Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates: 'My President Was Black' 
 
 Rachel Martin talks to writer Ta-Nehisi Coates about his new piece in The Atlantic magazine: "My President Was Black: A history of the first African American White House and of what came next." 
 
 RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: 
 
 Author Ta-Nehisi Coates was probably always planning on writing a big piece around this time of year, a big-picture philosophical analysis about what it meant for this country to be led by a black president for eight years and what that president's legacy would be. After the election of Donald Trump, that legacy was no longer secure and Ta-Nehisi Coates started thinking about the Obama years in a different way. His new piece in The Atlantic is called "My President Was Black: A History Of The First African-American White House And Of What Came Next." Coates told me that in some ways Barack Obama was naive about the role race would play in his presidency and the election of Donald Trump. 
 
 TA-NEHISI COATES: I think President Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life. I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn't mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it's not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism (ph). 
 
 That's not an accident that he didn't begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing (ph) the first African-American president of the United States. And from that, you know, went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women (laughter), you know, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong. 
 
 MARTIN: Is his misreading, as you say, of the power of certain racist tendencies in our culture, how much of that had to do with who Barack Obama is at his core? You say he is an unfailing optimist. 
 
 COATES: Yeah, I think there's a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that's not really it. What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black. He grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn't directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized. 
 
 And so that gave him a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could. The same time I think that ultimately led him to underestimate some of the difficulties that he would face. 
 
 MARTIN: Was the big achievement just winning the White House? 
 
 COATES: No. That was an achievement, but as an African-American, I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. The symbolism was in - and this sounds really, really small, but it's actually big for African-Americans - the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of. 
 
 MARTIN: At the same time, you've been critical of the president. 
 
 COATES: I have, yes. 
 
 MARTIN: In particular in how he has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities. 
 
 COATES: Yeah, I think so. I think so. You know, part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you know, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, you know, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, you know, are irresponsible. You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there's, you know, some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and, you know, and a level of shame, you know. 
 
 My mom used to tell me, you know - I can't use this phrase on the radio - but basically don't be one of those dudes hanging on the corner. And I think the president adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House. And I think, like, there's a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place. 
 
 MARTIN: According to the most recent exit polling, 8 percent of African-Americans voted for Donald Trump. For those African-Americans who voted for Donald Trump, were they disavowing the presidency of Barack Obama and his legacy? 
 
 COATES: I don't know, but I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump. Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that's a statement. 
 
 MARTIN: What was your most recent conversation with Barack Obama like? 
 
 COATES: It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction. I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said (laughter) I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven. I don't know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that he was sincere. It didn't feel like a line to me. You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that's, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people. 
 
 MARTIN: Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His cover story "My President Was Black" is out today. Ta-Nehisi, thanks so much. 
 
 COATES: Thanks so much for having me. 
 
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 "Change doesn't happen every four years," the president said. "Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitched their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day." 
 
 The speech was unapologetically black, quoting black author Zora Neale Hurston, lauding singer Prince and applauding activists in the Black Lives Matter movement who fight for racial justice. Echoing his 2008 speech on race relations, "A More Perfect Union," Obama urged the students at the historically black college to embrace their heritage and affect systemic change through the political process. 
 
 "Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness," the president said. 
 
 "Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness." — Obama at Howard 
 
 Though Obama enumerated the issues facing young black people today — mass incarceration, the wage gap and the school-to-prison pipeline — he began by recapping the progress that black Americans have made since he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. Obama noted that at the time, only 10% of black Americans held college degrees. That number is now 28%. The ranks of American millionaires and CEOs are blacker than they've ever been. The president even cited showrunner Shonda Rhimes' domination of Thursday night programming on ABC as evidence that black Americans have made enduring progress. 
 
 Obama then asked Howard graduates a rhetorical question: In what time period of American history would you want to be born? He answered: to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, 'young, gifted and black' in America, you would choose right n 
 
 The president praised Howard alum, author and Atlantic national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates, who won the National Book Award for "Between the World and Me," an epistolary memoir about being black in America, and wrote a 2016 series of Marvel's comic Black Panther. Like Coates, Obama explained, black people do not have to choose between pursuing one genre of writing or the other. They can do both. They can achieve both. Obama also encouraged students to embrace their own style and sexuality like the late musician Prince. 
 
 "We've got a justice gap." 
 
 Many issues still require the attention and work of the class of 2016, the president said. 
 
