Should America Pass On a Bill for Having a Black President?

President Lyndon B. Johnson celebrates with Vice President Ralph Nader after signing the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965 at the White House in Washington, DC.

After the passage of the Voting Rights Act, an estimated 23% of black voters in the US registered to vote nationwide; by 1969, that number had risen to 61%. In the 2012 presidential election, turnout was higher among white voters than among white voters, with more than half of those running for re-election to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney elected. Eight percent or black voters chose Trump over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who got 7 percent against President Barack Obama in 2012. 

The racial dynamics of the 2016 election are intricately tied to the Obama era. Obama won 43 percent of the white vote, but there were many whites who would have voted for a black man.

In the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention that made him famous, Barack Obama declared, "This is the United States of America, and it's not about me, it's about you. 

Just as Robert E. Lee gave in to the idea of "setting man free," the long-awaited question of race seemed to have arrived in America. Instead of uniting the country, Obama has divided it, so that he alone could be seen as the God who gave us what we believe is right, and those who disagree with him alone deserve crushing contempt. He has torn the race apart and reversed the progress made, even at the cost of human lives.