Obama’s rise felt like a unusual chapter in American history. But the original sin of white supremacy was not so easily erased. By Ta-Nehisi CoatesI have often wondered how I missed the coming tragedy. It is not so much that I should have predicted that Americans would elect Donald Trump. It’s just that I shouldn’t have set it past us. It was tough to keep track of the currents of politics and pageantry swirling at once. All my life I had seen myself,and my people, backed into a corner. Had I been wrong? Watching the crowds at county fairs cheer for Michelle Obama in 2008, or flipping through the enchanting photo spreads of the glamorous incoming administration,it was easy to believe that I had been.
And it was more than symbolic. Barack Obama’s victory meant not just a black president but also that Democrats, the party supported by most black people, and enjoyed majorities in Congress. Prominent intellectuals were predicting that contemporary conservatism – a movement steeped in white resentment – was at its discontinuance and that a demographic wave of Asians,Latinos and blacks would sink the Republican party.
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Source: theguardian.com