Mixed Race Studies

Obama sworn in at low-key White House ceremony

China Daily-USA
2013-01-21

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama took the official oath for his second term on Sunday at the White House in a small, private ceremony that set a more subdued tone compared to the historic start of his presidency four years ago.

Gathered with his family in the Blue Room on the White House’s ceremonial main floor, Obama put his hand on a family Bible and recited the 35-word oath that was read out loud by US Chief Justice John Roberts.

“I did it,” Obama said as he hugged his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia. “Thank you, sweetie,” he told Michelle when she congratulated him. “You didn’t mess up,” Sasha Obama told her father.

It was a low-key start to the first African-American US president’s second term, which is likely to be dominated – at least at the start – by budget fights with Republicans and attempts to reform gun control and immigration laws…

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Obama sworn in for second term

France 24
2013-01-20

US President Barack Obama on Sunday was sworn in for a second four-year term at a small, private ceremony at the White House. He will take the oath again on Monday at the Capitol during a public swearing-in.

A still-popular Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office for a second term on Sunday, facing a troubled future but hoping to leave behind a battering four years at the helm of a government mired in ugly political division.
 
When Obama first took office as the 44th U.S. president, many Americans hoped the symbolism of the first black man in the White House was a turning point in the country’s deeply troubled racial history. Obama vowed to moderate the partisan anger engulfing the country, but the nation is only more divided four years later, perhaps as deeply as at any time since the U.S. Civil War 150 years ago.
 
Obama was sworn in by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts during a brief ceremony with his family in the White House Blue Room, meeting the legal requirement that presidents officially take office on Jan. 20. Because that date fell on a Sunday this year, the traditional ceremonies surrounding the start of a president’s term were put off to Monday, which coincides this year with the birthday of revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King. He was assassinated in 1968…

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Obama sworn in for second term

The New Zealand Herald
2013-01-21

Stepping into his second term, President Barack Obama took the oath of office in an intimate swearing-in ceremony at the White House, the leader of a nation no longer in the throes of the recession he inherited four years ago, but still deeply divided.

The president, surrounded by family in the ornate White House Blue Room, was administered the oath by Chief Justice John Roberts. With Obama’s hand resting on a Bible used for years by Michelle Obama’s family, the president vowed “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” echoing the same words spoken by the 43 men who held the office before him.

“I did it,” Obama whispered to his youngest daughter, Sasha, as he wrapped her in a hug moments later.

The president said the oath in just minutes before noon on January 20 (local time), the time at which the Constitution says new presidential terms begin. There was little pomp and circumstance—Obama walked into the room flanked by his family and exited almost immediately after finishing the oath.

He’ll repeat the swearing-in ritual again on the west front of the Capitol before a crowd of up to 800,000 people.

Only about a dozen family members were on hand to witness Sunday’s swearing in, including the first lady, daughters Malia and Sasha, the president’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her family. Mrs. Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, and the first lady’s brother, Craig Robinson, and his family were also on hand, along with a few reporters and photographers.

Yet the mood in the nation’s capital was more subdued during this year’s inaugural festivities than it was four years ago, when Obama swept into office on a wave of national optimism, becoming the first African-American to hold the nation’s highest office. Since then, he has endured fiscal fights with Congress and a bruising re-election campaign – and has the gray hair and lower approval ratings to show for it…

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Inauguration Day: Obama sworn in for second term

BBC News
2013-01-20

Barack Obama has officially been sworn in for his second term as US president in a small ceremony at the White House.

Although the US Constitution requires the oath of office to be taken by noon on 20 January, that falls on a Sunday so the public inauguration will take place on Monday.

Mr Obama took his official oath in the White House’s Blue Room.

The public ceremony with pomp and circumstance will follow on Monday.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Mr Obama, witnessed by First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters Sasha and Malia as well as some family members and reporters.

Resting his hand on a bible used for many years by his wife’s family, Mr Obama vowed “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

He will repeat those words during Monday’s public inauguration, in which he will set out his plans for the next four years.

Vice-President Joe Biden was sworn in for a second term at a small ceremony at his official residence earlier on Sunday morning…

…In 2009, nearly two million people crammed into Washington to witness President Obama’s first inauguration.

Four years on, the mood is unlikely to match that excitement, says our correspondent.

But, he adds, the second inauguration of America’s first black president is a moment many will not want to miss….

