black thought.

an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.

words. 

"I am 60 years old — how did that happen? — and to me, what Mr. Obama has accomplished is far from insignificant: He saved us from economic meltdown, he got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and he signed the Affordable Health Care Act. He would perhaps be the first to admit we still have far to go. Because I am an old head now, I can accept incremental change, even value it. I voted for him, though I know he is more of a capitalist than I am. I voted for him twice, though in my heart I cannot forgive him for turning to economist advisers like Lawrence H. Summers (whom I despise). And I am dismayed by those who are obsessed by the mysteries of Mr. Obama’s personality, by his distance, his opacity. Nobody can make him lose his cool, just as nobody can move him from the center. So long as he occupies the middle ground as president, the Republicans are forced to stay on the right. Most of the world is relieved that the president of the United States is a man of integrity and intelligence. But here he is described as a flawed politician, a man not cut out for trench warfare, not the man for our historical moment. His early notion that the country could reconcile in him because of his personal story is dismissed as naïve.

Mr. Obama is criticized for not having done more for black people — not because they are black people, but because they are among his party’s most loyal supporters. Yet many whites resent or are afraid of those moments when the president seems to be taking the black side, speaking from the black point of view. Black people in turn can be frustrated that the black point of view is always ghettoized, never allowed to be, simply, the American point of view — especially when the issue at hand is about social justice. Historically, blacks have looked to the federal government for protection against the doctrine of states’ rights, a euphemism for the reactionary in American politics. But Mr. Obama’s experience in office has shown blacks the limits of executive power.

...The shooting in Ferguson, Mo., did not leave the news, because demonstrators stayed in the streets, just as Occupy Wall Street movement brought up the urgent matter of wage and wealth inequality and has not let the subject go. Maybe we are at the beginning of another age of activism on the part of youth. In Europe, disaffection from the major political parties has benefited far-right politicians. In America, the rabid Tea Party is the beneficiary. Mr. Obama said somewhere that troublemakers were catalysts for positive change, while others were caretakers of that change. History will remember him as the calm president who steered the nation through dangerous waters."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Election 2014: Should Black Voters Keep Their Faith in Obama?