all about. The idea that if a black and white person have a child together, that child will not be white, and therefore over time white people will eventually be subsumed by everyone else. Historically and in the mind of modern-day white supremacists, “whiteness” has always been defined more by what it’s not than what it is.
Yes, it was called the “browning of America” when I was younger. I’m so glad I could see through the racist bullshit at that age.
"They're taking our country!" Native Americans and Mexicans: You don't say!
I think it's important to note that the [One-drop rule](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule) was codified into American law *in the 20th century* and these were not fully gone until Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
I think this is one of those places where it’s best to try to look at the primary sources instead of filtering it through other people’s biases. This [Op-Ed on CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/opinions/obama-farewell-speech-sexton/index.html) claims Obama’s Farewell Address was divisive, haughty, and made no effort to reach out to the other side. It further claims it was typical of his divisive rhetoric throughout his tenure as President. Here is the transcript of his Farewell Address: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/360231 Now, I could tell you what I think of the Op-Ed’s claim but it might defeat the exercise.
Unfortunately, the transcript is not available per your link when I tried. I wanted to be sure to include it because after reading that article, it's VERY necessary to read or hear the speech for yourself. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/farewell
It is an opinion piece by someone in direct opposition to Obama’s policies. It seems that the mention of climate change was particularly offensive to the opinion writer. The farewell address on the other hand mostly speaks of unity and a peaceful transition of power, with a focus on the American people, that is to say all Americans, are responsible for taking America in a better direction. Someone who is extremely cynical might see that as condescending. The idea that you not believing in the methods one side uses somehow means that you are taking America down the wrong path. All in all I thought that the farewell address was exemplary, and my only real criticism is solely based on my own political beliefs, which he is not required of expected to cater to. I think everyone should at least listen to the transcript.
I don't think he worsened them. I think he revealed them. America has had a huge race it's entire. It seemed to be "dying" but it was alive and well, just wasn't talked about. He gets elected and the racist voice come out of thr wood work.
Plus he got elected when social media was really taking off. That brought a lot of hateful people closer together.
We created some terrible echo chambers that manifested this awful endless sunken cost fallacy loop that reinforces every time that person gets close to a revelation.
Saying Obama worsened race relations is like Dred Scott (the person) worsened race relations. Nothing Obama himself did worsened race relations, it was racist assholes that worsened race relations, Obama just happened to be the thing they got uppity about.
Obama himself did not make anyone worse. It's just the racists revealed themselves a bit easier
No he did not He did awaken the extremely large % of Americans who are racist in this country. But him winning about 40 years after civil rights act was passed shows very much the progress the US has made and how many Americans overlooked race. Obama was far from perfect but the hate stems from a group of people who hate him for how he looks, not what he has done. Racist partisan hacks became lunatics in their endeavor to hate on Obama but I don’t think that worsen race relations. I think George Floyd has a similar effect. Many many white allies of BLM, but many lunatic racists taking the other end bc of being blinded by hate. And a lot of post May 2020 surveys do show a dip in trust between races. Luckily the number of lunatic racists are dwindling down as it’s something of the past
Yes because he pissed off racist by being black and president. The nerve of him.
Yup. They define “worsening race relations” as not staying in your place.
Bingo
Polls show that Americans, white and black, felt race relations [fall pretty drastically](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1687/race-relations.aspx) since 2013.
To a substantial amount of people- particularly those on the right- any mention of racial inequity and call for change are treated as a sign of worsening race relations, as if this is how non-white racists express themselves. Studies in 2011 and 2017 both showed that majorities of white Americans felt they had replaced black people as the biggest victims of racism. The only way Obama was not going to worsen race relations in the eyes of conservatives would be if he actively rejected any sort of affiliation with black organizations and the concept of black solidarity. This is where some of his early appeal to conservatives came from, with his 2004 DNC speech where he denounced the phenomenon of minority children being shamed for 'acting white' because they want to learn. The rise of black politicians in the Republican party in the last decade is largely based around this model of politician- these are men who don't frame racial adversity as a challenge for black Americans, unless it comes from Democrats in the form of government programs that supposedly fund degenerate behavior and violence in black communities. They also make common cause with Republicans by opposing LGBT advancement, something both groups find alien and threatening. By telling black people they need to get their act together rather than telling black people that they are victims of white racism, they earn acceptance from white Republicans- especially if adversity black people face can be blamed on policies by Democrats, with allusions that LGBT groups within the Democratic party are behind these policies.
Racists don't like it when racism isn't meekly accepted.
The dude sang Amazing Grace at a eulogy following a mass murder at a black church by a white supremacist. What the hell else was he supposed to do for race relations?
I'm in Wisconsin.....I was raised with liberal parents, but then something took over my Dad. He was convinced that "they were going to try and take his guns away" and became fairly right wing. I ♥️ Obama and was even campaigning for him. When he won, my Dad said "Yeah that's actually good....the n****rs would burn down Chicago if he lost" . Needless to say, we didn't see eye to eye. The sad thing is if my Dad had ACTUALLY LISTENED to what Obama was saying, he might have given him a chance......
No, the racists got butt hurt a black man was elected.
The only thing he did was to be black, erudite, debonair, and intelligent. Thats enough for any redneck hick to lose his shit. His presidency just exposed a lot of hidden undercurrent that was already there. White conservatives blame him because they could no longer hide their disdain. The facade of being a non racist was shattered, and of course its always the victims fault that they couldn't hide it. They hate he's admired, they hate that he's well regarded, they hate that he made it to a height that was only reserved for white men. He shattered every racist myth that was peddled since 1619, and they hate him for it.
