Obama ruined my game: Salon

Quoted via Salon

May 26, 2009 | We're just a few weeks past the president's first 100 days benchmark, and his approval rating is holding steady in the polls. Redressing eight years of profound negligence, Obama has acted to resurrect the ailing economy, temper anti-American sentiment abroad, and decrease military involvement in Iraq. But for the lesser known, underappreciated demographic of black male intellectuals, the commander in chief is doing something terribly wrong: This dude is destroying our street cred.

Not long ago, the thinking black man posed a credible threat to the social order. We were the rogue outliers who bucked the trend of inferior black performance on standardized tests, who transcended the need for a boost from affirmative action. Now, what is a milestone for Obama is a millstone to the coolness of black male intellectualism. Obama's success is as devastating to our status as social deviants as the advent of Homies action figures (toy caricatures of "ghetto" stereotypes that depicted hardened criminals as cute and cuddly) was for the repulsive force of black delinquency.

Quite suddenly, being confronted with an unapologetically intellectual, hyper-articulate black dude who is self-assured to the brink of arrogance is no longer sure to create the kind of bewilderment and consternation that guaranteed me major laughs after college admissions and job interviews or "meet the parents" activities. In the salad days of being the only African-American male in Advanced Placement U.S. History, I could generate a palpable sense of awkwardness by stopping the lesson to quiz my instructor on the specifics of Cointelpro; my scholarly younger brother may never get to experience that perverse thrill. Where I got my kicks imagining that my flamboyant displays of subversive cerebral fortitude made the white establishment want my head on a stick, my brother's comparable acts will be met with a propensity to picture his on the dollar bill. more