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Zusammenfassung von We Were Eight Years in Power

Name: We Were Eight Years in Power
Rating: 4.5 (19 reviews)
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates

An American Tragedy

4.5 (19 Bewertungen)

19 Min.

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Race

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What’s in it for me? Understand the state of race relations in the post-Obama era.

The election of Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States, was a historical achievement and a great victory for Black Americans. But the rise of one man did little to assuage dangerous racist assumptions and discrimination.

Despite Obama’s two terms in office, people still argue that Black poverty is a “cultural” problem and refuse to acknowledge that racism has defined America since the country’s inception.

These Blinks – which focus on the most compelling points from eight essays – pull back the veil. They track the development of racism and white supremacy throughout American history and into the present, giving readers a candid look at a country built on the exploitation of Black bodies.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how slavery was reborn shortly after it was outlawed;
why Obama couldn’t talk about race; and
what the Civil War was really about.

Obama’s presidency gave rise to a wave of prominent Black writers and speakers, but they don’t all speak the truth.

The 2008–2016 presidency of Barack Obama was a historic achievement. For the first time in US history, a Black president sat in the White House. That would’ve been inconceivable in the not-too-distant past. But these accomplishments stretched beyond just the president himself.

During his term, and as a result of it, many Black journalists and writers rose to prominence, giving a voice to Black Americans. However, the author disagrees with one voice among them. It’s that of the prominent comedian, Bill Cosby, who preaches to the Black community about discipline, moral reform and personal responsibility.

In summer 2016, the author saw Cosby speak at Detroit’s St Paul Church of God in Christ. He told the Black audience that, while racism may be ever-present, it’s no excuse for Black Americans to fail. Cosby said that African-Americans needed to clean up their culture and take responsibility for their lives.

Worse was Cosby’s so-called “Pound Cake speech,” made in 2004 at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, in Washington. Cosby attacked Black Americans for, among other things, giving their kids African names. He vehemently announced to the crowd, “we’re not Africans.” In the same speech, he said that segregation produced “good things,” arguing that it made Black people learn self-sufficiency.

If it’s not already clear to you, Cosby is dead wrong. He’s turning white racism back onto Black people, making it an issue stemming from African-American culture. He believes that the racial problems of contemporary society are the result of a post-segregationist, pathological Black culture that fetishizes gangster rap and drugs.

Cosby even ignores legitimate claims by Black citizens and activists that white supremacy is still prominent in America today and that the criminal justice system is in dire need of reform.

Michelle Obama’s story paints a picture of Black America, but an unexpected one.

In 2008, the year of Obama’s election, the author was filled with euphoria. Had racism finally been banished from the face of the earth? Was this the end of white supremacy?

At the time, such achievements seemed possible, and it was in this climate that the author got an assignment from the Atlantic magazine to do a profile on Michelle Obama. However, as he heard her story, he was surprised.

Slavery is a centerpiece of the American story, but it has been downplayed in conventional history.

After Barack Obama took the presidency, intellectuals began proclaiming the death of the Republican Party. Mired in white resentment, conservatism was supposed to drown as people of color flocked to liberalism. However, these intellectuals failed to recognize the deep roots of white supremacy in American society.

For the author, studying the American Civil War clarified this long history and the centrality of slavery to America as a country. Commonly, we’re told that slavery was an early American sin, that it belongs to the past, and that America has moved forward toward the liberal, democratic ideal.

Malcolm X gave African-Americans significant self-confidence and even inspired Barack Obama.

To this day, the human rights activist and American Muslim minister Malcolm X is an enigma. Initially rising to public notice as a flat-out criminal, he eventually became a military ascetic; he walked the line between religious dogma and an open mind. In his later years, he was even as contradictory as to espouse both socialism and capitalism. How can such a paradoxical figure be pinned down?

Well, whatever conflicting claims can be made about Malcolm X, one thing is certain: he played a key role in the shaping of African-American consciousness.

Obama’s presidency was a great Black victory, but it also triggered a racist backlash.

Before Obama was elected president, the thought of a Black president of the United States was a recurring joke. For instance, the comedian Dave Chappelle once said that a Black president needed to have a “Vice-President Santiago” because only with a Hispanic president ready to fill the Oval Office could a Black president survive assassination.

Given the seeming impossibility of the accomplishment, Barack Obama’s election was, of course, a major victory for Black Americans. Obama had realized the collective dream of generations, a dream that was as old as the country itself. He had interrupted the seemingly never-ending streak of white presidents that spelled out the white domination of US political power. In the process, Obama instilled a new confidence in Black America. Black parents could tell their children that they could accomplish whatever they wanted and know it was true.

Reparations for African-Americans may sound like a radical demand, but it makes logical sense.

In summer 2014, the author published an article in the Atlantic called “The Case for Reparations.” While the demand might appear outlandish, the author argues that there’s just cause to consider compensating Black Americans for the racial atrocities of the past.

For starters, American wealth is founded on Black slavery. Yale historian David W. Blight says that, before the Civil War, American slaves were worth more than all the manufacturing, railroads and total productive capacity of the US.

The criminalization of Black Americans fosters astronomical incarceration rates.

Did you know that America’s incarceration rates have set a depressing record? With over 750 people out of every 100,000 in prison, the United States tops the charts for global incarceration rates, even surpassing autocratic countries like Russia and China.

But that’s not the only sad truth about incarceration in America: it’s also clearly racially charged. Black Americans are locked up at a far higher rate than whites.

Barack Obama’s background gave him a different perspective and made him a consensus builder.

Barack Obama is, if anything, a committed optimist. Before 2016, he never thought for a moment that a person like Donald Trump could be elected president. And even after Trump’s victory, Obama retained his sunny outlook for America’s future.

However, few Black Americans share this optimism. Rather, they are filled with a deep mistrust of white America. For Obama, there is no Black America and there is no white America either; he still believes in a truly United States of America.

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Worum geht es in We Were Eight Years in Power?

We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) reflects on President Barack Obama’s two terms in power and the aftermath of the first Black presidency. These blinks take a candid look at racism and white supremacy throughout American history.

Bestes Zitat aus We Were Eight Years in Power

There are thousands and thousands of Michelle and Barack Obamas across America. You just dont live next door to them, or there isnt a TV show about them.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wer We Were Eight Years in Power lesen sollte

Americans interested in learning about Black experience in the USA
Anyone who’s concerned about the state of democracy
Anyone interested in the history and political consequences of racism and white supremacy

Über den Autor

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for the Atlantic and the author of Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015.

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