Racism and The Presidency
by An examination of how underlying racism may be making the Presidents tasks more difficult.
On October 6th in Hammond, Louisiana, thirty year old Beth Humphrey was looking to get a marriage license signed so she could marry her fiancé Terence McKay. In her search she called Keith Bardwell, a local Justice of the Peace. You can only imagine her surprise when she was informed that as an interracial couple, Mr. Bardwell would not sign the marriage license and she would have to go elsewhere. It turns out Mr. Bardwell asks every couple contacting him if they are a mixed race couple and if they answer in the affirmative, he refuses to issue the license. That’s right. In the 21st Century in America there are still those who consider interracial couples as undeserving of marriage. Despite the fact that Supreme Court officially decreed interracial marriage as legal more than 40 years ago.
On September 16th of this year, former President Jimmy Carter speculated that racism might be an issue in the opposition faced by President Obama. Pres. Carter was expanding his comments from the day before in which he questioned whether the infamous outburst by Republican Rep. Joe Wilson had been motivated by racism. He would go on to later say to NBC Nightly News that “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American,” Some people truly believe racism is no longer an issue in the Land of the Free. It’s an unfortunate fact that most of them are white.
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While we have indeed made enormous progress in fighting the scourge of racism, we are far from the end of the road where all people are automatically considered equal regardless of race and skin color has become nothing more than a descriptive term no different from eye color or height. It is not only possible that President Obama faces greater opposition because of his heritage, but I suspect it’s highly probable. Whereas racism as an overt issue has largely become distasteful to the American people, there still exists a visceral racism lodged deep within the psyche of many Americans whose childhood predates civil rights.
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