Many people wonder why some are so hard on President Obama. Did Frederick Douglass predict the answer many years ago?
“Though the colored man is no longer subject to barter and sale, he is surrounded by an adverse settlement which fetters all his movements.
In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step of his progress.
If he comes in ignorance, rags and wretchedness he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome; but if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence.
In one case he may provoke contempt and derision, but in the other he is an affront to pride and provokes malice.”
Frederick Douglass
September 25, 1883”
A friend on mine sent me this. I won’t post my reply but he I haven’t heard from him since.
Frederick Douglass was most likely correct, at the the time of his writing, which was almost 130 years ago and only 20 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. But to make a claim that the same would apply now, to Obama, would be beyond ludicrous. Imagine, for example, black men openly courting white women in 1883. Today its so commonplace that it is not even noticed. If such a profound change as that has happened, what fool would think that other fundamental attitudes toward black Americans had not changed along with it?