Obama And Racism

U.S. society cannot redeem itself from its racist past and go on to call itself a post racial society since black men and women including Barack Obama still face extensive racial discrimination in all areas of daily life. Obama has been the subject of multiple racist attacks, from religiously bigoted e-mails claiming him to be a Muslim terrorist, who was not really born in America and who was viciously anti white, to T-shirts with racist caricatures. These different images aimed to dehumanize him, to attack his manhood, to turn American people against him and to diminish his credibility as a leader (wise 73). At the outset of Obama’s presidential campaign, many supporters including his wife and the black community expressed fears that

The constant stream of rhetoric from the McCain and Palin camp, aimed at manipulating the image of Obama among his white voters by portraying him as an elitist arrogant kid out of touch with average people. They tried through their rhetoric to remind the white voters that this black guy was not like them and looked down on them and how dare he. This play is one of the oldest and most predictable plays in the racist playbook (wise p 75). The radio commentator Rush Limbaugh kept insisting that Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama had been merely an act of racial bonding. Limbaugh was conceived that Powell, the lifelong Republican, had chosen to support Obama simply because of his skin color, not because he was the best candidate. As the polls indicated that the Democratic candidate received a historically high percentage of the white vote, Limbaugh attempted to mobilize white voters by interjecting race card into the discussion (Manimala

A Florida neurosurgeon who opposed The Affordable Care Act portrayed Obama as an African witch doctor and his wife a gorilla with sentence inscribed beneath it, Obama care coming soon to a clinic near you. Delegates to the American Medical Association condemned the racist behavior of this neurosurgeon (Netter). Obama has been portrayed too with the same exaggerated smile and black rimmed eyes as Health ledger’s joker character from the movie The Dark Knight. This poster was a distorted replication of the president’s hope poster that was clearly designed to make the president look sinister. Some critics of the poster argue that it was offensive because Obama was in white face and the image was a reverse of a black and white minstrel