Race is such a huge issue in the United States, that its importance can barely be overstated. When Barack Obama was elected as President of the United States, he broke a glass ceiling that had existed for people of colour in the US for hundreds of years and proved that it was possible to lift racial limits for everyone. It was a dream come true, a groundbreaking achievement, a lasting gift to the American people. For some it was proof, that the colour of your skin no longer matters in politics.

Unfortunately however, Obama's skin colour still very much seems to influence the way his presidency is now being perceived by the media in hindsight. As people are now scrambling to assess how successful his two terms in Office really were, they are neatly divided into his supporters, who never fail to praise what he achieved for people of colour and his opponents, who accuse him of never truly having been a President for all Americans, especially not for the white middle- and underclass now supporting Donald Trump. By leaving them out of the equation, the accusation goes, he was in the essence a big part of laying the groundwork for Trump's campaign.

Whatever conclusion one might come to favour, this kind of thinking presents a backwards thinking worldview where the President Barack Obama is not rated by what his policies achieved, but by the way he was perceived by the American population, which in turn often reduced him to the colour of his skin.