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Obama Takes Oath in Quiet Ceremony

The New York Times
2013-01-20

Brian Knowlton

Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With only his family nearby, President Obama was sworn into office in the White House before noon on Sunday in advance of Monday’s public pomp, the private moment forced by a rare quirk of the constitutional calendar but appropriately capturing the downsized expectations for his second term.

Even the Monday festivities, with the traditional inaugural parade, balls and not least the re-enactment outside the Capitol of Mr. Obama’s swearing-in, will be less spectacular than four years ago, when the new president embodied hope and change for most Americans at a time of global economic crisis and two wars. This year fewer parties are planned, and fewer people are expected to swarm the National Mall.

The private but official swearing-in of the 44th president at 11:55 a.m. was just the seventh such event in history to be held before the public ceremony, and the first since Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural, each one occurring because the constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration fell on a Sunday. Recorded and televised minutes later, the simple scene suggested a couple marrying before a justice of the peace, with a big ceremony and party planned for later.

Only Michelle Obama, holding her family Bible, and the couple’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, stood beside Mr. Obama, in the grand Blue Room as he recited the oath specified in the Constitution and again administered to him by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.…

…The president and his family later traveled to Washington to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, an historic church with a long record of activism against racism — it once harbored runaway slaves — to worship and to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The federal holiday honoring Dr. King coincides this year with Inauguration Day.

The congregation was enthusiastic, according to pool reports, and the sermon ended with a boisterous call and response of “Forward” – the president’s one-word campaign slogan.

These events took place mostly out of view of the hundreds of thousands of Americans, foreign visitors and dignitaries who have poured into Washington to be a part of the second inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president, a more restrained affair than four years ago but still a resonant marker in the nation’s history…

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In Second Inaugural Address, Can President Obama Reassure a Worried Public?

The Daily Beast
2013-01-19

Evan Thomas

These are gloomy times for an inauguration. In Newsweek, Evan Thomas asks: On Monday, can the president rise to the occasion with a historically inspiring message?

The last Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2009, dawned bright and cold. More than a million people, possibly the largest live audience ever to see a president inaugurated, and certainly the biggest since Lyndon Johnson’s inauguration in 1965, streamed to the Washington Mall for Barack Obama’s oath-taking as the 44th president of the United States. Even the most jaded old Washington hands could feel a different vibe in the crowd—people seemed excited, happy, some teary-eyed to witness, for the first time in history, an African-American sworn in as chief executive.

A president who is writing (or, more likely, editing and refining) his inaugural address is confronted with a very difficult challenge: how to speak in his own true voice while at the same time speaking for every man and woman. The challenge to be at once unique and universal has defeated virtually all of Obama’s predecessors. With a few memorable ­exceptions—like JFK’s, Lincoln’s second, FDR’s first (“the only thing to fear is fear itself”)—inaugural addresses have long disappointed their expectant listeners. The words rarely live up to the occasion. Most inaugural addresses “tend not to be very good,” says presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “The best rhetoric has been used up in the campaign, and presidents don’t want to promise too much. They are planning to give their first State of the Union addresses in a few weeks and they don’t want to preempt. Plus, most presidents are not good speakers or writers.”…

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Inauguration will cement ties between Obama, Martin Luther King Jr.

The Washington Post
2013-01-15

Wil Haygood, Reporter

President Barack Obama, with the nation and world watching, will share his Inauguration Day spotlight with a Baptist preacher from Georgia who launched a moral crusade six decades ago to wrest America from its brutal Jim Crow laws.

Future generations may mull the divine meaning of Barack Obama’s celebration and pageantry taking place on the very day set aside to honor Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader gunned down on a Memphis hotel balcony in 1968.

“President Obama represents the last lap of this unfinished race” to achieve equality, said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was near King on the day he was slain in Memphis.

The Obama-King moment is already imbued with a palpable resonance. “It is all so very deep to me,” said Clarence B. Jones, who in 1963 helped King draft his luminous “I Have a Dream” speech that he delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, opposite the Mall from the Capitol, where Obama will deliver his second inaugural address.

In the days leading up to the inauguration, Jones found himself in the throes of writing a letter to the president. “I’m going to ask him, ‘If you could just pause during your speech on Inauguration Day and look at the Lincoln Memorial, and then in the direction of the King Memorial, and say as you are taking the oath of office, “Martin, this one’s for you,” he said…

…Jackson points to the Obama accomplishments which make him feel most proud: The increase in Pell Grants for students, more people working than when Obama first came into office, the ending of the war in Iraq. But because Obama is in the White House, Jackson says it does not mask the concerns he still has.

