Only Barack Obama could say what he said and not be waking up today to an online dragging. Only Obama could call BS on some Black men refusing to back Vice President Kamala Harris for reasons that aren’t rooted in sexism.
The former president has been Black enough long enough to know enough. He knows there are Black men who don’t embrace the notion of a Black woman as president any more readily than they embrace the notion that a Black woman can preach in the pulpit.
Obama spilled the tea on that Thursday night in Pittsburgh.
“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” Obama said about soft support for Vice President Kamala Harris among some Black men. “I’ve got a problem with that because part of it makes me think – and I’m speaking to men directly – part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”
Less than full-throated Black male support for Harris has been explained as a result of the Democratic Party’s failure to deliver for them. Why, this thinking has gone, should Black men back a party that has backed policies that led to the mass incarceration of brothers? Why back a party that hasn’t been able to deliver low Black unemployment and more economic opportunities for Black men?
Charles Coleman Jr., a civil rights lawyer and former prosecutor, captured some of that feeling in a recent opinion piece for The New York Times.
“For Black men, particularly younger Black men who disagree with some of the positions of the Democratic Party, there is a frustration around not feeling like the party’s agenda speaks specifically enough to them and their concerns,” Coleman wrote. “They often point to pieces of legislation that target specific groups and give the impression that the party is more interested in courting new demographics of voters while not paying enough attention to its most stalwart supporters.”
Coleman ain’t wrong. But he ain’t all right, either.
Indeed, much of that argument - the Dems haven’t delivered for me; why should I vote for them - could have been made when Obama ran in 2008. Heck, it could have been made when Jesse Jackson ran in 1984.
But there’s a difference between Jesse and Obama and Harris. They’re men; she’s a woman.
There is a creeping sexism among more Black men than Black people want to acknowledge. No one white could even think of calling that out.
Can you imagine Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, saying what Obama said and not sparking a fiery Blacklash? Ditto for Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Black folks would be looking for new and creative ways to set their white asses on rhetorical fire.
But the nation’s first Black president can and did go there. It was the political equivalent of calling out the brother at the cookout, the uncle or family friend, who opines on how Black folks are struggling because Black women got it in their heads that they can be momma and daddy and pastor, too. That man usually draws a chagrined chuckle or an inoffensive shake of the head. “Uncle Junnie, I think I’m going to go get another cup of lemonade…”
Trump appeals to a sliver of the Black electorate that embraces uber-machismo and conspiracy theories. It’s not a big sliver, but it could be just enough to keep Harris from winning.
Which is why Obama has determined that the stakes in this election are too high to let casual sexism sail on by. If enough Black men decide to stay home on Nov. 5, Harris will lose.
A little disruption at the cookout, the former president figures, is a far better outcome than that.