{"id":19470,"date":"2017-01-16T11:42:18","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=19470"},"modified":"2017-01-16T11:42:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:42:18","slug":"for-obamas-black-appointees-a-calling-that-was-more-than-service-to-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/politics\/for-obamas-black-appointees-a-calling-that-was-more-than-service-to-country.html","title":{"rendered":"For Obama’s black appointees, a calling that was more than service to country"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For Obama’s black appointees, a calling that was more than service to country<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

For Obama’s black appointees, a calling that was more than service to country:-<\/strong> Christina Cue\u2019s supporting role in history began at a South Carolina rally where she was electrified by an upstart candidate named Barack Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason R.L. Wallace\u2019s opportunity came from a chance encounter after his car broke down one Thanksgiving Day. Christopher Epps thought he was applying for an ordinary government job, only to learn in an interview that he\u2019d be a White House appointee.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their paths were varied, but they all ended up in the Obama administration, among more than 400 African-Americans selected as presidential appointees over the past eight years: campaign volunteers, loyalists from Chicago, private-sector standouts, prominent scholars, public-school teachers and military veterans.<\/span><\/p>\n

They brought expertise and ideas, but also a deep sense of the historical weight of the moment. Beyond service to country, they embraced a personal mission: ensuring the success of the nation\u2019s first black president.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cProbably after being on the job a couple of months, it started to sink in: \u2018Wow, I\u2019m working in the administration of the first African-American president,\u2019 \u201d said Epps, who served in the Department of Commerce. \u201cAnd then you talk to former colleagues \u2013 and your family, who\u2019s so proud \u2013 and you really start to get the breadth and depth of the position.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The pressure was so intense and the executive branch so isolating that black staff members sought out one another, first for hugs and pep talks, then a brunch of about a dozen, and then, finally, the inaugural meeting of a group that now represents hundreds of African-Americans who\u2019ve served at the highest levels of federal government: the Black Presidential Appointees Association.<\/span><\/p>\n

Days away from the swearing-in of President-elect Donald Trump and what they jokingly refer to as their \u201cexpiration date,\u201d nearly 20 African-American appointees shared memories of the thrills and challenges of being black in the Obama White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

They listed policy breakthroughs and favorite moments, but also their sacrifices: eight years of missed birthdays and canceled dinner dates, accepted by their families because, like the rest of black America, they knew that this president\u2019s performance would reflect on them all.<\/span><\/p>\n

They spoke not only of Obama\u2019s legacy but also of their own, wondering what would become of the vibrant black political class that sprang from this administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly exciting to think about in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, where will we all end up,\u201d said Nate Jenkins, a former Atlanta schoolteacher who\u2019s worked in the White House since 2008. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of talent that\u2019s been developed in this administration that was untapped before. And because we\u2019ve had Barack Obama running the country, a lot more people have raised their hands to say, \u2018I want to be a part of that.\u2019 And they\u2019ve been given opportunities they wouldn\u2019t have been given in administrations before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

