Story highlights Peniel Joseph: Sessions hearings and Obama farewell speech together illustrate US racial schizophrenia

Political atmosphere of distortion on racial matters is perfectly suited to Sessions, who denies a racist past, he writes

Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Political Values and Ethics and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently "Stokely: A Life." The views expressed here are his.

(CNN) President Obama's farewell address Tuesday night, in combination with Senate hearings for Alabama senator and attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions on Tuesday afternoon, presents a stark example of America's schizophrenic racial landscape.

The nation's first black president delivers a rhetorical valediction of his legacy against the backdrop of one of the most fraught and tense racial climates in recent American history. From one perspective, Obama's legacy serves as both a reflecting pool of both the grandeur and travails of American history, especially its tumultuous journey from slavery to freedom. Obama's highest political achievements seem to chart the undeniable rise of racial progress, a trajectory that can be further witnessed in the growth of the black middle class, and the visible success of high-profile black entrepreneurs, business leaders, politicians, athletes, artists and celebrities.

Peniel Joseph

President Obama should certainly be applauded for rescuing the American economy from the brink of oblivion, passing health care legislation that gave tens of millions access to insurance for the first time, appointing two attorneys general who championed criminal justice reform, and being a passionate advocate for the environment, marriage equality, equal pay for women and LGBTQ issues.

Yet Obama proved, for good reasons his supporters would claim, ruthlessly cautious on matters of racial justice, preferring to quietly promote equal opportunity through surrogates in the Justice Department or Cabinet and sweeping gestures that ranged from a stirring speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Selma march to the opening keynote to the new Smithsonian Museum of African American History. He served as racial healer in chief in the aftermath of the shooting massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, and reflected sadly that "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin." Beyond these symbolic moments , Obama's leadership on matters of black equality remained too often invisible or reactionary.

Obama's presidency has also served as a fun-house mirror on matters of race and across the policy spectrum, one whose distortions have allowed critics to view his presidency as illegitimate, subversive and a blight on the very idea of American democracy.