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BeulahAgbabiakaFirstEssay 1 - 20 Feb 2016 - Main.BeulahAgbabiaka
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Reflections on the Presidency
-- By BeulahAgbabiaka - 19 Feb 2016
Reflections on the Presidency
I. There is a noticeable difference between the way President Obama and his agenda are treated by politicians and the populous alike and the way other presidents have been treated
A. He has been politically frustrated by partisanship in an unprecedented way.
I can point to the political process and look at the record-breaking number of filibusters during President Obama’s two terms, and the legislation that he has proposed that has been quickly quashed along partisan lines without a true review of the merits of the law and its potential for positive impacts on the lives of the American citizenry. A prime example of this partisanship is in republican presidential candidate Governor John Kasich of Ohio’s recent comments along the campaign trail. When he was under attack during a recent debate for choosing to comply with the Medicare expansion provision of the Affordable Care Act, Kasich asked if he was supposed to deny coverage to the people of his state who couldn’t otherwise afford coverage to cater to the party position at their expense. The response from the other candidates was essentially yes because President Obama didn’t go about the law in the right way in the Republican party’s opinion. This is ridiculous, and this level of partisanship has not occurred during my short lifetime, and upon consulting with her, my mother assured me that it hasn’t occurred since the Civil Rights Era.
B. He has been openly disrespected in an unprecedented way.
Beyond his political agenda, President Obama has been openly disrespected multiple times in a way that is not consistent with the gravitas of his position or with the way other presidents have been treated by American people. I remember vividly the outrage when a foreign news correspondent threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in the ultimate show of disrespect according to his religious culture. But American reporters, politicians, and people still showed a baseline of respect to President Bush. On the other hand, a congressman screamed out “You lie!” to President Obama on the floor of the House and he was applauded by his colleagues and by a significant portion of the American public. And a reporter recently felt very comfortable heckling him during a press conference, until he commented back and asked her to be removed. (I acknowledge that she was a trans* LGBTQ activist and President Obama’s dismissal of her and her mistreatment is another huge problem in and of itself and her voice shouldn’t have been silenced, but it still illustrates my current point that I very strongly doubt that she would not have felt comfortable doing this to any other president.) Even the Supreme Court of the United States, the branch that is supposed to be above the dirty, partisan, political fray feels more comfortable disrespecting the current president. During President Obama’s comments on the Citizens United Supreme Court Decision, the Chief Justice felt completely secure in physically showing his disapproval of the President’s comments through making faces and gestures. Again, this is far outside the typical rules of decorum for the highest officer of one branch of government in addressing the other. It is disrespectful and it helps contribute to an environment where people feel comfortable denigrating our president.
I. I feel like this discrepancy can be attributed to race
A. We can account for most of the other variables.
We know that President Obama is Ivy League educated, he is middle-aged, and he is an able-bodied man which all serve to reinforce a privileged position in society, but he is also a Black person which historically makes him open to disrespect here in the United States. The negative effects of elitism in regarding overpriced and overrated education from a select class of schools as better than other schools at anything but keeping the grass greener and keeping the surrounding community out, ageism, ableism and sexism do not apply to him. If he was a white man, he would be considered incredibly qualified, wonderfully competent, and innovative in his public speaking skills, ability to connect with people, and his charming fascination with helping already upwardly mobile “underdogs” who can help themselves in many ways after leaving his messianistic, boots-to the ground community advocate days behind him in which the constituents he sheparded needed more work getting to where they were going. Race is the variable in this equation that allows him to be worthy of disrespect despite otherwise powerful pedigree, and it is the consistent variable in American culture that tells us who is worth valuing and who is not.
B. The American populous keeps showing their true colors in this “colorblind” and “post-race” society.
There have been so many comments and memes made public by the “conservative fringe” but then shared on the Facebook pages of the silent majority, as well as articles by the progressive parade goers of Arnold’s capitalist folklore and “funny” comics and pictures debasing the president and his wife because of their Blackness in their magazines that I think it is silly to present any alternative narrative to deep-seeded racist tendencies in or society. As a Black woman it is extremely obvious to me that this is a race issue. But since the problem with racism today is that many people are not consciously racist and have an aversion to being called racist despite being heavily invested in power structures that reinforce the systematic oppression which allow racism to continue without attaching it to a face or person, People choose to ignore the power structures so the systems can continue and their personal consciences won’t be implicated. This means that no one individual who doesn’t slip up and say the N-word in public will be implicated in the system that privileges them and people can continue to be colorblind. Which means that they can pretend racism isn’t impacting our current President.
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