The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

10 Jun 2026

🖨️ Print Article

Barack Obama with Stephen Colbert at the Obama Center (Scott Kowalchyk / CBS Broadcasting Inc.)

Barack Obama was not a friend to Black people. He bailed out the banks, deported millions, and bombed Muslim countries, and now his $850 million monument in Chicago is pushing Black families out of their neighborhoods.

“Barack Obama does not carry our burden, in addition to other burdens. He in fact promises to lift white-people-as-a-whole’s burden, the burden of having to listen to these very specific and historical black complaints, to deal with the legacies of slavery. That is his promise to them. That is what allowed him to amass huge, huge numbers of white votes. And he will amass larger and larger percentages of black votes now that black folks see that white folks will vote for Barack Obama.”

Glen Ford, January 9, 2008

The Obama Center, Barack Obama’s oligarch funded monument to himself, cost a grand total of $850 million to build. The ability to raise such a huge amount of money tells much of the story of the Obama presidency. Barack Obama, like all other presidents, was beholden to the ruling class and accordingly carried out all of their directives, which is what one might expect. In return, presidents are paid off upon leaving office with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates donating $25 million each to the Obama Foundation to build the Obama Center. Their largess is an indicator of what Obama did so well. He very skillfully marketed himself as a progressive while breaking fundraising records with a $750 million war chest haul in his 2008 campaign. Glen Ford described the contradictions as, “Goldman Sachs and the anti-war movement being on the same page.”

Black people are still besotted by the former president who has now been out of office since January 2017. Living through a second Donald Trump administration plays a large role in the continued love relationship. The often ecstatic feelings about Obama’s presence were crushed when the man who carried out the “birther” campaign questioning his U.S. citizenship succeeded him and even returned after being impeached, convicted of a felony, and found liable in a civil case alleging a sexual assault.

Trump has been relentless in pushing his programs which range from mass deportations and restrictions on legal immigration, imposing tariffs that hurt U.S. businesses, joining the U.S. military with Israel’s, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, attempting another regime change project in Iran, destroying the inadequate social safety net, and carrying out a deadly siege against Cuba.

But if one looks at Obama we see much that is the same. Obama was the deporter in chief, setting a record with deportations exceeding all of his predecessors. He carried out a bloody regime change against Libya, killing its president and thousands of other people and displacing millions more. He began another such plan against Syria, which two more presidents expanded upon until jihadists proxies took over that country as well. He presided over a U.S. led coup against Ukraine and led the effort to undo a United Nations approved Minsk Agreement peace process and in so doing led Joe Biden to instigate a now four-year long war. Trump is making good on finishing the agendas started by his predecessors.

As for the safety net, no one should forget Obama’s efforts at a “grand bargain” with republicans, putting everything on the proverbial chopping block table, including social security. He said as much during his first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012: “You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position.” For the previous two years he had pursued but been spurned by congressional republicans. Black Agenda Report explained, “We can only hope that the Republicans are so consumed with destroy-Obama fervor that they reject his entreaties to bipartisan collaboration, and rush to gridlock.” The attack on the safety net would have begun with Obama instead of Trump, had republicans not been so insistent on obstructing for the sake of “white nationalist triumphalism.”

Now Obama, ever the smooth talking, shape shifting, neo-liberal has erected a monument. But to what? This center is technically not a presidential library. Presidential libraries hold archives on-site which are maintained by the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA). NARA is digitizing Obama’s papers but those will be held in Maryland, not at the Obama Center in Chicago.

Valerie Jarrett, Obama factotum for life and Obama Foundation CEO, explained the difference thusly: “The advantages of having everything in one location might be fun for people who like to sift through the papers. We would much rather have a Chicago Public Library on our site than filling it up with a bunch of papers.” Sifting through papers is what makes a presidential library a library but the Obama center is basically a privately funded vanity project and not the historical archive that it ought to be. Bunches of papers be damned.

And what of the Chicago Black community? How will they fare after the Center is completed? A headline in the Chicago Sun-Times tells the story: “As Airbnbs explode around the Obama Center, housing advocates say affordable units are disappearing.” The man still beloved by most Black people is accelerating gentrification. Airbnb short term rentals are declining in the rest of Chicago but increasing in the area near the Center. Through its Community Tourism Prep Sessions the Obama Center is, among other things, helping homeowners become Airbnb operators. “Helping local residents earn extra income by sharing their homes with Obama Presidential Center visitors. Hosted in partnership with Airbnb, this session will give residents the information they need to welcome guests to their home, use the Airbnb platform, and champion their neighborhood.” Higher rents and housing shortages are the inevitable result of Airbnb proliferation. Black people struggling to maintain their properties can keep them if they engage in accelerating the loss of housing stock for the entire community.

Black Agenda Report was always in the forefront of Obama critique. This columnist along with co-founders Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon and other contributors did not shrink from practicing real journalism even as others changed their politics and succumbed to Obamamania. While the hackneyed phrase “lesser evil” was promoted in order to excuse the misdeeds of the Democratic Party in general and the Obama administration in particular, Black Agenda Report responded by pointing out that the first Black president was not a lesser evil at all. He was the more effective evil:

“He has been more effective in Evil-Doing than Bush in terms of protecting the citadels of corporate power, and advancing the imperial agenda. He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks – just as he hired himself out to do.

That was always Wall Street’s expectation of Obama, and his promise to them. That’s why they gave him far more money in 2008 than they gave John McCain. They were buying Obama futures on the electoral political market – and they made out like bandits.

They invested in Obama to protect them from harm, as a hedge against the risk of systemic disaster caused by their own predations. And, it was a good bet, a good deal. It paid out in the tens of trillions of dollars.

If you believe that what Wall Street does is Evil, then Obama’s service to Wall Street is Evil, and there is nothing lesser about it.”

The Obama Center is full of beautiful art and, as Jarret points out, has a public library branch, a basketball court, digitized documents, and all of the amenities that one would expect to see in an $850 million spend. Millions of people are already excited and planning to travel to Chicago to see the Center after its June 19, 2026 opening.

Yes, the opening will be held on Juneteenth, a holiday which was once a people’s celebration with deep meaning for Black history. It now has the dubious distinction of becoming a federal holiday that was created for the express purpose of quieting Black political demands during the Biden administration. Any righteous significance was sacrificed on the altar of political cynicism, which makes the choice of a date for the Obama Center opening all the more revealing but not in the way in which Barack Obama intended.

The collective memory of Barack Obama will likely remain in a positive light. After all, he doesn't wear orange makeup, fall asleep, show signs of dementia, or destroy the refugee program in favor of white South Africans who aren’t really refugees. But he is not a friend to the Black people who love him so much. He bailed out the banks, but not the victims of the housing bubble. He celebrated Ramadan at the white house but made war on Muslim nations. Perhaps it is just as well that he built a theme park in his honor instead of a real presidential library. At last Barack Obama provides truth in advertising.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.