In “Fear of a Black President,” Coates writes,
Obama’s first term . . . coincided with a strategy of massive resistance on the part of his Republican opposition in the House, and a record number of filibuster threats in the Senate. It would be nice if this were merely a reaction to Obama’s politics or his policies—if this resistance truly were, as it is generally described, merely one more sign of our growing “polarization” as a nation. But the greatest abiding challenge to Obama’s national political standing has always rested on the existential fact that if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin. . .
Do you agree with Coates? Why or why not?
To the first point Coates is making in this excerpt I will say that I couldn’t agree more. The resistance president Obama felt during his first term was generalized and passed as the “splitting” and “polarization” of a nation. However, this generalization is a piecemeal to keep the news cycles running with material. I say this because what really kept the Obama administration back during its first term was the guaranteed factor of racism, prejudice, and the opposition the White House faced as a result of these factors.
The second point Coates makes concerns the fact that Obama’s national policy and politic has always, and fundamentally “rested on the existential fact that if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin”. This statement Insinuates that Obama’s policies, with regard to his first term, did not represent the American people, but exclusively the Black community, which, in retrospect, could have incited the Whitelash the United States is witnessing currently. Essentialist discourse of Obama’s first term stresses White America’s racist ideology and endorses the idea that Black America is ignorant. Tying Obama’s policies to Trayvon Martin’s death is essentialist. The Black community does not stand for just violence and fighting or running from that violence. Asserting that Obama’s national politics have “rested” on the fact that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin supplants the fact that Obama’s national policy stands for all minorities and the American people as a whole.
I do not agree with Coates because his analysis, from what I can gather in this short except, has an essentialist tone and disregards that Obama was intact a president and not just a Black representative. Obama is not a Black representative, however, because of the controversy surrounding his first term and beginning half of his second term and the Trayvon Martin comparison, the media and apparently Coates have labeled Obama as such. This labeling did not only provide energy for Trump’s presidential win, but also partially depreciated and dislodged Black progress, racial equality, and progress in the LGBTQ community from Obama’s presidency.