Throwing around Barack Obama’s middle name as a dog whistle is so 2008.
Bigotry in America, however, never goes out of style, and so retro xenophobic slights make comebacks.
I got flashbacks reading about Donald Trump’s repeated use of the first Black president’s full name when he spoke at the Economic Club of Chicago Tuesday.
Trump’s “Barack Hussein Obama” diss hit less hard than the missive delivered by conservative radio talk show host Bill Cunningham 15 years ago when he introduced Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, at a rally in Cincinnati.
But as someone whose last name is Hussain, it still stung.
I am far from ashamed of my last name, and it sickens me that its utterance in reference to Obama has been wielded as a pejorative since he first ran for president.
When Cunningham went on his “Hussein” offensive, I felt compelled to speak out because most of the pushback from liberal circles conceded the name as a slur.
“Hussein,” Cunningham hissed, like he was beckoning Satan when shouting the Arabic word for “good,” “handsome” or “beautiful,” I wrote at the time, recalling how my “Hussain” surname had drawn wide-eyed stares during the Gulf War before petering back into a more muted signpost of my so-called “otherness.”
“Obama’s middle name — my last name — is ‘Hussein.’ So?” the headline to my March 5, 2008, column declared. There were many Obama supporters who felt the same, gleefully adopting “Hussein” on their Facebook profile pages. But most Americans didn’t see it that way. They rendered as liabilities the “Hussein” in Obama’s name and the other traits that made him different than the white men who previously vied for the job in the Oval Office.
Many members of the media and Democrats, including Obama’s campaign, showered McCain with praise for condemning Cunningham, specifically for deeming it inappropriate to use Obama’s middle name, as it falsely “maligned” him as a Muslim.
“The pundits were quick to applaud McCain’s fatwa against the use of Hussein, and broadcasters began trying to report on the controversy without actually saying the name too much, dancing around the offending word as if they were doing a segment on “The Vagina Monologues.” In both cases, the word comes off as not quite illicit, but certainly a little taboo,” journalist Nathan Thornburgh opined in Time magazine.
A few months later that year, McCain came to his political rival’s “defense” once again, chastising a woman who referred to Obama as an “Arab” at a town hall in Minnesota. “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man…,” McCain interjected, as if being Arab and a good person are mutually exclusive.
Unchecked bias makes it easier to dismiss a community
Noble intentions aside, McCain’s response fed into anti-Arab prejudice, and by default, Islamophobia, since many Americans can’t comprehend that not everyone of Middle Eastern descent is Muslim. Video of the exchange still pops up on my social media feeds as an example of the bipartisan civility of yore.
Less amplified is the forceful retort that Colin Powell, also a Republican, had when asked about party members who suggested Obama was a secret Muslim: “Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”
There shouldn’t be.
Unchecked biases against Muslims and Arabs that intensified after 9/11 continually smolder, making it easier and excusable to dismiss our communities and discredit our concerns, as we’ve seen in this past year, post Oct. 7. When accusations of antisemitism haven’t stuck to the legitimate critiques against Israel’s bombing of Gaza, and now Lebanon, we and our allies have been slandered with the age-old stand-in of being terrorist sympathizers and un-American, by both Democrats and Republicans.
Trump’s outdated jab wasn’t surprising. Obama and Muslims, along with so many marginalized groups, have long been his targets in his quest to “Make America Great Again.”
He even came up with a new “insult” to lob at President Joe Biden during their infamous debate over the summer: “Palestinian,” more specifically, “a very bad Palestinian.”
Trump is a bit like the Gretchen Wieners character in the 2004 hit film “Mean Girls” who tries to win over her more popular friends by using the term “fetch” as a new slang word for cool.
But Trump co-opts harmless phrases that are designed to demean rather than flatter.
“Fetch” never took hold in the fictional tale of cliquey high schoolers.
The problem is in the real world, where what people in positions of power say or don’t say lingers.
Rummana Hussain is a columnist and member of the Sun-Times Editorial Board.
Want to write a letter to the editor or an op-ed? Check out our guidelines.
Get Opinions content delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.