President Obama lost something invaluable last week when he weighed in on the arrest of his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., saying the Cambridge police acted stupidly. He lost the presumption that he is colorblind and embraces all races and both genders equally.

This colorblindness was, perhaps, the fondest hope of the American public when we elected President Obama to our highest office.  As the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya we hoped his election marked the ascent of a leader possessed of so much empathy, so much intelligence and such a desire to understand all perspectives and experiences that he could resonate with anyone’s needs and disenfranchise no one.

That hope has withered for many, and it will be difficult to resurrect.  The fact that President Obama remained in a church headed by a pastor (Reverend Wright) who denounced white people, together with the fact that the First Lady says she felt no pride in our country until very recently, together with the fact that President Obama nominated a woman to the Supreme Court who slurred white judges as inferior, together with the President’s recent unwarranted slur of a white police sergeant as stupid seems to reveal deep-seated anger in him and constitutes a psychological pattern of insensitivity to the feelings of Caucasians.  He is a President who now (and hopefully only temporarily) seems the least colorblind of my lifetime, a terrible irony and tragedy I certainly didn’t imagine transpiring when he announced his candidacy.

The emotions some white people are sharing with me seem to parallel the feelings that African Americans may have struggled with in the past.  They tell me that they fear President Obama resents them, but won’t say so plainly, that he considers them “less than” others, maybe even demonic (like Reverend Wright does), but won’t admit it.  This gives them, and it gives me, a sliver of insight into how painful it must have been for disenfranchised minorities for decades in this country.  But the price of that slim window on the feelings of others has been high, indeed.  For the millions of white Americans who now better understand what it feels like to doubt that the President of the United States is their President, too, our heightened empathy comes with deep sadness and not a little anxiety.

President Obama doesn’t seem to understand the full depth of what has transpired.  It can’t be glossed over with the words he shared after the Crowley fiasco: 

“This has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up.  I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically.  And I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

He then invited Crowley over to the White House for a beer with Professor Gates.

What we needed, as white Americans, for all Americans, was a moment less about political caution and false camaraderie and more about self-revelation.  I kept thinking, as I listened to President Obama, of how short his statement fell from the words of another great African American politician, Jesse Jackson.  During the 1984 Presidential campaign, when Jackson sought the Democratic nomination, he referred to New York City as Hymietown, a slur against Jews.  I remember him taking the podium at the Democratic Convention and apologizing.  It was 25 years ago, and I was just 22-years-old, so forgive me if I have forgotten some of the words.  Most of them are seared into my memory—these two-and-a-half decades later:

“If I have offended anyone, or renewed old fears, I am deeply sorry.  Charge it to my head and not my heart.  I am an imperfect servant.  God is not yet finished with me.”

That was plenty good enough for me.  I didn’t believe Jackson could fake a statement like that.  And I never questioned the man’s heart again. 

President Obama, we need that kind of eloquence and honesty right now.  We need you to do that kind of soul-searching and let us in on the result.

Dear Mr. Jackson:

The occasion of your child’s death is a moment when all parents, including me, offer you every wish for strength and God’s healing power in the face of your loss.  Any father or mother can sense the tragedy it is to lose a son or daughter, yet no one who has not suffered such a loss can truly know your pain.

I would write no more than this were it not for the fact that you have used the occasion of your son’s passing and the attendant publicity to also promote your own business ventures, including your new record label.  This makes me feel it important, as a psychiatrist with access to the media, to reach out to you, with other parents and their adult children “listening” in. 

The foundation of our nation assures each person in this great country of certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Great leaders and courageous soldiers have safeguarded these rights for our citizens, and they would make a decent Bill of Rights for parents raising children, too.  Fathering a child, you see, means far more than participating in a child’s conception and witnessing his birth; it means doing everything possible to optimize that child’s life.  This requires many acts of love and self-sacrifice. It pays immeasurable dividends in the growing self-confidence and autonomy you witness developing in the child you care so much about.

Somehow, perhaps because of pain suffered in your own early life experience, you stole that God-given potential for healthy development from your son.  You have admitted lashing him with a belt or a switch when he failed to perform dance steps to your standards.  According to him, you called him ugly when acne affected him as a teenager.  You brutalized him by placing your own pathologic need for control and for “success” above his needs for security and comfort and self-esteem.  In a very real way, you buried enough of his love for himself that he was no longer comfortable with his race or age or sexuality or even his great fortune.  Trying to please a father who beats you with a belt for missing a dance step will do that to you.

Now, even when saying goodbye to your son, you think of yourself and your business.  You are deprived of a purer life and love.  This makes me feel badly for you, but feel worse for the son you injured so deeply. 

Some will see you only as a monster.  I know that monsters are made through cruelties suffered in life; they never spring fully-formed onto the planet.

In your quiet moments, I hope that you can dig up the roots of the emotional and physical violence you visited upon your child.  One of the wonderful things about still being on the planet is that you always have some chance to win back the potential for real humanity buried inside you.  

Here’s a hint:  Success or failure in becoming human isn’t measured in record sales or reflected in the lenses of television cameras.  You have to look much, much deeper.