Opinion Obama’s country

It was the present that appeared to cast a long shadow over the past when US President Barack Obama spoke, on March 7, at the 50th anniversary commemoration of “Bloody Sunday”, when 600 black men and women attempted to cross a bridge in Selma and were instead brutally attacked by the police. Half a century later, race relations in America continue to be characterised by a deep disaffection. Just days earlier, the department of justice issued a damning report on the institutionalised racism within the Ferguson police department. After the deaths of two unarmed black men — Michael Brown and Eric Garner — touched off a new national conversation on racial discrimination and profiling, and another shooting in Los Angeles last week seemed to confirm that black people were right to distrust the “system”, the resulting anger, bitterness and frustration prompted accusations that nothing had changed.

Far from heralding a post-racial America — as some read Obama’s election and re-election to mean — his presidency has been a study in how much race still matters. Obama has rarely been able to use his position as president to speak on racial issues with candour. He has routinely been painted as an “angry black man”. Or, most recently, an unpatriotic one. In Selma, though, Obama didn’t just speak eloquently about the struggle of black men and women to craft a “more perfect union”, he also rebutted the notion that progress had not been made.

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Obama avoided the simplistic narratives of America, weaving instead the darkest chapters of its past into its civic mythos, and asking: “What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this… than the belief that… we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?”