No We Can’t
By: Rann Miller
Tags: Racism, Defundthepolice, Police Brutality, Barack Obama, President

When it comes to “Defunding the Police,” President Obama Abandons His Trademark Message of Optimism and Possibility.

One of the most effective political slogans, or slogans overall, was that of the Barack Obama presidential campaign in 2008 and 2012; yes we can. The slogan caught on like wildfire; it was simple, catchy, it looked good on posters, it was easily translatable and it was a phrase that seemingly everyone could rally around — no matter how people identified themselves.

The slogan transformed Barack Obama into both a president but a performer of performers; one who can command any stage. As it was then, it remains a fair question to ask now; who is Barack Obama performing for with the recent defense of his presidency and his centrist messaging.

James Brown and Bobby Byrd on the Ed Sullivan Show

In any case, Mr. Obama trots back to the stage faster than an escaping James Brown from Bobby Byrd during a concert.

It started slow with a few tweets. It then became a series of virtual chats, followed by campaigning around the country for Joe Biden. It has now reached a crescendo with public interviews with CBS, NPR and Oprah to name a few, surrounding the release of part one of his memoir, A Promised Land.

In his memoir, Mr. Obama finally acknowledges white resentment of his holding the office of president, as TaNehisi Coates had already done. He justify his drone strike program, one which killed hundreds of civilians, saying that he did not want to look soft on terrorism. He mentioned that his failure to call out the racism of the Tea Party was due to fear of upsetting white voters and because he understood how America failed Tea Party fanatics.

There was also the halfhearted defense of Jeremiah Wright… after all these years.

But it was his comments on the slogan defund the police that encapsulated the turn from yes we can on the campaign trail to no we can’t in the oval office. Mr. Obama took the sentiments of James Clyburn further, saying the slogan was “snappy,” adding:

“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done. You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.”

Is Barack Obama concerned with looking too tough on police? Maybe his comments on defund the police stem from the support he said he’d never regain due to the Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley Fiasco. Even Now, Mr. Obama juxtaposes the thoughtful and decent Crowley with a professor he describes as one part W.E.B. DuBois and one part Mars Blackmon.

Maybe his comments stem from the Rev. Wright controversy, when he acted as a sort of “race whisperer;” affirming Black anger while appeasing white guilt. To that point, Coates argued that Mr. Obama knows his whites because he was born to them, raised and loved by them which gave him the ability to offer them trust in the face of those skeptical of a Black head of state.

Is Mr. Obama concerned with maintaining the trust of White people still? Is he concerned by the numbers of his voters that swung Trump’s way in 2016 and with losing them again after 2020 due to proponents of defunding the police? What about the trust of Black people and progressive voters; is he equally concerned about them?

Defunding the police is not abolishing the police; rather it is taking funds away from the police and reallocating them where needed i.e. social service providers and social safety net programs. More police don’t make us any safer — rather, defunding does. Yet as crime has gone down, funding for police has gone up.

However, conservative and centrists alike, many of whom are white, need only look back on Barack Obama’s record with police if they have any question as to where he stands. While president, Mr. Obama asserted that the criminal justice system needed reform, however such reform did not include defunding the police. In fact, then President Obama sought funding to put more police on the street.

Courtesy of Dreamforce

In a speech given in Camden, NJ, then President Obama praised the city for its community surveillance program to “target” crime spots, he offered them support to continue doing so as well as support for police to continue receiving military equipment through the 1033 Military Surplus Program. However, a 2018 study found that as public safety departments acquire more 1033 Program equipment, more local residents are likely to die in encounters with police and sheriffs.

None of that matters. Many white people believe that calls to defund the police is a threat to the social order; one where state-sponsored terrorism will no longer serve as a tactic to protect the physical and psychological enclaves of whiteness.

Equally as troubling is Mr. Obama’s history of framing the means for acquiring desired social gains dependent on people carrying themselves with self-respect and dignity. The very first thing he said when advising protestors in the wake of the George Floyd murder was, “if we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.”

One can argue that Mr. Obama isn’t practicing respectability politics; that he’s not specifically telling Black people to behave for White approval. But then again, Mr. Obama is good at scolding young activists; as he did in Ferguson and Baltimore.

He’s also good at scolding Black people — particularly Black males — but I digress.

Barack Obama may believe that he has the political and social cache to apply a political campaign strategy to a social movement, however he fails to understand that politician and activist aren’t synonymous terms.

Activists, as well as politicians, understand that slogans, emblems and symbols help reduce movements, whether for justice or for votes, to its most basic part. Although slogans like Black Power, We Shall Overcome, Free Angela, Black Power, and All Power to the People offend some, they’ve effectively translated into shifts in public policy. These slogans, such as Black Lives Matter, are also horribly gentrified, into Blue Lives Matter or All Lives Matter and even Million MAGA March; it’s why they’re now performed after being previously criticized i.e. kneeling.

Watering down a slogan for the sake of easing white people’s fears won’t save us from the damage white supremacy has caused. Neither did drinking water in Flint; nor will a video of taking a Coronavirus vaccine. What it will take is confronting white supremacy head on by calling a thing a thing, saying just what we mean and not giving a damn if white people are uncomfortable because of it.

Barack Obama is a politician, not an activist and that’s okay. History will reflect on Barack Obama the politician well, but his grassroots organizing days are well behind him. But sadly, this is who Barack Obama is; a politician first, willing to chastise agitators of an unjust system rather than challenge those who benefit from it in an effort to make an unjust system more just.