We Bumped Our Heads Against the Clouds. My uncle Steve hates Barack Obama.
There, I’ve said it: I’ve relayed in public the secret that we hush at family gatherings, the reason why our family cannot openly celebrate and discuss the Obamas at Christmastime the way other black families do. Let me be explicit about what I am saying. When I use the word hate, I mean that my uncle—an African American man in his fifties who grew up in the segregated South, in Arkansas, a hundred miles from the National Guard’s 1957 standoff with nine black students outside an all-white school—this man, who ate at segregated diners, played in all-black athletic leagues, and went to all-black schools—despises the first black president of the United States.
The reasons why are varied: sometimes he seems simply jealous: envious that a brother has come around in his lifetime who is—how can I put it? —superbadder than he will ever be. Search. Action. Clay Shirky: How social media can make history.