Bet YOU would have gotten YOUR man some new shoes. Girl, too bad this isn’t YOUR man.I saw this coming. Those poster collages in your cubicles. The starry eyed expressions whenever he was on television. The sweaty palms when he was in your town. Don’t let a sister have gone to the actual venue he was at – she’s probably still on a chocolate high and showing people grainy pictures from her camera phone a whole year later. This crush has gotten out of control.
I like him too. He seems like a nice guy and I think he was the right choice. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to agree with everything he says or does. Recently, I’ve had conversations with other women about how the President’s term has gone so far. I must admit, I’ve had some reservations about some of the things President Obama has done and hasn’t done. I thought that was allowed. I was so wrong. Expressions started to change. Brows became furrowed. Eyes started rolling. I wondered what I’d done or said that was so wrong. Then it hit me:
I was talking about their man.
Now, I know everyone was digging the promise of change and the audacity of YES WE CAN and everything else that came with the Obama campaign. But on a deeper level, Barack Obama is the man that so many Black women have been waiting for. He’s smart and well educated, seemingly down to earth, funny, attractive, a family man. Just the thing we’ve been looking for – and not finding-at the club on a Saturday night. So we took him close to our hearts. He became our man. And talking about our man is a definite no-no. Our gut reaction is blind defense.
Women in general, but black women especially, are fiercely loyal. If we love you, you’d better get used to it, cause we’re not going anywhere. And we’re always ready to defend our man, whether he’s right or wrong and whether we know all the facts or not. It’s a somewhat admirable trait, when it is your man in question. But Barack Obama is not your man. He’s the President of the United States.
The President has to stand on his own. The same measure I’d use for George Bush or Bill Clinton, I have to use for Barack Obama. Yeah, I understand he’s inherited a mess. That really sucks. Now, he has to make the decisions necessary to begin to get us out of this mess, to change how the world sees our country and to make it better for our kids. That means some tough, unpopular choices. I do question the President’s audacity when it comes to that. He’s always played it near the middle, trying to please everyone in the name of unity. I get that, I really do. But nothing happens in the middle. The middle is the status quo and that’s what we’re trying to get away from. So when the pressure is on, I need President Obama not to fold. Or be everyone’s friend. Or keep quiet. It’s not time for that.
Think about your own man for a minute, or at least the one you used to have (I’m not hating, I fall in the latter category.) Could he take you seriously if you agreed with everything he said? I mean, he might have enjoyed it for a while, but could he take it seriously? Or did he appreciate that you, respectfully, called him to the carpet if he was wrong? Not nag him or fight about it, but expect that he made the decisions that were best for your family or your relationship. If Obama was really your man, would you not question his choices sometimes? I can’t imagine he’d have much respect for a woman who didn’t. And I’m sure that his own wife, at times, does.
It’s okay to be in the President’s corner. And it’s okay, to a certain degree, to defend him against lies, misrepresentations and other bits of slander that may be flying his way. But it’s also okay to dialogue about what’s going right and what’s going wrong, because everything isn’t going right. You really don’t have to take it personally when people bring it up the sticky issues regarding Barack Obama and his presidency, because that’s Michelle Obama’s job and I’m sure she does it beautifully.
