Tea Party and Republicans: NO'bama now, No'bama Ever Again!!!!

By Tamar Manasseh -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Dec 16, 2010 - 12:06:39 PM

President Barack Obama looks at a classroom project while visiting with students at the Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, La., Oct. 15, 2009. Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Even with a Black President in the White House, Black children still don't believe it's possible to one day be the President. It is not because of their own shortcomings or misgivings, but because in this day and time, they still don't feel that they will be allowed to.

A few days before the mid-term elections this year I took my children to a political rally where we were to be addressed by President Obama himself. I had hoped I'd leave there with a renewed sense of optimism but unfortunately, it brought to the light something much different.

At one point the President made a remark and the crowd began to chant his name. At this time I looked over at my daughter chanting as she looked at me smiling and singing out, “Obama, Obama, Obama!” Then I glanced over at my son, perhaps to share this moment with him as I did his sister or maybe just to check and see what he was doing but the glance turned into a stare. My son was having a moment that was all his own. He wasn't chanting or clapping or moving at all, he too was starring but not at me but at the jumbotron. The President was smiling and taking in the sounds of the chant and my son was nearly hypnotized. Reading what was on his face I leaned over and said, “That's you one day.” He looked at me and smiled and said “Nahh, not me.”

In that instance I realized something that I never had before, my son could be the President of the United States one day! It wasn't just some kind of sentimental moment I was having with my son, I really did mean it. I believed it. In this place with all of these people of, every ethnic, religious, economic and educational background all huddled there supporting this President, a Black man, it opened my eyes to a whole new realm of possibilities.

As we walked home, my mind raced. Even though my son said he didn't want the job, I still thought about him one day becoming the President and the road he as an African American would have to travel to get there. It would be hard but no longer impossible. Finally, we arrived home and as we all sat around in the kitchen recalling the events of the evening, I asked my son why he said ‘no' when I told him he could be the President one day? He simply replied, “The Republicans won't let me be!”

An anti-Obama billboard found in the heart of the Midwest depicting talking points used by the Tea Party and Republican Party representatives.

I wasn't ready for that response. I then asked him to explain. Very simply he told me that Republicans don't like Black people and the Tea Party hates Black people so he didn't stand a chance and with that he excused himself for a game of 2K11. Allow me to explain. My son is twelve and the only African-American in an all-White private Jewish Day School, which comes with its very own challenges. There he learns lessons about the world that I nor any of our neighborhood public schools could teach him. He is exposed to other cultures, places, and things but most importantly opinions. His friends come from wealthy to upper middle class Jewish families with old money and old ideas and most with heavily Republican leanings. This fact becomes evident in the spirited political discussions of his class that he reports to me every day when he comes home from school. He always questions politics. Not only do we have political discussions but he watches the pundits on different networks and compares them so the next day he can go back to school and hold his ground. He knows that he is the only one of his kind in his school and for some of those kids, he and President Obama are the only two Black people they know. However, it is very expensive and we sacrifice a lot for this privilege. I do it because I have seen what happens if I don't.

His answer was shocking. It would have made more sense three years ago but not now or would it? My son's words delivered the hard reality of a grim truth. Even with a Black President in the White House, Black children still don't believe it's possible to one day be the President. It is not because of their own shortcomings or misgivings, but because in this day and time, they still don't feel that they will be allowed to. The rhetoric of the Right Wing Conservatives and the Tea Party has all but squashed that short lived hope that Black children can grow up to be whatever they want to be. Nope! The thinking of the Tea Partiers is once they take “their” country back, Black people can be what we've always been.

Mitch McConnell should be proud. Black children see the beating that the President recently took in the mid-term elections from the right. They have seen the birth of a new party that their history books don't even teach them about and that most teachers are afraid to even discuss with their classes. They have seen Black elected officials being spat upon and the President with a Hitler mustache and pictures of him as a witch doctor, people's heads being stomped on and death threats on camera, but sadly, this is on the evening news and not some R rated movie you would prevent your children from watching. They have seen and heard the hatred and disrespect that politicians, elected officials—who all took oaths to serve Americans—have heaped upon this President. They have seen the hatred of this President—a Black man—outweigh the love that the entire Republican Party is supposed to have for this country, its people, and its constitution. So once again Sen. McConnell, Kudos! You guys may have killed two birds with one stone! You not only have ensured that Black people will not now or ever have a place in the Republican party, you have also scared the will to not only dream but to even try, right out of any future little aspiring Obamas.

(Tamar Manasseh is the youth coordinator at Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken EHC in Chicago. She can be reached at [email protected])

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