I think I can speak for many Africana Studies professors when I say President Barack Obama has been ever on the lips of my students the last four years. I actually first began teaching college courses in the fall of 2008. So my four years of teaching has paralleled President Obama’s first four years in office.
The Obama discussions have been wide-ranging—serious, comical, personal, intellectual, critiques, praises—and everything in between. I have most enjoyed the intellectual debates that emerge without fail almost every time a student says something provocative about President Obama.
Four major ideas have dominated Obama discussions in my classroom (and seemingly in society at large) during the first four years. As I reflect on these ideas during the week of his second inaguration, the disunity does not startle me. What startles me is that all four of these ideas are false.
False Idea #1: Racial Messiah
President Barack Obama is the racial messiah redeeming America from a racist to a post-racist society. He embodies the colorblind present and future, and the death knell of a color-conscious past.
Although in 2012 it may seem crazy, we must not forget that quite a few Americans (black people included) were articulating this idea. It was one of the unwritten messages of President Obama’s first campaign, as he embodied racial hope and change for many people. Initially, people believed it, argued it, defended it, hoped for it to be true. Four years later, after Troy Davis, after Trayvon Martin, with race relations on the ground largely unchanged, the “racial messiah” idea has all but exited Obama discussions, particularly in the progressive and black communities. Conservatives, however, still regularly utilize this false idea to demonize race-specific programming.
False Idea #2: Racism’s Offender
