Wow, after five years of his loyal constituents supporting him and receiving nothing in return, it was nice to see President Obama address this year’s all black male Morehouse College graduates. Obama even found his black vernacular as he always does before a black crowd, saying “I know some of you are just graduating, thank you Lordy.” As if all black people walk, talk, and think alike. Sickening and offensive.
Nevertheless, the last time Obama spoke to an historically black college or university was in 2007 at Howard University when he was trailing Hillary Clinton in the black vote for the Democrat presidential nomination. Can we say pandering?
Equally surprising during his Morehouse commencement address, Obama referred to himself “as a black man like you” something he rarely, if ever has done. Obama didn’t refer to himself as a black man during his re-election campaign either. In fact, quite the opposite, as America’s first black president he’s largely made it a point of distancing himself from black America but ironically need black Americans vote each time to win.
In his first term Obama had no appetite for the problems facing black Americans even though over 95% of blacks voted for him in 2008 and 93% in 2012. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Obama’s black voter water carriers, barely got one meeting with the president during his first term. According to the editor of the blog Crew of 42 and managing editor of Politic365, Obama has met with the CBC only three times since 2009.
In 2012, CBC Chairman Emmanuel Cleaver told the media that if Hillary had been president or any white person with the black jobless rate at 14%, “we’d be marching around the White House.” Instead, the CBC gave Obama a break because he’s black. And with this lousy record, Cleaver and CBC members told blacks to vote for Obama a second time and they did.
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Obama is “black” when convenient. The president throws blacks a few bones during elections to keep them in his pocket, ignoring them the rest of the time and delivering them nothing for their loyalty. His Morehouse speech was a nice diversion for the mainstream media from the growing scandals (IRS, AP and Benghazi) in his administration.
But the speech amounted to dishonest, propagandistic rhetoric that glossed over the problems plaguing the black race, which have been hurt by liberal policies for the past 40 years. The historically black college located in Atlanta has a proud legacy of educating young black men like Martin Luther King Jr., many of whom went on to become leaders and successful men in life.
Obama told the young men they were “graduating into a job market that’s improving.” That’s hardly true, of course, because the black jobless rate has remained twice as high as the national average since Obama took office. “If you think you can get over in this economy, just because you have a Morehouse degree, you are in for a rude awakening,” continued Obama. This was closer to the truth.
As he has done on many other occasions, Obama vilified success. Even though he is a very rich man who sends his kids to private school, Obama told the Morehouse men don’t aspire and worry about “making money” or paying off your student loans, “ask yourself if the only option is to defend the rich and powerful.”
Obama mentioned many blacks live in “troubled neighborhoods across the country—many of them heavily African-American” with bad schools “where violence is pervasive.” Rather than asking the Morehouse graduates to “set an example,” numerous times throughout his speech Obama should have set an example himself and talked about how Black America is failing itself. He should have pointed out to these young men that the catastrophic problem facing blacks is our rejection of marriage.
Obama should have warned graduates 73% of black babies are born out of wedlock compared to 40% of whites and this is the direct cause of higher incarceration rates, lower high school graduation rates and the economic decline of blacks. He also should have mentioned the staggering statistic that 44,038 black children have been killed by guns since 1979, which is about 13 times more than blacks lynched over 86 years from 1882 to 1968, according to a Children's Defense Fund report.
Moreover, Obama also should have told the young black men, looking up to him as an example of success, that the only way blacks can truly help each other is by helping themselves first. Instead we heard Obama invoke the same, old broken record blacks must be the caretakers of other blacks. “If you know someone who isn’t on point, go back and bring that brother along.”
Why are blacks the only race constantly telling blacks they have an obligation to help each other along? No, blacks have an obligation to first help themselves along like any other race. Giving back should be something we all do but the Democrats’ message to black America always seems to be someone will be there to help you along, peers or the government.
I’m glad Obama connected with his blackness at Morehouse but he wasn’t honest in his speech. If Obama had been, it would have been an admission to the young black males at Morehouse that liberal policies have and are utterly failing black America.
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