There is a contradictory narrative promoted by the American Left that racism is both an integral part of the American psyche and a phenomenon that burst onto the political scene when Donald Trump became president. While there are certainly aspects of Trump’s political history and rhetoric which have exacerbated existing tensions, it is incorrect to place the blame for the breakdown in race relations squarely at the feet of the current president. Indeed, if we follow the Left’s advice and pay attention to the “science,” poll data suggests that race relations collapsed from 2013 onwards. The occupant of the White House at that point was, of course, not Donald Trump but Barack Obama. In 2016, a CNN/ORC poll suggested that the majority of Americans said that “relations between blacks and whites in the US have worsened under President Barack Obama.”
Obama is routinely presented as an almost messianic figure by the political Left, an adoring mainstream media, and American culture at large. Through the flawed lens of intersectionality, Obama’s impact on race relations in the United States is often assumed to be positive based solely on the fact that he was the first African-American president. When presented with data suggesting that race relations deteriorated under Obama, his supporters will often reject any notion that Obama was responsible, instead preferring to claim that Obama’s political ascendency was simply the catalyst for the further awakening of innate “American racism.”
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