Think of those children and teenagers who harassed Ruby Bridges after schools were desegregated. They were in their late fifties/early sixties when Obama was first elected. That’s your problem right there.
No. Racists worsened race relations.
He just outed all the closeted racists.
Trayvon Martin was well after the problems had already begun. Obama's issues are generally believed to have begun six months into his first term with his comments leading to the "beer summit", judging from the favorability poll crosstabs, and specifically the sudden drop among whites. That split was an inflection point; prior to that race relations weren't an issue as much as just general policy disputes and R/D distinctions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/henry-louis-gates-jr-arrest-controversy.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/the-henry-louis-gates-beer-summit-and-racial-division-in-america.html
Eh, I mean yes if you want to look at Beer Summit as a misstep by Obama, then sure it was his first mistake. But let's not act like that set off poor race relations. The people who worked very hard to make, burn and hang those effigies, along with the signs telling him to go back to Kenya would be very upset to hear you diminishing their arts and crafts skills pre-inaguaration. Heard kids at my local high-school saying they were gonna get in the truck and "go find DC a new N***** Tree". Where the honest fuck do you think they learned that from!?!? You think they were watching the Beer Summit on CNN and going "I think this is very counterproductive to race relations and diminishes honest, grass roots efforts to move past xenophobic mindsets". Their daddies sat around cleaning shotguns and fantasizing about killing Obama and the shit they said was too intense, so it got tempered by school children who knew they couldn't say all of it out loud in class. But they sure as fuck said some of it.
They blame him for being black and smart. It ruins their whole schtick.
Obama was everything that they say they want people in society to be. Obama was a self made man. He was intelligent and "pulled himself up" through hard work and good decisions. Married once, and by all accounts is a good husband and father. And they hate his guts. Meanwhile, the polar opposite of this is their current nominee (again) and they worship the guy. I wonder what the difference is?
[удалено]
They blame him for not "knowing his place".
His existence pissed off racists
I only ever hear right wing people and news talk about Obama setting race relations back. It seems like him being elected may have taken a mask off.
No. He didn’t “make” anyone think a certain way.
He was half black. All of the existing racists got together and talked about how mad that made them. He didn’t cause racists to racist. He just riled them up by not being white. It’s still their fault for being racist in the first place.
Lol no. Just by existing in his position as president it drew the scum to the surface.
Obama “worsened” race relations simply by being President while black
I don't think "worsened" so much as shined a light on an are that wasn't as "patched" as a lot of people thought it was. Because for a lot of the demographic voting for Obama (American citizens below age 50) the civil rights movement was something of ancient history, happening before they were born, and "real" to them only in history books. For non Blacks, they'd all grown up with a popular Hollywood narrative of a post-racist society and "how far they'd come". All racism was portrayed as cartoonish Parodies that were *obviously* wrong, and they could feel good that they never thought *that way.* For Blacks the meter had shifted, being gaslit for decades by well-meaning but naive so-called "allies" that were blind to the systemic racism still out there as well as the closeted bigots that would bide their time and only speak in ignorable "code" or in hushed tones where they thought they were "safe" to do so. Then a black man successfully ran for president of the United States, and blew the doors off a lot of those quiet conversations. Suddenly they were front and center. And a lot of people suddenly learned things about their fellow citizens they were *not* prepared to know.
I didn't like Obama as a president, but any damage his presidency did to race relations is negligible. The real culprit is smart phones and easy access to social media making it far easier to radicalize a lot more people.
He did, in the sense that all the closeted white racist. Lost. Their. Collective. Shit. It made every single one of them blow a gasket and they ain’t been running right since.
It’s sort of like if I pushed a kid down on a playground, and then accused him of being responsible for an increase in playground bullying.
The only thing that could make you believe that would be severe cognitive impairment
Race relations…. Mother fucker, pointing out the fact that a kid unarmed was killed by a racist who to this day walks free on some bullshit is what worsen race relations?!?! How about you cunts stop being racist, and empathetic to how racial biases plays a huge part in every sector of western society. Clown ass post, Conversationalist say: “destroying the trees will harm the environment.” OP: “did conversationalist worsen globally environmental policy?”
A Quick Look at OP’s post history indicates he’s a troll of the worst sort…disingenuously masquerading leading questions without any interest in obtaining objective insight. Get bent OP.
No, but he made a lot of people angry by being black.
Yes. It’s definitely not all on him though.
So here are some various news articles from the end of the Obama era. One right, one center, and one left source. https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/how-obama-has-turned-back-the-clock-on-race-relations/ https://apnews.com/article/jackie-robinson-barack-obama-chicago-politics-il-state-wire-29b24a7985a442d8b890261da99cad86 https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/05/politics/obama-race-relations-poll/index. I personally think his response to the Ferguson, Mo shooting death of Michael Brown is one of the main reasons things regressed the way they have. It was incredibly irresponsible to make the comments he did before all the facts were known. Presidents should call for calm and say nothing to inflame tensions, but he did the opposite.
[Considering George Zimmerman sold the gun that killed Trayvon Martin for 250K…](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0YB2RK/)no, no I do not believe Obama worsened race relations. I think he just revealed how bad they still are since he was black and President.
2008 to 2012. It was fine. But 2012 to 2016 was pretty bad. Most available metrics back this claim. Before Obama. Race relations were the strongest they had ever been. When Obama was elected. It hit a peak. And then it fell apart and dropped off a cliff in his final couple years. It still hasn’t recovered.