Member-only story
The Black American Lynching of The First Black President
From black savior to black step brotha
With the recent release of former President Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, Americans are called upon once again to evaluate the success or failure of his presidency. Black Americans, specifically, will often judge him based on his ability to force the rest of America to finally treat us as equals. In much of black America, he is evaluated not on his success as a president, but as a messiah. But no one seems to give thought to the other burden he bared, of protecting the very idea that a black person could actually be president.
Much like with the black quarterback in the National Football League, the primary argument against the idea of a black president has always been that black people are simply not smart enough to do the job. Despite being probably the most well-spoken and knowledgeable president of my lifetime, critics of the former president most often call him an idiot or come up with some other way to further the myth of African American intellectual inferiority. Even more, than they call Obama a secret Kenyan Muslim who wanted to institute Sharia law in the United States, even more than they call him a black racist who only cared about the lives of black people, they fall back time and again to questioning his intelligence.
