P resident Obama told New Yorker editor David Remnick last week “There’s no doubt there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president.” No doubt: “Some folks” is a pretty vague number.
But the president’s intent was not just to alert us to the continued existence of three Klu Klux Klan members. Rather he sought to deflect blame for his plummeting approval ratings by attributing them to racial animus. That’s frankly pretty pathetic. Mr. Obama’s general approval ratings have soared as high as 76 percent. I doubt that many of the three-quarter of Americans who once approved of his performance in office were so color-blind as to not notice that he is black.
The president’s race has remained constant. What has changed is public perceptions of his policies his competence and his frankness. Far more Americans continue to find Obama likeable than approve of his policies which would be odd if race were a key component in his approval ratings.
Obama was on far more solid ground when he added “Now the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president.” Indeed were he not black it is unimaginable that Obama would be president today.
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