“What we want is equality,” Jackson explains. “If you put a black as head of the NFL, well, that’s a position. But what makes the league work, why we’re so successful, is that the rules are public, the goals are clear and the score is transparent. We have a black in the White House, yes, but beneath, the playing field is uneven, the goals are not clear and the score is not transparent. The infrastructure enforcement is where justice comes from. You want justice from the bottom up. You want equality from the bottom up.”…

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African Americans Reflect on Obama 2nd Inauguration

Voice of America
2013-01-15

Chris Simkins

WASHINGTON — Americans from across the nation will converge on Washington, DC, next  Monday (January 21) for the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. The moment will be especially meaningful for millions of African Americans who will again witness history as the first African American President is sworn in for a second four-year term.

Some Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters are celebrating the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.  Francine and Cynthia Blake from Ohio see great significance in the president’s second term.
 
“We have come a long way, a long way.  It just touches and warms my heart because for me I may not ever see another African American in office as high as he is,”said Francine.

“The great significance and importance about it is the fact that he needs to promote and protect the middle class, the middle working class,” added Cynthia.

These women are in Washington to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the sorority—which is the largest African-American women’s organization in the world.  The 260,000-member group, along with other black voters, helped propel President Obama to victory last November. 

Political Science teacher Vanessa Kidd-Thomas says the election result illustrates the power blacks have at the ballot box…

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Why The Next President Will Probably Be Black Too

BuzzFeed
2013-01-03

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Staff

If there is anything approaching an iron law of American politics, it’s this: The next president will be a member of the same race as the current one. It’s a rule that has held through 42 of 43 transfers of power. And there’s every reason to think it will hold through the next one. The next president will, in all likelihood, be African-American, most likely one of the two African Americans who would make anybody’s list of the top 10 contenders for the Democratic nomination.

This is, obviously, the sort of statistical bullshit with which political and sports pundits amuse themselves all day on cable TV and talk radio. It’s equally true that 43 of 44 presidents have been white men.

But there are also strong reasons to believe that the Democratic nominee, at least, will be African-American. First, African-Americans represent a vital voting bloc in Democratic primaries, and they — like most ethnic groups — typically rally around the favorite son or daughter. Black voters represented an overwhelming 55 percent of the vote in South Carolina in 2008, and almost 20 percent in, for instance, Florida. And the liberal white Democrats who make up the primary electorate in places like Iowa obviously have no problem voting for a black candidate.

But there are also strong reasons to believe that the Democratic nominee, at least, will be African-American. First, African-Americans represent a vital voting bloc in Democratic primaries, and they — like most ethnic groups — typically rally around the favorite son or daughter. Black voters represented an overwhelming 55 percent of the vote in South Carolina in 2008, and almost 20 percent in, for instance, Florida. And the liberal white Democrats who make up the primary electorate in places like Iowa obviously have no problem voting for a black candidate.

Indeed, as Obama showed, the two great tranches of the Democratic coalition are well-educated white voters and voters of color, of whom most primary voters are still black. (That has only become clearer as the Democrats shed, and win without, working class white voters.) The candidate who can unite those two constituencies is the one who wins the primary. Without a true white liberal champion, a la Howard Dean, an African-American primary candidate has a head-start in 2016.

Second, the strongest sub-rosa argument that backers of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards made against Barack Obama in 2008 is now moot: A black man, they claimed, simply wouldn’t be able to win in November. He has twice. Indeed, you could easily argue from recent precedent that a black man has a better shot than anyone of getting elected President of the United States in the current decade…

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President Obama on “The View”

Sojourners: Faith in Action for Social Justice
2010-08-02

Valerie Elverton Dixon
Just Peace Theory

President Obama visited with the five hosts of the ABC daytime talk show “The View.” People complained. He should have gone to the Boy Scout gathering. The office of the presidency ought to be above such a program. These complaints are nonsense. The president ought to speak to his constituents, and the views of “The View” are all people to whom he is accountable.

The women asked interesting questions about the economy, the war, and the Shirley Sherrod episode and what it says about race in America. The president was able to make his case on all of these issues. Barbara Walters asked the president about his personal identity: why he identified as African American rather than as mixed race since his late mother is European American.
 
In my mind the answer to Walter’s question was obvious because President Obama is literally African American, the son of an African father and an American mother. He answered that he identifies as an African American because in the African-American community the reality that we all are mixed race is known and readily accepted. In one family you can find kin that is the blackest of black and the whitest of white. Racial purity is not a concern…

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