The amount of vitriol from the right over Barack Obama is about as strong and stupid as it ever was. It seems like the GOP may NEVER get over the fact that a BLACK MAN occupied the White House for 8 years. It's shit like this that makes you remember and realize that the United States is full of racists and white supremacists. Trump has given them the OK to come out of the woodwork and fuck shit up, and they have, gleefully. Yeah, we have a real educational problem in this country.
The timing of this column is as revealing as its content.
On Juneteenth, and just as the Obama Presidential Center opens its doors, USA TODAY chose to publish yet another hit piece aimed at Barack Obama, the first Black president. Not a celebration of an historic institution on Chicago’s South Side. Not a discussion of its potential impact on education, culture, and economic development. Instead, another attempt to recycle the same tired grievances that have followed Barack Obama for nearly two decades.
The article’s central premise is misleading from the start. The Obama Presidential Center was built through private fundraising, not with taxpayer dollars paying for construction of the center itself. Yet critics continue to blur that distinction because the facts are less useful than the narrative they are trying to sell.
What is most remarkable is the obsession. Barack Obama left office nearly a decade ago, yet many of his detractors still speak of him as though he occupies their thoughts every waking hour. They cannot move on because his very existence disrupts the mythology they prefer to tell about who can lead, who can excel, and who can embody intelligence, dignity, sophistication, and grace on the world stage.
And let’s be honest about something else. Presidential libraries and presidential centers are not new. They are an established part of American history. We have presidential libraries and museums honoring Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and many others. Millions of dollars have been spent preserving the legacies of former presidents for generations to study and explore. Yet somehow, when the first and only Black president builds a presidential center, suddenly there is outrage, suspicion, and endless scrutiny.
Where were these voices when other presidents built institutions bearing their names? Where were the accusations, the obsession, and the relentless attacks? Why does the first Black president continue to receive a level of hostility that others never faced? These are fair questions, and we already know the answer.
The truth is that Barack Obama will be remembered as a consequential president who rescued an economy in crisis, expanded health care to millions, restored America’s standing abroad, and inspired a generation of young people to believe that public service matters. History will render its verdict long after partisan columnists have been forgotten.
And USA Today should be embarrassed that on Juneteenth of all days, and on the heels of the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, it chose to amplify a piece that reads less like serious analysis and more like another installment in America’s never-ending discomfort with accomplished Black leadership.
Some people simply cannot stand that Barack Obama continues to carry himself with the same dignity, class, intelligence, and excellence that first made them uncomfortable in the first place. The Obama Presidential Center is not merely a building. It is a reminder that despite every effort to diminish him, Barack Obama remains one of the most admired and consequential figures of the modern era, and for some people, that reality remains impossible to accept.
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