President Barack Obama\u2019s tears during his gun control speech were a long time in coming.\u00a0<\/span>As he recalled <\/span>the 20 elementary-school children who lost their lives in the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the president found new fountains.\u00a0<\/span>While the president has shed tears before, this time was different. I\u2019m no psychologist and I\u2019m not attempting to get into the president\u2019s head, but I believe his tears\u2014indeed, I hope\u2014went beyond concern about gun violence, which, on its own, is enough to make one weep.<\/p>\n For how many Columbines, Sandy Hooks and killings in Chicago must we endure? How many lives must be lost? How many children sacrificed? How much carnage must be caused before we come to our senses and enact common-sense legislation? All President Obama called for was modernizing our current system, strengthening existing laws, and providing $500 million in aid for mental illness\u2014and still, 15 seconds hadn\u2019t passed before Republicans hounded and reviled him for trying to strip people of their guns. \u00a0America\u2019s inability to pass reasonable gun control after so many tragedies is emblematic of a sick paralysis gripping our nation\u2014a paralysis, alas, that is exacerbated by the COLOR of the president\u2019s skin.<\/p>\n Indeed, the sheer absence of reasonableness in Congress over so many issues: climate control, poverty, crumbling cities, the failure to expand Medicaid for needy families, making college affordable, is in part traceable to the fact that the president is a brother. That he is biracial doesn\u2019t even register among those for whom race is religion and black is so evil that it has the power to erase the white side of his heritage.<\/p>\n The president shed tears, I hope, because America is so rife with fear, hopeless, hatred and greed so much so that we aren\u2019t moved by the killing of children in a school house, nor the police shooting of a Black kid like Tamir Rice on a playground. Maybe the president\u2019s tears also reflect the fact that after ascending to the top political post in the nation he realizes how handcuffing the presidency really is\u2014especially for an African American.<\/p>\n Even the great thing he has done\u2014such as steadying the economy\u2014are glossed over and discredited. For instance, despite capturing and killing Osama Bin Laden\u2014once the face of global terrorism\u2014the president is still perceived as someone who can\u2019t and won\u2019t protect America. Had it been George W. Bush who took Bin Laden out, Congress would fallen over itself calling for a special third term.<\/p>\n Too, I hope the president was crying because while he made history by becoming the first Black leader of the so-called free world\u2014definitely a misnomer\u2014he lost something.<\/p>\n Outside of the indignity of being called a lie, of being demanded to \u201cshow his papers,\u201d of having his wife and daughters constantly disrespected, as well as a ton of other racist onslaughts, the presidency\u2014as seductively alluring and powerful as it is\u2014cost him something big. As Michael Eric Dyson said, it stripped him of his ability to be \u201cBlack in public.\u201d This explains his hesitancy around the issue of race. And even when he tried to address it head-on\u2014as he did in his defense of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested for breaking into his own home\u2014he was forced into having a \u201cbeer summit\u201d with a low-level white campus cop to make amends with a nation terrified of a Black president being too Black.<\/p>\n And surely, it isn\u2019t lost on the president that while Black protesters are often called thugs and forced to stand down by heavily armed police or the National Guard, a gang of white terrorists have currently taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Oregon\u2014and the government is handling the situation with caution and care.<\/p>\n William Jelani Cobb, author of <\/span>The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress<\/span><\/i>, reminds us of James Baldwin\u2019s poignant observation that \u201cblack leaders have traditionally had to implore whites to hurry up while begging blacks to wait.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The president, unfortunately, has presided over a nation where whites are in NO HURRY while Blacks, once again, are forced to WAIT. And this waiting has weighed heavily on the shoulders of a community that has supported and LOVED him the most. A community whose love the president has never been allowed to freely and fully reciprocate. Surely, there were some tears for that.<\/p>\n While President Obama\u2019s accomplishments have been considerable, they have not trickled down to the Black community in significant ways. By most accounts, when it comes to the issue of race, he has failed. \u00a0Maybe his tears were a recognition of the fact that you can gain the whole world and lose your soul in the process.<\/p>\n After all, the presidency is the office of Pharaoh. One that presides over the empire and dances to tune of the oligarchs and plutocrats on Wall Streets. That\u2019s a long way from being a community organizer on the streets of Chicago and from listening to prophetic sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright\u2014a time when he felt he could change the world.<\/p>\n No, these were not the tears of a broken man. But maybe they were the tears of a man who has finally realized that being president of a relentlessly racist and selfish empire just isn\u2019t all it\u2019s cracked up to be.<\/p>\n I weep with him. We all should.<\/p>\n