Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

The Obama Presidential Center Will Displace Black People
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
13 Oct 2021
The Obama Presidential Center Will Displace Black People
The Obama Presidential Center Will Displace Black People

The Obama Presidential Center will inevitably displace a working class Black community in Chicago. The center is in keeping with Obama's history of doing the bidding of the powerful, including accelerating gentrification.

The soon to be constructed Barack Obama Presidential Center poses a great danger to the surrounding Black neighborhoods on the South Shore of Chicago. In fact, thanks to this $500 million, 19-acre homage to the 44th president, there may not be any Black people living there much longer.

Families are already facing rent increases and homes that were once moderately priced are now unaffordable to Black working people. These market manipulations are integral to the gentrification model of urban development. The end result is always a displaced and dispersed Black population.

This crisis is but the latest Obama slap in the face to the people who loved him the most. His 2008 presidential campaign stump speeches were replete with the worst stereotypes about Black men. Who can forget his not very funny jokes about the imagined Cousin Pookie who wouldn’t get off the couch to vote. Obama avoided any mentions of Black people and their unique status with canned lines about rising tides lifting all the boats.

Of course the intent was to disappear Black people as a group and therefore make himself more palatable to white people. In his maiden speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention he declared, “There is no white America. There is no Black America.” He showed his hand early on and no one should have been surprised when he disappeared the needs of the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting block in order to gain political advantage.

Construction of the enormous facility will not be the first time that Black people lost homes and money because of Obama. The Peoples Policy Project reported how federal inaction during the housing bubble collapse was especially damaging to this group. The Obama administration did not take the steps necessary to end foreclosures, in fact his Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) accelerated foreclosures by aiding the banks more than homeowners. The crooks who enabled the crash got away and struggling workers got the shaft.

The tragedy is that these failures of policy did little to diminish Obama’s luster with Black people. He could do no wrong, regardless of the damage that he created domestically or internationally. The code of silence did nothing to help his enablers. The foreclosure crisis pushed vulnerable people over the edge to loss of property and loss of wealth. Homeownership has traditionally been the main source of wealth for Black people and losing it has devastating consequences.

Renters will also suffer. The state of Illinois does not have laws limiting rent increases. . Landlords in the area are already raising rents in anticipation of the coming changes. In typical Obama fashion, an inadequate community benefits agreement was hastily drawn up. It provides for low-income housing in one small area of the community, but leaves others untouched.

Yet there is still a reservoir of support for the man who did so little to benefit Black people and a naive belief that he has their interests in mind. As one community resident said, “This is the community that sent President Obama to Springfield. This is the community that sent him to the Senate. This is the community that sent him to the White House, and we should be the community that gets to stay for the presidential center.”
The points are valid but they are of no importance to Barack Obama or to the people who have funded his vanity project to the tune of $500 million. Funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros Open Society Foundation, and corporations like AT&T and Boeing. 

None of them grew rich because they cared about the needs of working people anywhere in the country and those who risk being forced out of their neighborhood are not exceptional in their eyes.

Barack Obama is leveraging his connections to the rich people and the corporate interests who made him a United States senator and then president. He worked on their behalf and in return they help to build a modern day cathedral where he can be worshipped and dispense patronage as he sees fit. That is what former heads of state do after all. They are errand boys and girls for the international 1% and they live happy and wealthy lives thereafter.

The South Shore residents must be disabused of any notion that their needs count to Obama or his benefactors. The center is not being built for them. They are literally in the way of the developers who now have another neighborhood where they can manipulate the market and grow richer.

Everyone in this sordid drama is doing what they always do. It is the people who want to stay in their homes who must behave differently. They are under the misapprehension that they can rely on good will where there is none to be had.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . Her work can also be found at patreon.com/margaretkimberley  and on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

gentrification
Barack Obama
Black Displacement
Neoliberalism

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Jon Jeter
In DC, A New ‘Mayor 1 Percent” This Time in Blackface
21 May 2025
Muriel Bowser is proving that Black faces in high places don’t break systems, they grease them.
Maxwell Evans
South Side Neighbors Want Housing Protections Before City OKs ‘Luxury’ Hotel Near Obama Center
07 May 2025
Community residents say that Chicago's City Council should pass a slate of housing protections centered on low-income renters instead of advanc
Chuck Squatriglia
Feds Lend Tesla $465 Million to Build Model S
26 February 2025
Elon Musk is Donald Trump's right-hand man and viewed as an evil incarnate, but it was Barack Obama's administration which bailed out Tesla wit
Jon Jeter
John Mearsheimer’s Folly: How Whites Agree to Misinterpret the World to Fulfill Their Racial Contract
23 October 2024
Systemic racism and reactionary violence are embedded into the foundation of the US political and social system, despite false claims of any so
Jon Jeter
Not Like Us: Black Men Frown on Harris Campaign Because Democrats Have Done Nothing to Help Them in This Worst Hard Time, Not Because of Misogyny
16 October 2024
For decades, the Democratic Party has pushed Black men as the scapegoat for election losses.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil
24 July 2024
Black Agenda Report has republished this 2012
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
For African/Black Working Class and Colonized Peoples, Midterm Elections in the U.S. Offer No Relief from War, Repression and Capitalist Misery
10 July 2024
This article was
Images of all the presidents since Ronald Regan
Imani Nile
These Politicians are Playing in Our Faces
10 October 2023
Joe Biden had a moment of truth when he promised the oligarchs that nothing would fundamentally change if he became president.
Bad Hombres— didn’t Boss Tweet warn US?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Bad Hombres— didn’t Boss Tweet warn US?
14 June 2023
                                                                                              Bad Hombres—
Obama and Black America
Kevin Alexander Gray
Obama and Black America
15 March 2023
Kevin Alexander Gray analyzed Barack Obama's presidential election and its negative impact on Black people and their politics. 

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio May 23, 2025
    23 May 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the legacy of Malcolm X and the state of the political party that many Black people feel trapped in. We are joined by a guest in Libya who explains the lasting…
  • Richard Medhurst
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Independent Jourmalist Richard Medhurst Targeted by Western Governments Acting on Israel's Behalf
    23 May 2025
    Our guest is Richard Medhurst. He is an independent journalist whose work has been severely impacted by state repression in the UK and Austria. He was arrested and detained in the UK in August 2024…
  • Malcolm X
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Malcolm X Legacy and Politics Today
    23 May 2025
    Anthony Rogers-Wright is a Black Agenda Report contributor and host of the WPFW program Full Spectrum, where I was recently a guest. We discussed the legacy of Malcolm X on the 100th anniversary of…
  • Libya
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    How the Libyan People Are Still Impacted By the U.S./NATO Destruction of Their State
    23 May 2025
    Our guest is Dr. Abdelkarim Kashkar. He is a physician and an author who writes about politics in Libyan newspapers. He joins us from Benghazi, Libya, to discuss how the United States impacts the…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Biden's Fate and Israel's Sadistic Revenge
    21 May 2025
    Israel is starving Gazans to death and continuing its bombing attacks on civilians. Israel also specializes in personal revenge, targeting men, women, and children who might be the subject of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us