By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
In a March 2008 column, I criticized pundits' concerns
about whether America was ready for Barack Obama, suggesting that the more
important issue was whether black people could afford Obama. I proposed that we
look at it in the context of a historical tidbit.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson, after signing a contract with
the Brooklyn Dodgers organization, broke the color barrier in Major League
Baseball. He encountered open racist taunts and slurs from fans, opposing team
players and even some members of his own team. Despite that, his batting
average was nearly .300 in his first year. He led the National League in stolen
bases and won the first Rookie of the Year award. There's no sense of justice
that requires a player be as good as Robinson in order to have a chance in the
major leagues, but the hard fact of the matter is that as the first black
player, he had to be.
In 1947, black people could not afford an incompetent
black baseball player. Today we can. The simple reason is that as a result of
the excellence of Robinson -- and many others who followed him, such as Satchel
Paige, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby and Roy Campanella -- today no one in his right
mind, watching the incompetence of a particular black player, could say,
"Those blacks can't play baseball."
In that March 2008 column, I argued that for the nation
-- but more importantly, for black people -- the first black president should
be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson, and Barack Obama is not. Obama has
charisma and charm, but in terms of character, values, experience and
understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson. In addition to those deficiencies,
Obama became the first person in U.S. history to be elected to the highest
office in the land while having a long history of associations with people who
hate our nation, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years,
who preached that blacks should sing not "God bless America" but
"God damn America." Then there's Obama's association with William
Ayers, formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that
bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Ayers, in the
wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, told a New York Times reporter, "I
don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough."
Obama's electoral success is truly a remarkable
commentary on the goodness of the American people. A 2008 NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll reported "that 17 percent were enthusiastic about Obama being
the first African American President, 70 percent were comfortable or indifferent,
and 13 percent had reservations or were uncomfortable." I'm 77 years old.
For almost all of my life, a black's becoming the president of the United
States was at best a pipe dream. Obama's electoral success further confirms
what I've often held: The civil rights struggle in America is over, and it's
won. At one time, black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees
enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle
is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting
many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and
have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.
There is every indication to suggest that Obama's
presidency will be seen as a failure similar to that of Jimmy Carter's. That's
bad news for the nation but especially bad news for black Americans. No white
presidential candidate had to live down the disgraced presidency of Carter, but
I'm all too fearful that a future black presidential candidate will find
himself carrying the heavy baggage of a failed black president. That's not a
problem for white liberals who voted for Obama -- they received their one-time
guilt-relieving dose from voting for a black man to be president -- but it is a
problem for future generations of black Americans. But there's one excuse black
people can make; we can claim that Obama is not an authentic black person but,
as The New York Times might call him, a white black person.
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