Democratic presidents reinforced rather than challenged America’s racial habits

Evidence

In 2008 and again in 2012, Obama sold black America the snake oil of hope and change. He joined Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, other Democratic confidence men who presented themselves as people who would challenge the racial order of things. Clinton even heralded from a place called Hope. But neither Carter nor Clinton changed the racial habits at the heart of the country. In some ways, they reinforced them. Obama promised more. Or at least we thought he did, until he told us that he wasn’t the president of black America. Maybe black people believed he represented real change. Maybe we didn’t. Maybe we needed the illusion of hope. It doesn’t matter. The reality, amid the thick fog of unmet expectations, is that very little has changed in this country. In fact, things have gotten worse. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 22

Categorization

• XREF: This is the foundation of the ‘loyalty as trap’ argument the reader must assess — the claim that black electoral loyalty to Democrats produces rhetorical hope but no structural change, echoed in H.M. Naqvi’s Home Boy’s critique of the American Dream.
• QUESTION: Reader’s central question: has this ‘trap not strategy’ reading held up post-2016, when the alternative to Democratic loyalty became an openly white-nationalist presidency?