Obama’s legacy started early in his presidency. Not quite in office for six months, Obama showed his hand with his characterization that “The police acted stupidly” in reference to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates a professor at Harvard who, locked out of his house, broke in. A neighbor, not recognizing Gates, called 911. The police arrived, things didn’t go well, and Gates was arrested.
When asked about race and the incident a week later, Obama responded:
I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.
Without the facts, Obama stated the police acted stupidly and implied that racism might have played a role. Nothing, however, about Gates’ reported “loud and tumultuous behavior.” For Obama, it was just racism and police misbehavior.
Obama said:
You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son…Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.
Again. All race, no facts.
But there’s more.
About Michael Brown’s death, Obama said:
In too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement… Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.
About the jury failing to indict the NYPD officer involved in Eric Garner’s death, Obama said:
[T]hat we are going to take specific steps to improve the training and the work with state and local governments when it comes to policing in communities of color; that we are going to be scrupulous in investigating cases where we are concerned about the impartiality and accountability that’s taking place.
In these instances and more, Obama made it all about race when a black man was affected by a police action or killed by a non-black person. (George Zimmerman was called a “white Hispanic.”) It’s no surprise that the BLM movement began under Obama, nor that the fiction of “systemic racism” took hold, nor that the black victimization ideology became omnipresent.
That’s unfortunate.
As Rod Steiger might have said, imagine if you will, if Obama had handled those incidents differently.
What if he had said about Gates: He should probably have remembered that the police were simply trying to protect his neighborhood after neighbors called them. Misunderstandings happen.
Or this about Brown: Michael Brown was killed after stealing from a store, attacking the proprietor, and attacking a policeman. Had Mr. Brown not done these things, he’d likely be alive.
What if he had responded to the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, after Brown’s death by taking to the airwaves and telling black Americans that the problem in their communities is not racist police, but criminal activity and fighting with police?
What if he had nationalized National Guard troops to restore peace in Baltimore or Ferguson, rather than standing by and later coercing police forces around the country into “consent decrees that invariably increase crime.
But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, Barack Obama reinforced the notion that blacks are victims of systemic racism, that they cannot win on an even playing field, and that in any negative outcome, racism must be the cause.
It is that pervasive belief in black victimization that leads us to where we are today. The Internet is simply bulging with videos of blacks behaving badly. Black flash mobs robbing stores. Blacks punching random people on the street. Blacks pushing people in front of trains, running over bicyclists, attacking bus drivers, destroying merchandise in stores, rioting on cruise ships, attacking airline workers, and more. Sure, we must state the obligatory reality that other people commit crimes too, but the fact of the matter is, blacks do so at far higher rates.
Race relations are reaching a boiling point. To put this in perspective, in 2007, 75% of whites and 71% of blacks thought race relations in America were either good or very good. By 2021, those numbers were down to 43% and 42% respectively, and no doubt they’re lower today.
The reality of that dichotomy can be seen in two events from last month.
In April, Karmelo Anthony, a 17-year-old black high school student, knifed and killed fellow 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a track meet in Frisco, Texas. The family, claiming self-defense, has raised over $600,000 in support, with many of Anthony’s supporters posting explicitly anti-white racist comments.
Later that same month, Shiloh Hendrix a white woman in Rochester, New York was captured on video calling a black child a “nigger”—vile word for certain, but one frequently used by blacks, even as it’s arbitrarily off limits to whites. After claims of death threats and pleas for security, she raised over $700,000, with many of her supporters posting explicitly anti-black racist comments.
Combine all of that with the growing phenomenon called “Black fatigue,” as well as cities, states, and members of Congress calling for reparations, and you get an idea of where America’s temperature is on the scale of race relations.
And that’s where we are today. Obama had the opportunity to go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents. He not only didn’t take it, but he made it worse.
For longer than I can remember, we’ve been told that America needs to have a Conversation about Race™. We did, for generations, but it was always about whites abusing or keeping blacks down. That is, or at least is now, the wrong conversation. The conversation America needs to have today is pretty much the opposite. Far too many blacks see the system, the police, whites, and society at large as racist, with the corollary that they see themselves as victims…but victims with a pass from law enforcement. (And no, there’s no way to square that pass with “systemic racism.”) Therefore, they feel like they can do anything without consequences. That’s a recipe for disaster, both for blacks and for America. And that’s Barack Obama’s legacy.
There may be a tiny sliver of hope, however. There are a growing number of black personalities and potential leaders who are pushing back on that victimization narrative. Guys like Jason Whitlock, Byron Donalds, Charles Payne, Jason Riley and others are regularly telling their millions of followers how to succeed in life sans the victimization narrative, sort of a wider version of what Chris Rock did with his spectacular video How not to get your ass kicked by the police!
With Donald Trump at the helm, Barack Obama’s legacy has the potential to be reversed as more Americans of all hues decide that the ‘everything is racist’ shibboleth and, more broadly, the cancer of DEI get the derision they so badly deserve.
Follow Vince on X at @ImperfectUSA
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