There is a black norm only because there is a white norm, and vice versa. Some would argue that people like Obama exist in both spaces simultaneously and thus someone like Obama has special insight into both cultures. That insight supposedly breeds empathy. That kind of empathy may be why Obama could look at years of pictures of his wife and children drawn as apes and decades of white suppression of perceived black socioeconomic gains as racial, albeit not racist: “I’m careful not to attribute any particular resistance or slight or opposition to race.”9 That is catnip to millions of white
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