Fee-shaming Obama into a corner

Dis a funny country!
How so?
Well, every chance you get, you disrespect the negro.

A twelve year old boy gets shot by the police and y’all blame the boy, his mama, his daddy, his sister, his community, but never the incompetent and unfit  White cop who shot him. When the Grand Jury refuses to indict and the city pays a multi-million dollar settlement to the family, the police union president tells the family they should spend the money educating other negroes how not to be 12 year old police murder victims. Ain’t that funny?

Dis a funny country!
How so?
Well, every former president joins the Speaker's Bureau and gets on the speaking circuit. They all parlay their administrative and executive leadership experience into an income. Bill did it. Dubya did it. St. Ronnie did it. This is your capitalism on fleek, cuz these folks be making serious bank. But somehow, some way, when Brother Obama seeks to do it, suddenly, errbody's verklempt and clutching their pearls. Folk want him to do it for free because apparently he’s supposed to be above the vulgarity that is a pay check. Now ain’t that funny?

Dis a funny country!
How so?

Well, POC still can’t get equal treatment in either a court of law or the court of public opinion. Black baby boys can’t walk the streets in safety. We still have to work twice as hard to get half as much. And now, it looks like even half is too big a fraction. Now, y’all want a grown Black man to work twice as hard for free.

Rather than lean unto your own integrity, rather than develop your own moral compass, you want to copy Obama’s? And to facilitate you, to be worthy of copying, he must forgo post-presidency earnings (from certain quarters, which quarters will be defined by you, of course) so that you can “have someone to look up to?”

It’s not enough that he’s not taken bribes.

It’s not enough that his was the FIRST administration in 30 some years to end without a single indictment or imprisonment.

It’s not enough that his administration was largely scandal free (never mind BENGHAZI! and THE TALKING POINTS!).

No! None of that is quite enough. Now, he must take a vow of perpetually saying no to invitations you deem unseemly, to prove his decency bona fides.

Ladies and gentlemen, this right here is the definition of alabaster bullshit©. (Not my term and I promised my friend I'd use the © sign when I used it publicly. )

Tell me, y’all don’t get tired policing Blackness? Cuz this sho’ nuff feels like that’s what this is.

Y’all established your capitalist system, and have frustrated the progress of people who look like Barack H. Obama in every way you could. When we adapted and found ways, you put up a new blocks. You conducted pogroms, drew red lines, and generally mistreated us any time you had half a chance. And still, when, God forbid, one of us manages to cross the finish line, you lose your damn minds.

Truly, there’s nothing that pisses you off more than us making a way out of no way. There’s nothing that upsets y’all more than a Black man or woman playing on the field you laid, and winning. You hate it. And the minute it happens, you rush to adjust the rules, so you can make sure our first place finish is actually a distant second. To you. Again.

At the end of the day and in every way that matters, you still see us – including BHO – as ‘boy’, and you still see yourself as entitled to our uncompensated labor, whether it be physical, intellectual, or emotional.

In the same way that the Cleveland Police Union president tried to shame Samaria Rice into spending the city of Cleveland’s blood money (to which she was entirely entitled, and which, I feel compelled to point out, didn’t bring her dead son back) doing what the city of Cleveland should be doing, so too do you want to shame Barack Obama into working for free (you know what that’s called right?) so as to model integrity for you. Lord that is laughable.

You want a moral leader? Here’s a hint: buy a mirror (available at Pottery Barn). Look into it. See one there? Lead your damn self and keep your policing of Blackness to a minimum. If you can.