No escaping racism<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason R.L. Wallace\u2019s introduction to the Obama team came through serendipity, when his car broke down in Washington on Thanksgiving Day in 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, Obama was president-elect and Wallace was an ambitious young Howard University student who\u2019d already interned at the White House under President George W. Bush. He\u2019d discovered a knack for \u201cadvance\u201d work, handling the logistics of presidential travel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Always on the lookout for networking opportunities, Wallace kept a stack of r\u00e9sum\u00e9s with him wherever he went, a move that paid off when he was stranded on the side of the road.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea what I was going to do. I was stressed out and frustrated,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cAnd the person who pulled over to help turned out to be the personal aide to the first lady, Michelle Obama.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wallace and the Obama aide chatted. He told her about his work for Bush and handed her a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 before they parted ways. Not long after that, Wallace received a phone call: Michelle Obama was doing an event on the Howard campus \u2013 could he help?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI ended up traveling with the first lady for four years,\u201d Wallace recalled with a laugh.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wallace\u2019s job gave him an insider\u2019s view of what the Obamas were like away from the cameras. He was used to staying in the background, a behind-the-scenes guy whose job was to make travel seamless. But Michelle Obama noticed him, like the time she surprised him with a hug after a long day\u2019s work in Los Angeles.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first lady is one of the only people I\u2019ve worked for who\u2019s been the same on camera as they are off camera,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cThe genuineness, the love and the compassion, the love for people that she has is the same behind the curtain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On another presidential trip, to India, Wallace was nervous about proposing to his girlfriend. He polled all the guys around \u2013 the agents, the staffers \u2013 about what marriage was like. But the best answer, he said, came from watching the Obamas greet each other after a long day of travel and official appearances.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wallace, who was escorting the first lady, stepped aside when the president arrived, but remained within earshot. The couple hugged and kissed, then teased each other about television appearances, Wallace recalled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were going back and forth very playfully. And I have their schedules \u2013 I\u2019ve seen how strenuous it was, how exhausting it must have been,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cBut before they walked out, they just had that time together. That was the best advice, without even asking them. It was just seeing them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Obamas\u2019 historical significance became real to him in March 2015, when he worked their trip to Selma, Alabama, where the couple walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge 50 years after Alabama state police had beaten and tear-gassed peaceful protesters in the same spot.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandmother told me how she used to pick cotton. My dad owned a restaurant that, when he was younger, he couldn\u2019t have walked into and sat down to eat,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cBeing there and being able to cross that bridge was a very emotional experience. It was not just for myself, but for my ancestors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But there were also dispiriting moments that punctured the myth that Obama\u2019s election had moved the country beyond centuries of entrenched racism.<\/span><\/p>\n

When former first lady Betty Ford died in the summer of 2011, Wallace happened to be in California, his home state. As the only advance staffer on the ground, it fell to him not only to arrange Michelle Obama\u2019s logistics, but also to help former first families who were traveling to Palm Springs for the service: the Nixons, the Reagans, the Clintons.<\/span><\/p>\n

The funeral was put together so quickly that the Secret Service agents in Palm Springs hadn\u2019t received any \u201cS-pins,\u201d the staff pins that grant White House representatives access to restricted areas. They assured him he\u2019d get in without one and gave him a Secret Service official\u2019s business card to show guards once he got to the funeral site.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wallace arrived and was denied entry. White colleagues, who also didn\u2019t have pins, were allowed in, he said. Local authorities detained him and stuck him in a police car on a blazing July day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first lady lands at the airport and I\u2019m in the back seat of a police car and I\u2019m getting all these calls saying, \u2018Jason, where are you?\u2019 \u201d Wallace recalled.<\/span><\/p>\n

White House officials eventually got him released, the officer who\u2019d detained him was disciplined and the Secret Service apologized. Still, five years later, the sting remains.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven while you\u2019re working for the White House, you\u2019re still black,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cYou\u2019re still black and this stuff still happens.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A new civil rights movement<\/span><\/p>\n

