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My tweets, my choice.
Millions of black and brown people could perish and Obama would remain "hopeful". His personal success always fueled his racial "optimism".
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Obama's "hope" was *always* self-serving. Always. Please understand this clearly.
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People like Chait enjoy Obama's selfish optimism and use it to remain selfishly complacent with (and in denial about) white supremacy.
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Obama, being a ruthless politician, knows this, which is why he campaigned on post-racialism and the denial of white supremacy.
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Obama, as I point out in my book, didn't deny white supremacy out of ignorance. He studied with one of the founders of critical race theory.
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Obama studied systemic racism and white supremacy but decided to throw radical educators and mentors under the bus to win the presidency.
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It's really as simple as that. Obama knew exactly what he was doing. He may even believe his own bullshit. Who knows.
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But one things for sure: whether or not he genuinely believes his own post-racial bullshit, he knows it pays. Quite literally.
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Obama is many things, but he ain't no fool. He knows the US is racist as fuck and he also knows he can enrich himself by denying it.
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This is why he has gone out of his way to repeatedly deny that the US is "endemically" racist. He must leave a glimmer of neoliberal hope..
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And I don't doubt that Obama's narcissism also helps him live within the post-racial fantasy-land he constructed to fuel his political rise.
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Obama may indeed read his own exceptionalism and "success" as proof that white supremacy is not "endemic". That's how narcissists think.
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"I made it, so things can't be that bad. I went to Ivy League schools! I became the first black president! I'm wealthy!" "I..I..I..I.."
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What's sinister about Obama is that he became the "1st black POTUS" precisely by using his knowledge of race and racism to manipulate voters
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He's not only the 1st black POTUS. As far as I know, he's the 1st POTUS in our history to formally and extensively study systemic racism.
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Obama used his formal education about racism and his political education about blackness in Chicago to master the art of racial opportunism.
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Concretely, this means he built his political career walking the tight rope of performing black authenticity while appeasing white liberals.
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In order to be seen as an authentic black politician (to himself and to anyone else) Obama *had* to grant some recognition to racism..
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.. but he knew quite well that he could not grant *too* much recognition to racism without risking backlash among white liberals.
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The critical moment where Obama's racial calculus was made very obvious was his treatment of Jeremiah Wright during the '08 campaign..
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There are few things I can think of more ruthless than throwing your own pastor under the bus. Bombing children, perhaps. Obama did both.
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Obama showed us who he was well before he got to the White House. But very few of us were ready to to sit with that reality in 2008.
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End of conversation
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