This Time, I'm Voting for Obama Because He's Black

This time, I'm voting for President Obama because he's black.  Before you accuse me of "playing the race card," a phrase I find offensive because it is intended to thwart any meaningful and real discussion of race and racism in America, hear me out.

Last time, I voted for President Obama because I believed he was the candidate with the better intellect and temperament to deal with the challenges American would face.

I was not disappointed.  I knew that there was no way he was going to be able to reverse the tsunami that would become the Great Recession in only four years. But you could not have told me that the GOP would have, from day one, conspired to make President Obama a "one-term president" before he had even done anything to deserve such animus.  To my knowledge, the GOP didn't even conspire to make Roosevelt a "one-term president," and his agenda was decidedly more radical than President Obama's.

You cannot tell me in good conscience that we'd even be saying that a white president who accomplished all of the following and more in four freakin' years was a "failed president":

• The Lily Ledbetter Act
• The Consumer Protection Agency
• Appointing two women to the Supreme Court
• Ending the war in Iraq
• Earning a Nobel Peace Prize
• Health care reform
• Taking out Osama bin Laden and most of the top leadership in Al Qaeda
• Saving the U.S. auto industry
• Ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
• Deferring deportation of Dreamers
• Keeping the entire U.S. economy from going off a cliff

To my mind, the only plausible explanation is that a whole lot of white folks just aren't comfortable having a black president, no matter what he's done to save many of their broke behinds.

So I've already voted for Barack Obama because he's black.  Since he's not been graded fairly because of his race, I've decided to balance the unspoken racial bias with my racially biased vote.  As a fellow African-American Ivy League-educated professional, I totally get it.  Been there, got the "unspoken racial bias" t-shirt many times over.  Hell, it's not like a whole lot of evangelical white folks aren't holding their noses about Romney's religion and voting for him just because he's white.

As Iyanla Vanzant says, "Call a thing a thing."  If Barack Obama were white, we wouldn't even be talking about a close race.  Nor would he have been treated with more disrespect than any sitting president I can recall in my 49 years in these united states.

Yep, I said it.  And I'm not playing the "race card."  I'm playing the "reality card."

Get over it.