We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

As America’s first Black president, Barack Obama is a symbol of several important American ideals and myths. To many Black Americans, Obama is a symbol of Black excellence in the tradition of Malcolm X. To liberal White Americans, Obama is a symbol of America as a meritocracy, a place that has transcended its racist past, as well as a symbol of the continued possibility of achieving the American Dream. For more conservative White Americans, Obama represents the erosion of their White privilege. These are relatively straightforward symbolic roles that reinforce people’s preexisting perspectives on American culture.

Coates’s presentation of Obama as a symbol reflects a more complicated notion of Obama’s place in American culture. We Were Eight Years in Power spans the eight years of the Obama presidency and Coates’s changing notion of the potency of Obama as a symbol. In the first three essays and the flashback at the end of “My President Was Black,” Coates presents Obama as a symbol of Black Americans as people capable of engaging in governance of the nation and being full citizens. In later essays, Obama is an archetypal Black politician and American liberal, one who has good intentions but finds his hands tied by the White supremacist structure within which he functions.