That awareness hit home for many when, in the second half of Obama\u2019s final term, a string of police shootings of unarmed black people catalyzed a new civil rights movement. Several black appointees spoke of the anguish of that time, and also a shared frustration because they couldn\u2019t express themselves freely in their sensitive government posts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because they couldn\u2019t join protests or vent on social media, African-Americans inside the administration began to organize quietly. Christina Cue, the daughter of a pastor and a teacher from Aiken, South Carolina, already had been thinking of a club to connect black appointees to one another and to communities through service projects. She loved her job in the administration but missed the interaction with ordinary people from her days on the campaign trail.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first \u201cmeeting\u201d of what would become the Black Presidential Appointees Association was a brunch Cue arranged with about a dozen staffers in October 2014, when African-Americans across the nation were in collective despair over the acquittal in the Trayvon Martin case and a string of other shootings of unarmed black men.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs a black appointee working for the first black president, it was important to have a sense of community in those moments,\u201d Cue said. \u201cWhen you can\u2019t articulate or share what you feel, it was important to have people around to talk to, to lean on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When they realized they didn\u2019t even have firm figures for the number of African-American appointees, Cue and her friends began counting, office by office, building a tally through word of mouth. They opened membership to black appointees from previous administrations, with an eye toward building intergenerational connections that would let the group endure once Obama left office.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were monthly meetings, each time at a different agency so that members could get a fuller picture of how the government works. They joined a White House conference call with black personnel to discuss responses to the wave of officer-involved shootings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have family members, brothers and sisters and cousins, across the country \u2013 some in urban America, some in rural America \u2013 and this could\u2019ve easily been one of them,\u201d recalled Epps, from the Department of Commerce. \u201cThe call was being able to vent a little bit, but also to talk about what the current issues are and what we, in our respective areas, could do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As it turned out, they could do a lot. In a series of emotional interviews, black appointees described their quiet work that culminated in some of the administration\u2019s seminal moments of African-American uplift.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dispatched to funerals on behalf of the White House, they fought back tears as they comforted the families of black men killed by police officers. They set up Obama\u2019s historic summit between 1960s-era civil rights leaders and today\u2019s Black Lives Matter activists; those who were in the room described getting chills when they heard civil rights legend C.T. Vivian tell the president, \u201cI would take a bullet for you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The appointees beamed as they watched the official events they\u2019d planned come to life, with African dancers in the East Wing and rappers snapping selfies at receptions. They welcomed as many African-Americans as they could to the White House, moved by the men and women who showed up in their Sunday best to see for themselves that a black family lived in a mansion built in part by slave labor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfrican-Americans have been the president\u2019s backbone throughout this entire administration,\u201d said Stephanie Young, a senior adviser in the Office of Public Engagement. \u201cThey have supported him unlike any other constituency. They have loved him through absolutely everything. And they have worked extremely hard to protect him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But they recognize that there were disappointments, too. Many African-Americans are proud of the symbolism of the first black president but don\u2019t think Obama did enough to improve the lives of ordinary black families, through changes on schools, affordable housing and law enforcement, for example.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a sensitive spot for the appointees \u2013 they know the difficult, unseen work that went into addressing those issues, and they know the obstruction they met from a Republican-led Congress. Some appointees explain the hurdles. Others flip the question on the critics: What have you done?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo tackle the issues we\u2019re dealing with requires all of us to do our part. I think a lot of us have done what we could where we were, but there still needed to be so much more,\u201d said Stephanie Gidigbi, who\u2019d worked in politics for years but started with the Obama administration only in the second term. \u201cThe reality is at the local level: Are you serving on a board? Do you know who your police chief is? Have you spoken up?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Life after Obama<\/span><\/p>\n

Many black staffers had assumed Hillary Clinton would win the election, leaving open the possibility that they\u2019d continue to serve the executive branch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s victory has introduced uncertainty: Would he appoint more than a few token African-Americans? Would black professionals even agree to serve Trump after his disparaging comments on racial minorities, immigrants and Muslims?<\/span><\/p>\n

For some, the answer is an emphatic \u201cno.\u201d They\u2019re moving on to the private sector, starting nonprofits, applying for jobs on Capitol Hill. For others, it\u2019s a dutiful \u201cyes,\u201d with the reasoning that people of color must be present in the Trump administration to represent the interests of minorities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many more are unsure, wary of Trump\u2019s record with people of color but eager to keep sharp the skills they\u2019ve honed over the past eight years, eager to keep their hard-won place at the table.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re passionate about our respective issues. You\u2019ll have someone from Department of Interior talking about pollinators. A colleague at the National Park Service ensuring that parks tell stories for all. Our folks from USDA will tell us why rural is critical,\u201d Gidigbi said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gidigbi had just wrapped up her last day of work with the Obama administration. She\u2019d served in the Department of Transportation, a job she loved because of her interest in how transit issues intersect with race and housing concerns.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gidigbi is heading to the nonprofit world, to work on race, health and climate issues in American cities, a natural extension of her government work. This may be a bittersweet moment for many, but she\u2019s entering post-Obama life feeling triumphant.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou knew the long nights, you knew the events that got missed, you knew the meetings that took all night, and you stayed because you cared, because you were committed,\u201d Gidigbi said. \u201cYou stayed because you wanted to make sure we truly did our best. That\u2019s why I can leave today filled with joy, because I know that we did.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.idahostatesman.com\/news\/politics-government\/article126504674.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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