A few days ago, Bobbie Coleman — the chairperson of the Hardin County Republican Party — shared an AI video on the county party’s Facebook page with former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama portrayed as grinning apes.
Coleman took the video down and eventually posted an apology, which began, “Earlier today, I shared a video from social media that was intended to celebrate President Trump’s successful policy achievements by depicting him as a Lion King, triumphing over liberal Democrats.”
She closed with, “I believe the Republican Party is the vehicle to save our country from the far-left and I look forward to continuing to support our Republican candidates and Make America Great Again.”
The Obamas left the White House almost nine years ago. Other than being Black, what do they have to do with Trump’s alleged “policy achievements?” With making America great again? With supporting Republican candidates? With their obsession to “save our country from the far-left?”
What’s odd about today’s latent obsession with Barack and Michelle Obama is how little their obsession has to do with policy. If anything, Obama as president is viewed by those on the “far-left” (Coleman’s word choice in her apology) as someone who was not all that liberal, as someone who played it too careful and too close to the center.
But realities like these do not matter in Trump’s Republican Party.
Obama, almost a decade post-presidency, is not a cartoon figure for today’s Make America Great Again crowd because he is influencing policy. Obama is a MAGA cartoon figure because he is Black.
Racism sells.
At the end of Kentucky’s 2024 General Assembly, I wrote a recap of what I’d witnessed over the course of those many weeks titled, “Undercurrent of racism fueled this legislative session.” This is not a title a writer chooses without a pretty long list of strong, supporting evidence.
There was Senate Bill 6 and House Bill 9 that year which aimed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion — DEI — in our education system and would pass in the next session because, hey, who needs diversity?
There was Sen. Gerald Neal’s proposed Crown Act, a repeat bill that never gets anywhere, “which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of a hairstyle historically associated with a person’s race.”
There was Rep. Jennifer Decker (who is white) telling an NAACP audience that her white father was a slave and then doubling down on the claim when asked to explain.
There was Rep. Jason Nemes (who is white) ranting in anger at Rep. Derrick Graham (who is Black) for daring to tell the truth on the House floor about how the Jefferson Davis statue was “taken out for a reason,” the reason being that he led the Confederacy, which was built on the backs of slaves, and the insurrection that kicked off the Civil War.
And later in 2024, a bunch of white university presidents prostrated themselves before the interim education committee in our state Capitol, assuring them that they were not, no-way-no-how, teaching diversity of thought or helping people of color in their education systems, even as one brave Black woman sat right there in the front row wearing a bright red t-shirt that read in bold white letters, “Make America Not Racist for the First Time.”
Racism is not a side item in today’s Republican Party, with its masked ICE agents profiling brown people on the streets; it’s a main menu selling point.
The president told a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One Monday that U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett is “a low-IQ person” which is the same derogatory statement he makes regularly about professional Black women, insisting they can’t be smart because they’re Black.
And speaking of women — because GOP misogyny runs in the same creek as their racism — a 35-year-old Louisville Republican named Calvin Leach is currently running for state Senate after once writing in an online article in that young women are “promiscuous skanks,” “coddled americ--ts,” “party whores” and “damn sloots” (internet slang for slut).
When asked about this in an interview with Kentucky Public Radio, Leach described his writing as dating advice, saying that diversity, equity and inclusion has gotten out of hand.
It is notable that I also wrote — during the same 2024 General Assembly that was fueled by racism — that our GOP supermajority is often nothing but a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as serious lawmaking. With Leach as a candidate, it appears they like it this way.
Apologies for the digression. There is so much rampant sexism and racism in the KY GOP, it’s hard to keep up.
If the Republican Party of Kentucky does not want to be viewed as racist — if they do not want their leaders out in the counties posting racist videos — they might start by not telling tall tales about how their white fathers were slaves, by passing bills *allowing* Black people to wear their natural hair at work, by not obsessing about how one whiff of diversity or Black history might dare appear on a college syllabus.
“Racism greeted Obama in both his primary and general election campaigns in 2008,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in his book, We Were Eight Years in Power. “Photos were circulated of him in Somali garb. Rush Limbaugh dubbed him ‘Barack the Magic Negro.’” After “Obama won the presidency in defiance of these racial headwinds, traffic to the white-supremacist website Stormfront increased sixfold.”
We will soon approach two decades since Obama’s 2008 campaign, but overt racism is alive and well here in the commonwealth. Just last week the Frankfort Police Department advised the public that KKK propaganda was strewn around and that they were looking for ring-cam footage and any other evidence of the perpetrators.
I watched and rewatched the video posted on social media by the GOP chairperson in Hardin County, opening as it does with Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as grinning apes, and I was not surprised.
I read and reread the article about KY GOP candidate Calvin Leach and his use of “promiscuous skanks” and worse to describe women, and I was not surprised.
Let’s face it, you aren’t either.
- Teri Carter writes about rural Kentucky life and politics for publications like the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Courier-Journal, The Daily Yonder and The Washington Post. You can find her at TeriCarter.net.
