The Legacy of Barack Obama

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has only been out of office for a few weeks, but his legacy is secure in ways that are critical to our national identity—and quite separate from his policy successes and failures.

One lens through which we can understand Obama’s relevance and lasting historical legacy is found, surprisingly, in the book of Genesis. Genesis 1:26-27 gives us the first biblical description of human origin: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, to be like us. ... Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them.’”

This text is foundational to how we understand God’s purpose for the world and for human beings. Perhaps most important, it establishes the foundational value of every human as being made in the image of God ( imago dei).

This biblical revelation—and America’s racial history—is why the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 is of such lasting importance. The United States was founded on the original sin of white supremacy, which declared that some people were less human than others; the nation was built on the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans and the displacement and eradication of Native Americans. In the process, the founders of our nation cast aside the notion of imago dei. The Constitution enshrined the notion that African slaves could be considered three-fifths of a person for the purposes of congressional representation (and Native Americans counted not at all).

Choosing an African-American man for the highest office in our nation—making him the most powerful person in the world for eight years—was and is a fundamental blow to white supremacy. The Obama presidency marked a historic era in the longstanding and ongoing movement to undo white supremacy and privilege.

ON ELECTION NIGHT in 2008, our home hosted an election-watch party, attended mostly by 20-somethings. Early in the evening, Obama was expected to win, and most of the young people at my house were celebrating, dancing in the streets of our multiracial neighborhood. But I, like most of the older black men who lived in our neighborhood, was not sure if I really believed that an African-American president would be elected in our lifetimes. If in the end all the “undecideds” went against him, Barack Obama would lose.

After a while, I was the only one left in the house watching the returns, as the votes Obama needed for his electoral victory were officially tabulated. Finally, victory was declared. When that happened, I quietly and privately broke down in tears. But soon I went out to the streets to join those of the next generation who were ready to, as I’ve put it, help build the bridge to the new, emerging America, one in which former “minorities” are becoming the majority.

But the white backlash began almost immediately. The never-ending accusations and falsehoods started, with even a conspiratorial, racist campaign alleging that the new black president didn’t have a U.S. birth certificate and wasn’t really one of “us,” that is, a real American. Of course, that same lie would help Donald Trump launch his own political career, which has culminated in the ultimate insult of Trump’s election as Obama’s successor.

BARACK OBAMA’S LEGACY has and always will be deeply entrenched in the vision of a “beloved community,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, where our public and civil life is rooted in the spiritual foundation of the truth that all of us are created in the image of God. That is the word, God’s Word, that will ultimately defeat the lingering original sin of American society, no matter how far away that goal now seems.

Barack Obama’s legacy is indeed a call to repentance—a call to turn around and go in a whole new direction on our path toward a spiritually transformed America where neither punishment nor privilege are the result of skin color. We have a long way to go on that path, with much systemic injustice remaining that was not solved by electing President Obama, and which may now be made even worse under Trump.

But as Dr. King reminded us, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I still believe that, and that night in November 2008 is a big reason why.

This column is adapted from Jim Wallis' forward to Mr. President: Interfaith Perspectives on the Historic Presidency of Barack Obama, compiled by Barbara Williams-Skinner and Darryl Sims (2017).