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Fascinating article by Gavin Esler in today's Daily Mail on the subject of racism in the USA.
The ugly question that won't go away... Can America EVER unite behind a black President?
By Gavin Esler
Last updated at 9:39 AM on 17th September 2009
Race issue: Barack Obama
One of the greatest hopes for the Obama presidency was that it would finally heal America's worst wound - racism. This week has shown that for all the good press Barack Obama has enjoyed at home and abroad, the wound is still there, just beneath the surface, and it takes very little to open it up again.
In the months since the first African-American President was sworn into office in January this year, American commentators have tip-toed around the race issue. Some have pretended it is no longer even relevant.
Others have rejoiced that a clearly loving and successful black family in the White House is providing a role model for others in a society in which black families have often been portrayed negatively.
But former U.S. President Jimmy Carter caused the issue to explode into the open again this week with his claims that much of the vitriol directed at Obama's ambitious healthcare-reform plan is 'based on racism'.
If Carter is correct - and I have spoken to white as well as black Americans who broadly agree he is - then simply putting an African-American President in office has not been enough to reverse the bitterest legacy of America's original sin, slavery.
Even worse, it has now tainted the most difficult issue Obama faces, changing the U.S. healthcare system. As Carter put it: there is 'an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be President'.
Certainly, the healthcare debate has created a far wider ideological battleground than the rights and wrongs of Obama's policy proposals. In sometimes furious town-hall meetings, anti-Obama protesters have talked about 'taking back' their country.
Some have portrayed Obama with a Hitler moustache - in a crude suggestion that he has totalitarian ambitions.
Others have suggested that he is not really an American citizen - pointing to his Kenyan father and childhood in Indonesia - and is therefore ineligible for office, not a 'real' President with 'real' American values.
Despite the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is a practising Christian, there are even those who still claim he is a Muslim. It would be tempting to dismiss such hysteria as belonging to a lunatic fringe element. But then came the 'Wilson outburst'.
When President Obama made his big televised speech on healthcare to Congress last week, one Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson, screamed out 'you lie'.
This was shocking and unprecedented to Americans of both parties and of all racial backgrounds. The President of the United States is not simply, like a British prime minister, the head of a government. He is also, like the Queen, the head of state.
'You lie': Joe Wilson
Even in the rough-and-tumble of American political debates, I cannot think of an American president who has been heckled in such a way during such a major address. It was crude politics, and obviously rude. But was it racism, as Jimmy Carter claims?
Wilson has since apologised for his outburst - and the President has been gracious enough to accept it.
But in Washington they are noting that years ago Congressman Wilson worked for a segregationist politician in the South and more recently voted in favour of flying the Confederate flag - a favoured symbol of white rule.
Moreover, the controversy comes hot on the heels of a similar inflammatory episode involving the arrest of an old friend of President Obama's, Henry Gates - a prominent black academic.
Professor Gates was observed by a police officer acting suspiciously outside a property in Massachusetts that subsequently turned out to be his own home. When questioned by the officer, Professor Gates became verbally abusive, accusing the police of being racist, and was thus arrested at the scene.
Yet when the story became public, the President waded into the debate, stating that the officer concerned had 'acted stupidly' with regards to his friend. This, said his opponents, was proof of Obama's inherent racial loyalties, even at the expense of a police officer performing his normal duties.
A storm in a teacup? Not, it seems, when the issue of the President's race remains such a sensitive issue - as it undoubtedly does.
More...
An American journalist friend of mine said to me just last week that the atmosphere in the U.S. nowadays is 'as poisonous as anything I can remember since the early Nineties'.
Mr President: Jimmy Carter
He referred directly to the Oklahoma City outrage - a bomb planted by Timothy McVeigh that killed 168 people in a direct attack on the U.S. government. My friend shocked me by saying he would not be surprised if there were further acts of domestic terrorism spawned by hatred of Obama.
He is by no means the only one to detect an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.
At a recent conference I asked the African-American veteran civil rights campaigner Roger Wilkins - a man who marched with Martin Luther King - whether the election of Obama meant the end for racism in America.
Professor Wilkins, who worked for the Johnson administration in the Sixties, accepted that a black man in the White House was a great leap forward, but said that racism was still there, and black people knew it. So did white people.
For Obama this is, then, a very dangerous time - not just politically but personally.
Many Americans are worried that, sooner or later, some American, racist nutcase will try to shoot their President simply because of his skin colour.
The Secret Service is, of course, vigilant, though the white supremacist plots against him that have been discovered so far have been almost laughably incompetent.
As for his political enemies, Obama's success has been that from the outset of his presidential campaign he has been 'above race'. That is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge, as his opponents seek to highlight once again his colour, however far-fetched their accusations may be.
In all the enthusiasm for Barack Obama in Britain and Europe, we need to remember that even when up against John McCain - a relatively elderly candidate from a Republican party in disarray - he did not win in a landslide.
Demonstrators have equated Obama to Nazi leaders
For all his oratorical and political skills, Obama's victory was not overwhelming. He offended some working-class white people by talking of them 'clinging' to guns and God. Some Democrats I talked to simply refused to vote for him, though none would say openly that race was a factor.
And now in trying to reform healthcare - which amounts to almost 17 per cent of the American economy - Barack Obama is emerging as just the type of Big Government President that those on the American far-Right really loathes.
As he takes on healthcare reform, cracks down on the banks and spends government money trying to keep the economy afloat, there are plenty of political reasons for Barack Obama to be a controversial President, to be opposed, even to be defeated.
His race is not one of these - for most Americans. But for a minority, even in the 21st century, a black President is still unacceptable. Obama has changed much in America, but not even his oratory and skill can change that.
