Godspeed to President Obama; you did us proud

“Barack Obama is not Jesus.”

Those were the first words of the first column I ever wrote about President Obama – a poke in the eye to Democrats who were singing rhapsodic hosannas about a certain highly regarded young senator. “Yes,” I griped, “he has great potential. But is it asking too much that people wait until he actually does something before they starting chasing his name with a hallelujah chorus?”

Two years later, Obama was elected president. Shows what I know.

Now the time has come to say goodbye. Which means it’s also time for people like me to furrow our brows in summation. I will leave it to others to analyze Obama’s legacy with regard to the economy, health care, foreign policy, privacy rights and war.

As he heads for the door, I find myself simply wanting to address him as one African-American man to another about the singular mark he made on American history: first black president. To be a first black anything significant has often been a thankless task. Jackie Robinson learned this when he crashed Major League Baseball in 1947. Obama’s experience proves that it remains true 70 years later.

He got it from all sides.

Certain opinion leaders on the left held that Obama failed to speak – and act – boldly enough on issues of concern to African Americans. It’s an argument that did not take political reality into account – would the same drain clog of a Congress that couldn’t agree to routine measures to raise the debt ceiling really have passed some huge program to ameliorate African-American woes? I also think Obama gets too little credit for quietly dismantling much of the ruinous War on Drugs and working to reform racist policing.

Meantime, the political right thought Obama was the love child of Louis Farrakhan and Nat Turner. By simply existing, by acting as if winning two elections actually entitled him to be president, Obama drove them crazy. He made many of them reveal – even revel in – the ugliness, hatred and fear that have always undergirded so-called conservatism where race is concerned.

It is telling that the folks who grasped at every untruth and exaggeration to make Obama out as an America-hating Other now watch in feckless silence as Donald Trump plants sloppy kisses on the autocratic thug Vladimir Putin.

For myself, I was frustrated by Obama’s naivete. He was surely the last person in America to recognize the degree to which racial resentment drove the rigid resistance and shrill hysteria he faced. He seemed to think he could win over his most hateful critics by being conspicuously even-handed, even-tempered and good. But it doesn’t work that way. Most any black person could have told him that.

That said, let me also say this:

A defining truth about black life in America is that each of us carries all of us wherever we go. The incompetence of a black man in Dallas will keep a black man in Miami from getting a job. The dishonesty of a black woman in Oakland will get a black woman in Baltimore arrested.

Each one of us is every one of us. Which places an inordinate weight on the one of us who is called to perform on a high public stage.

Obama has performed on the highest, most public stage there is. He faced headwinds unprecedented in American politics and nonstop disrespect from the GOP. But he did so with unflappable dignity, unshakable class … and urbane cool. No stench of personal scandal wafts after him as he leaves office, and the country is better for his service. So allow me to say to him, as one African-American man to another:

Godspeed, brother. You did us proud.

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Godspeed to President Obama; you did us proud."