“Snake-oil salesman” is the stinging label Princeton’s African-American studies chair, Eddie S. Glaude Jr.—who happens to be black—gives President Obama as he leaves the White House. Because Obama betrayed blacks.
Millions of white men and women voted for Barack Obama, a biracial president, in hopes that he would unite our country. Millions of black men and women voted for Obama hoping he would help them forsake disparate levels of poverty; teen pregnancy; single motherhood; absent fatherhood; and violent crime. Whites’ and blacks’ hopes were historic.
Turns out Obama’s dual presidency was historic. Historically bad.
Only wealthy whites and Asians notably improved their quality of life during Obama’s eight-year reign. On economic and social levels—American blacks slid the furthest. Even reality-denying Slate now bemoans a “rising” tide of “racial discontent” in America.
Today, our nation celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.—a man to whom Obama often compared himself in his own quest for power. In 2007, candidate Obama announced his run for the presidency by invoking “King’s call to let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. …it is time for our generation to answer that call.”
He needed his black brothers’ and sisters’ votes—and won them with lofty promises—by 91 percentage points in 2008 an by 87 percentage points in 2012. Then, he twisted the knife.
Legacy Control: Taping Statisticians’ Mouths Shut
Numbers don’t lie. Which is why liars love taping shut the mouths of statisticians.
“African Americans have made enormous strides,” WhiteHouse.gov touts “during [the Obama] Administration.” The official Obama administration website then proceeds to tick off areas in which blacks elevated their quality of life since 2007, such as a falling “poverty rate” and a “historically low” level of teen pregnancy.
Do some fact-checking—and you’ll quickly learn that Obama is engaging in what I’ll call “blackwashing”—or painting a picture that seems beneficial to his own people.
“For the first time, there are more poor African-American children than white children,” Glaude Jr. recently told TIME. “What’s startling about that is that there are three times as many white children in America as black children.” Indeed, according to Pew Research Center’s July, 2015 report—for the first time since the federal government began collecting data—almost four times more black children live in poverty (38.3 percent) than white children (10.7 percent).
And black teen pregnancy fell—but Obama’s administration fails to describe this fall as part of an overall drop in teen pregnancy across all demographics. Over twice as many (35 percent) black females still become mothers as teenagers compared to white females (17 percent), according to Pew Research.
Used and Confused
He was a playboy, in the worst way. Obama used and confused blacks more than any other president in the modern era. They trusted that he would help them. In reality, he only wanted their help at the polls.
Along with his wife, First Lady Michelle, Obama used his eight years of influence to uphold one woman as the paragon of black female success. No matter that this woman made her millions by shaking her derrière in front of millions on Super Bowl Sunday; sipping sugary soft drinks (Pepsi) while shouting “Live for now!” and posing with her celebrity-thug hubby who made his millions by rapping about heroin and using the b-word to slam white, female pop star Taylor Swift.
“Stop shooting us!” Beyoncé told police in her pre-Super Bowl 2016 music video. Too bad, in reality, blacks shoot blacks more often than cops shoot blacks. Or whites shoot blacks.
The latest Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and FBI data reveals that black men are 40 times more likely to be shot by a fellow black man than by a police officer. And FBI crime statistics indicate that in murders where the victim is black, the murderer is also black—93 percent of the time.
“I’d be Beyoncé” Michelle loudly and proudly told People, when asked who she’d be if she could be anyone else. Over and over, Beyoncé and Jay-Z were invited to perform at presidential events—and even given controversial access to the White House Situation Room and to Cuba for a 2013 vacation spree.
The New York Times reports that thousands of women plan to march in Washington, D.C. on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration—in protest of his supposed oppression of females. Interestingly, however, black women are telling white women on social media not to show up if they can’t “check their [white] privilege constantly.”
Funny, but the facts indicate that white girls might be bullied more than black girls. A 2015 report from the National Center for Education Statistics found that among students ages 12-to-18, the victims were most often white females.
Black “feminists” telling white feminists to metaphorically go to the back of the march are simply heeding President Obama’s farewell message, wherein he reminded blacks that they are victims with “very real struggles for justice” while whites are the aggressors, who need to “acknowledge[e] that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn't suddenly vanish in the '60s.”
On every level; in every category; black Americans faced setbacks under our first black president.
May Donald J. Trump be the first president in recent memory who can truly be color blind; who will unite us by ignoring race while focusing on the issues we care about; and who will help every American achieve a better life.