● Gavin Esler’s novel Power Play, about the potential collapse of the British-American 'special relationship', is published this month. He is a former BBC chief North America correspondent.
The ugly question that won't go away... Can America EVER unite behind a black President?
By Gavin Esler
Last updated at 9:39 AM on 17th September 2009
One of the greatest hopes for the Obama presidency was that it would finally heal America's worst wound - racism. This week has shown that for all the good press Barack Obama has enjoyed at home and abroad, the wound is still there, just beneath the surface, and it takes very little to open it up again.
In the months since the first African-American President was sworn into office in January this year, American commentators have tip-toed around the race issue. Some have pretended it is no longer even relevant.
Others have rejoiced that a clearly loving and successful black family in the White House is providing a role model for others in a society in which black families have often been portrayed negatively.
But former U.S. President Jimmy Carter caused the issue to explode into the open again this week with his claims that much of the vitriol directed at Obama's ambitious healthcare-reform plan is 'based on racism'.
If Carter is correct - and I have spoken to white as well as black Americans who broadly agree he is - then simply putting an African-American President in office has not been enough to reverse the bitterest legacy of America's original sin, slavery.
Even worse, it has now tainted the most difficult issue Obama faces, changing the U.S. healthcare system. As Carter put it: there is 'an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be President'.
Certainly, the healthcare debate has created a far wider ideological battleground than the rights and wrongs of Obama's policy proposals. In sometimes furious town-hall meetings, anti-Obama protesters have talked about 'taking back' their country.
Some have portrayed Obama with a Hitler moustache - in a crude suggestion that he has totalitarian ambitions.
Others have suggested that he is not really an American citizen - pointing to his Kenyan father and childhood in Indonesia - and is therefore ineligible for office, not a 'real' President with 'real' American values.
Despite the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is a practising Christian, there are even those who still claim he is a Muslim. It would be tempting to dismiss such hysteria as belonging to a lunatic fringe element. But then came the 'Wilson outburst'.
When President Obama made his big televised speech on healthcare to Congress last week, one Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson, screamed out 'you lie'.
This was shocking and unprecedented to Americans of both parties and of all racial backgrounds. The President of the United States is not simply, like a British prime minister, the head of a government. He is also, like the Queen, the head of state.
Even in the rough-and-tumble of American political debates, I cannot think of an American president who has been heckled in such a way during such a major address. It was crude politics, and obviously rude. But was it racism, as Jimmy Carter claims?
Wilson has since apologised for his outburst - and the President has been gracious enough to accept it.
But in Washington they are noting that years ago Congressman Wilson worked for a segregationist politician in the South and more recently voted in favour of flying the Confederate flag - a favoured symbol of white rule.
Moreover, the controversy comes hot on the heels of a similar inflammatory episode involving the arrest of an old friend of President Obama's, Henry Gates - a prominent black academic.
Professor Gates was observed by a police officer acting suspiciously outside a property in Massachusetts that subsequently turned out to be his own home. When questioned by the officer, Professor Gates became verbally abusive, accusing the police of being racist, and was thus arrested at the scene.
Yet when the story became public, the President waded into the debate, stating that the officer concerned had 'acted stupidly' with regards to his friend. This, said his opponents, was proof of Obama's inherent racial loyalties, even at the expense of a police officer performing his normal duties.
A storm in a teacup? Not, it seems, when the issue of the President's race remains such a sensitive issue - as it undoubtedly does.
More...
An American journalist friend of mine said to me just last week that the atmosphere in the U.S. nowadays is 'as poisonous as anything I can remember since the early Nineties'.
He referred directly to the Oklahoma City outrage - a bomb planted by Timothy McVeigh that killed 168 people in a direct attack on the U.S. government. My friend shocked me by saying he would not be surprised if there were further acts of domestic terrorism spawned by hatred of Obama.
He is by no means the only one to detect an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.
At a recent conference I asked the African-American veteran civil rights campaigner Roger Wilkins - a man who marched with Martin Luther King - whether the election of Obama meant the end for racism in America.
Professor Wilkins, who worked for the Johnson administration in the Sixties, accepted that a black man in the White House was a great leap forward, but said that racism was still there, and black people knew it. So did white people.
For Obama this is, then, a very dangerous time - not just politically but personally.
Many Americans are worried that, sooner or later, some American, racist nutcase will try to shoot their President simply because of his skin colour.
The Secret Service is, of course, vigilant, though the white supremacist plots against him that have been discovered so far have been almost laughably incompetent.
As for his political enemies, Obama's success has been that from the outset of his presidential campaign he has been 'above race'. That is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge, as his opponents seek to highlight once again his colour, however far-fetched their accusations may be.
In all the enthusiasm for Barack Obama in Britain and Europe, we need to remember that even when up against John McCain - a relatively elderly candidate from a Republican party in disarray - he did not win in a landslide.
For all his oratorical and political skills, Obama's victory was not overwhelming. He offended some working-class white people by talking of them 'clinging' to guns and God. Some Democrats I talked to simply refused to vote for him, though none would say openly that race was a factor.
And now in trying to reform healthcare - which amounts to almost 17 per cent of the American economy - Barack Obama is emerging as just the type of Big Government President that those on the American far-Right really loathes.
As he takes on healthcare reform, cracks down on the banks and spends government money trying to keep the economy afloat, there are plenty of political reasons for Barack Obama to be a controversial President, to be opposed, even to be defeated.
His race is not one of these - for most Americans. But for a minority, even in the 21st century, a black President is still unacceptable. Obama has changed much in America, but not even his oratory and skill can change that.
● Gavin Esler’s novel Power Play, about the potential collapse of the British-American 'special relationship', is published this month. He is a former BBC chief North America correspondent.
