Dear liberals: No, Obama can’t be ‘black enough’ for you

Okay, I know it’s been a minute since this exchange (Bill Maher on his political chat show), but it embodies the American left’s flaws that seldom get talked about…

Dear White Liberals of America:

Barack Obama is not Samuel Jackson. He’s not Jay-Z. He’s not Chris Rock. He’s not the one who you thought might kick your ass the other weekend in the club.

Obama is exactly what you wanted—a smart, but culturally middle of the road black guy who won’t do anything to scare you or your friends. He’s not aggressive. He’s not confrontational. He’s not defiant. He doesn’t have swag or flavor or any of the stuff you like to project on him and claim to want to see more of now. And most importantly, his policies do nothing to address systemic inequities in our society that have benefited you and yours for several hundred years or so.

Why?

Because Obama’s smarter than all of you and he knows that if he had displayed any of that during his historic campaign, many of you wouldn’t have voted for him in the first place.

Everyone wanted Obama to smack Tony Hayward upside the head. Sling a few “mofos” at defiant Republicans and disrespectful Tea partiers. You want him to do everything he said he’ll do even if it means pissing off every moderate and conservative in the US.

But it won’t happen. Obama is, more so than George Bush even, the Great Appeaser. He’s going to walk the middle till the middle shifts or turns into a dead end. That’s what he is. That’s what he needed to be to get elected. And for all I know, that’s what he may be at heart.

But this nonsense of you liberals swearing you wish Obama would be more than what he’s shown is a joke. These calls for Obama to speak on race, even more so.

Imagine turning on your TV one evening and there’s Barack Obama behind a podium laying out one of these:

“The racial and cultural bias that has long ravaged America knows know political or geographic ideology. It’s not a problem of the ‘older generation’. Nor is it a problem of just so-called ‘white male patriarchy’.

I’m sad to say that in my years as a student, community organizer and politicians, I’ve seen just as much racial and cultural bias from White Liberals as I have from White Conservatives. As much from White women looking down on women of colour as I have from White men who are often blamed exclusively for the racism in America…

That our inner city schools which largely cater to Black students and students of colour can suck to high hell generation after generation from Reconstruction till now, while our suburban schools which cater to predominantly white student bodies can flourish is simply unacceptable. It’s even more unacceptable that we blame inner city parents and students—neither of whom have the power to hire or fire teachers or set curriculum or budgets for the condition of their schools… It’s unjust that we have a two tier justice system where depending on your skin color and resources to hire a quality defense, you’re almost guaranteed to go jail…

But I knew there was something wrong back in the spring of 2008, when despite winning the DNC nomination fair and square I was pressured not by conservatives but by white liberals to pay the campaign debts of Hilary Clintion, an opponent that I beat otherwise her white liberal/white feminist backers would go support McCain/Palin ticket.

Imagine that?

You win fair and square and your reward is to compensate the person you beat, a person whose personal net worth dwarfs yours by some ten fold? Would we tell Nike to pay reebok’s debts because they’re winning? Would we demand McDonald’s compensate Burger King or Wendy’s simply for winning? Would we do this for any other presidential candidate? You think Hilary would’ve paid my debts had I lost?

Furthermore, imagine being told that your opponent ‘deserved’ a cabinet position and that if I knew what was good for me, I’d see that she was at least offered one?

As folks from another generation would say, ‘That’s mighty White of you.’

This is why I don’t have specific policies aimed at helping African Americans even though the deck has been stacked against them for so very long. There’s not a doubt in my mind that I’d be called a reverse racist just as much by my Democratic supporters and much as by my Republican opponents.

I am the change you see because you see only what you want to see….”

Now if President Obama ever gave a speech like that—one that demanded as much of White Liberals as White Liberals sanctimoniously demand of White Conservatives, he’d be run out of DC on a rail. Forget that: Obama would never have made it to Washington or out of the Illinois State Senate for that matter. (And if you know Chicago politics as I do, you know he wouldn’t have even made it that far.)

Fact is, Barack Obama is being excatly what you need him to be in order to be president. And that’s not his shortcoming, but rather it’s yours.

Black Canseco is the author of Knock The Hustle: How to save your job and your life from coporate America. He writes at hustleknockin.com

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