Racism has always been an issue in the life of the Americans since the early years and is still a grave volatile problem in the United States. Racial conflict affects the legal system and the Obama presidency in various ways that are not very open to the citizens. According to Randall Kennedy, the president has not managed to elevate the United States into a post-racial nation. There are several cultural artifacts including speeches, articles, off-record remarks, sermons, political ads, court cases, and congressional outbursts among others that indicate Barack Obama’s failure concerning racism. The terms under which the President won the elections, the circumstances that he uses to seek reelection, as well as the conditions that he uses to govern the nation all indicate the persistence of race and all its related factors (Kennedy 22). Besides, President Obama’s African American wife increased the goodwill he had with the black community. He was forced to be black enough and still not too black to win the favor of the Americans.
Additionally, by having a dark-skinned wife indicated his commitment to the black identity where his roots belong. For that reason, many blacks believed in the president’s commitment to being racially fair. However, President Obama is overwhelmingly popular among the African Americans, and their enthusiasm is credited to their neediness since the blacks are used to being neglected and mistreated therefore they tend to exaggerate whenever they get an authority that treats them with even a little respect. Ultimately, Obama carefully expresses himself using the passive voice in his race speech simultaneously acknowledging slavery while obscuring enslavers (Kennedy 104). Therefore, there is still the persistence of the color line in the Obama presidency. He has not been successful in overcoming the racial resistance as well as neutralizing it.
Works Cited
Kennedy, Randall. The Persistence Of The Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Print.
