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| President Barack Obama |
I started to think about that as I read a CNN analysis piece that focused on race relations worsening during the Obama presidency. This headline, of course, popped up in my Facebook news feed (along with probably items from the hundreds of pages I have come to "like" during my time with a profile on the social media giant.
I digress.
Have race relations worsened under Barack Obama's presidency? A majority of those surveyed (CNN and Kaiser Family Foundation polling) said, "yes" -- rather emphatically so.
I get why some would feel this way. So, the poll suggested that "racial strife" is getting worse. Poll results further indicated that tensions among Americans of different ethnic/racial groups has increased. About 64 percent of Americans believe this to be true, including 67 percent of whites, 65 percent of blacks and 55 percent of Latinos.
Is it worse? I can appreciate how some people would see it that way. The real question is: Why is it worse (if that is what you believe)?
I do not believe it is worse. I believe that it is simply been brought from the closet to the front porch. Regardless of how you feel, the sentiments of the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter (not necessarily to equate the two, but to make a bigger point) were always there. Certain incidents, however, opened the door for individuals affiliated with these two movements to become more activist and vocal. For the Tea Party, you could argue it was the election of Barack Obama, the first black president. For Black Lives Matter, it appears to be incidents involving black people and the police.
The growing power of social media and video have given certain movements more power than they could have had in even the 1980s.
But, none of this is about Barack Obama. Feel free to try and ultimately fail to link it to the Obama presidency.
The headline of the article I linked, above, asks an important question about who will be blamed for race relations in the post-Obama era. It's a good question, indeed. Because, if you're foolish enough to believe racial issues will vanish once Obama leaves the presidency, then you were probably foolish enough to believe it started the day he became a viable presidential candidate and after he took office.
As Billy Joel once famously sang, "We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning ... No, we didn't light it though we tried to fight it."
