Obama in Black and White

On July 19, Barack Obama did something that will be remembered as a milestone in his presidency. He burst into the White House pressroom, interrupted his spokesman and directed the reporters to address the issue of racism in the United States. He obviously had something to say, something that had bothered him since a Florida jury acquitted the killer of a black teenager named Trayvon Martin.

This is what happened on the night of Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012 in a residential neighborhood in the town of Sanford, Florida. The neighborhood is a gated community, protected by private security. A young, black boy was returning to the house he was visiting when he was spotted by an armed guard named George Zimmerman who followed the teenager and, after an altercation, killed him with a single gunshot.

The trial lasted one month and on July 13, the jury acquitted Zimmerman. The jury rejected the charges presented by the district attorney and accepted that Zimmerman acted in self-defense. There were protest demonstrations against the decision, and it reopened the question of racism in the United States. The case that also brings up the issue of how easy it is to carry firearms in that country.

It is a case that will be talked about for a long time. Consider the makeup of the jury: six women, five white and one Hispanic. Consider also Zimmerman himself: He is the son of a white American man and a Peruvian mother, and identifies himself as Hispanic.

Racial discrimination occurs on a daily basis in the United States, as well as in the rest of the world. We have all uttered blatantly racist words. We have all listened to racist jokes. And we all know that the coexistence of different races on the planet has become a universal problem.

But in the United States, racism is closely linked to the slavery period of past centuries. Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House has changed American history. His wife Michelle’s great grandfather was a slave. Obama, however, has a very different history.

In his autobiography, he allows a glimpse of his life’s fluctuations between black and white. He speaks of his infancy and adolescence with his white mother and grandparents and later of his Indonesian stepfather, only to later face and try to resolve the influence of his black father whose death encourages him to seek out his Kenyan roots.

To many African-Americans, Obama isn’t black; for a not so small a number of Americans Obama is unacceptable precisely because he is black. This tension between black and white [identities] is present within Obama and perhaps has defined him as a person and a politician. His attitude in the face of many problems reveals a pragmatic attitude learned from individuals (maternal grandparents) in the Midwest of the United States. Rarely does he present solutions from the agenda of traditional black politicians. In many ways he is a white man with black skin.

Obama’s blackness is something that has been acquired with age. Up until he began university, his life was not typical of a black teenager. He lived among whites and later spent some years in Indonesia. Of course there were times in which he felt discrimination. But, as he himself tells it, it was in New York when he was dating a white woman that he began to feel black, a process that continued during his years in Chicago as a social worker.

What is surprising about Obama is that in all of his speeches as a politician he has avoided playing the race card, at least up to now. Hence the importance of what he said on July 19. It’s an attempt to put the issue of racism on the discussion table, coming from the perspective of a thinking man who happens to be black and is the president of the United States.

Obama said that the jury had reached its verdict and that it must be respected. But, he added, it must be put into context; it is necessary to see how people have reacted and [listen to] what they feel about the matter. He recalled that when Trayvon Martin died, he said that he [Trayvon] could have been his son. He now added that he [Trayvon] could have been him 35 years ago. He stressed the pain that the black community feels because they see this in light of a series of experiences and a history that has not been overcome. The key phrase in English is: a history that doesn’t go away.

Later he described some experiences common to black men in America, experiences that he himself had had: the feeling that you’re being followed when you enter a department store, hearing people lock their car doors when you cross the street or seeing how a woman holds on tight to her pocket book when you enter an elevator.

According to Obama, the black population knows that there are very marked differences in how the laws are applied to people of different races, including the death penalty and drug possession. They all know that a disproportionate number of black youths are involved in crime and many of them are also crime victims. But part of the reason for this stems from a violent and complicated history.

The president recognizes that racism as well as the practice of racial profiling exist in some police departments, and he stresses the necessity of changing certain laws and the need to help put black youths on a path toward a better and more productive life.

He ended by admitting that the Trayvon Martin case must serve to make society better and that he had confidence in the younger generation. Certainly, Obama’s words were well received by a large sector of the black population. It remains to be seen how the rest of the country will react. But what is important is that the president discussed it.