We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“If there was one thing that South Carolina feared more than bad Negro government,” wrote Du Bois, “it was good Negro government.”

I know now that that hunger is a retreat from the knotty present into myth and that what ultimately awaits those who retreat into fairy tales, who seek refuge in the mad pursuit to be made great again, in the image of a greatness that never was, is tragedy.

Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president.