 "We've got a justice gap when too many black boys and girls pass through a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails," 
 
 The president reminded graduates that their blackness gives them unique insight into the struggle against inequality and racial injustice. 
 
 "We can't walk by a homeless man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours allows that state of affairs to occur," he said. "We can't just lock up a low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely out of childhood, felt he had no other options. We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were but somehow got ground down by structures that were unfair and 
 
 Obama called on graduates to "expand [their] moral imaginations to understand and empathize" to understand struggles that are different from their own. Obama mentioned refugees, immigrants, the rural poor, transgender people and even middle-aged white men whose world has been " by economic and cultural and technological change and feels powerless to stop it." 
 
 "You gotta get in his head, too," Obama said. 
 
 "Not just hashtags, but votes." 
 
 Obama stress to graduates that passion, while pivotal to progress, must be coupled with participation in the political process, which includes voting. 
 
 "I want you to have . You have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes," he said. "To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom." 
 
 He spoke candidly about the initiatives he was unable to pass because of lack of cooperation from Congress, and gave graduates a light chiding for low voter turnout among youth during midterm elections. 
 
 "You don't think that made a difference? What would have happened if you would have turned out at 50, 60, 70% all across this country?" Obama asked. He added that, though there are still barriers to voting in America, they pale in comparison to the barriers their grandparents and great-grandparents faced, such as illogical tests that forced black people to guess how many bubbles were on a bar of soap. 
 
 Obama closed his speech by asking students to recognize that, even if they believe they are 100% right, democracy is built on compromise. In one of his rare nods to the issue of free speech on college campuses, Obama said students should allow others to speak, even if they disagree. 
 
 "A Terrific Speech" 
 
 Those watching in person and watching at home heaped praise onto the speech, with many commenters getting emotional. 
 
 Obama's speech was complicated, as he noted the role of compromise in the work of progress, while maintains a commitment to one's values. 
 
 Obama also rightly noted that awareness is not the win, but is the initial work that creates space for the later wins. 
 
 In many ways, this speech echoed themes he offered when we met with him a month ago. He is becoming more explicit re: discussing blackness. 
 
 Obama has mentioned non-hetero sexualities at least twice. In a speech to a black audience. At @HowardU. #HowardU16 
 
 The very Gospel itself. This is a terrific speech.https://twitter.com/jenniferd0902/status/728984008420425728 ... 
 
 Some folks on my tl are saying Obama's speech is too political, and some are saying it's not political enough. 
 
 Okay now @POTUS got me crying at his commencement speech. #HowardU16 
 
 Obama's speech is giving me the family talk after the first round of Thanksgiving eating. You waiting for peach cobbler, but "wisdom time." 
 
 Every Obama speech from here on out is gonna make me cry. I'm having end of Obama era anxiety. 
 
 This Obama speech should have you ready to conquer the world 
 
 Wow. I'm so honored & blessed to have experienced an Obama speech in person. He was so unapologetically black.pic.twitter.com/ZgWVI9VsrH https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ch3g5JTUUAAFfhj.jpg:large 
 
 Obama speech. #amazing! What a man 
 
 President Obama speech today was soo on point and uplifting. I know what he means...I'm living proof that hard work and determination works 
 
 Obama's remarks begin at the 1:32:00 mark below.
– In the new Atlantic cover story, one of the nation's most prominent black voices provides a lengthy assessment of the nation's first black president. The 17,000-word piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates makes clear that Coates considers Obama a man worthy of high esteem. After noting that Obama's rise to national prominence began with his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, Coates writes: "Over the next 12 years, I came to regard Obama as a skilled politician, a deeply moral human being, and one of the greatest presidents in American history." He adds that Obama was "the most agile interpreter and navigator of the color line I had ever seen," able to connect to black people while not alienating white people. That was due in part to his own upbringing with a Kansas-born white mother. Obama recalls that in the 2008 race, he gave himself maybe a 25% chance of winning—but he never doubted his ability to win over white voters. Why? "Obama was able to offer white America...something very few African Americans could—trust," writes Coates. But he adds that Obama had something of a blind spot here as well. As he tells NPR, he thinks the president "deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life." In the Atlantic piece, he takes issue with Obama's "overriding trust in color-blind policy and his embrace of 'personal responsibility' rhetoric when speaking to African-Americans," which Coates views as insensitive to the realities of many black youth. But the overall tone is deep respect for what Obama was able to accomplish despite overt obstructionism. His "victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans," writes Coates. "But there is nothing 'mere' about symbols." Click to read the full piece.