Politics

President Obama Needs to Stop Lecturing Blacks

May 21, 2013, 11:22 PM by  Darrell Dawsey

With all the criticism he's endured lately over the IRS, Benghazi, leak investigations and drones, you'd figure President Obama would be on safer ground at a place like MorehouseCollege, the historically black all-men's university where he gave the commencement address last weekend

You'd be wrong.

Sharp criticism comes from pundits who contend that Obama, yet again, spent excessive time lecturing the grads about personal responsibility and not making "excuses" for their troubles.

The argument, which has been leveled at Obama on previous occasions when he's spoken to largely black male audiences, is that the President tends to want to wag his finger at and scold black men -- that he "talks down" to blacks, as Jesse Jackson once said -- rather than greeting them with the same sort of themes with which he addresses white folks.

Consider, for instance, this jab from my friend Trevor Coleman, a noted Detroit journalist and author, in the Washington Post yesterday:

Coleman, a former speechwriter for former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, said that although parts of the talk were strong and lofty, including passages honoring Morehouse graduate Martin Luther King Jr., he was disappointed that Obama almost always defaults to the clean-up-your-act message when talking to predominantly black audiences. First lady Michelle Obama issued a similar tongue-lashing last week at Bowie State University’s commencement ceremony. She told graduates at the historically black Maryland school that too many young people are “fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper.”

“The first couple of times, it was okay, but I and a lot of other people are beginning to grow weary of it,” said Coleman, adding that the message was particularly galling at Sunday’s event at the historically black Georgia school. “What made it so gratuitous was this was Morehouse College! In the African American community, the very definition of a Morehouse man is someone who is a leader, who is taught to go out and make a difference in his community.”

Coleman isn't alone in his criticisms. Noted scholar after the speech, contending the Obama lacks "the moral authority" to give such a "lopsided" address to the Morehouse audience. 

Double Standard

Watkins also argued that some black voters too often enable the President's hectoring.

So, when Obama comes to Morehouse and says, “Stop using racism as an excuse and start taking more responsibility,” we LOVE it.  We also nod our heads in agreement because for the educated elite, Obama isn’t talking about us.  He’s talking about “them.” 

You know, those n*ggaz who keep getting sent to prison, who can’t get jobs, and who are killing each other in the street.   They deserve their plight because they don’t work as hard as the rest of us, at least that’s the logic. It’s easy to grab onto the simple answers:  Black men love their kids less than white men do, black women are only capable of raising incompetent children who eat Popeye’s chicken for breakfast, and black people are slightly less human than whites, thus prone to more criminal activity.

But here’s the issue. Telling black Americans to stop using racism as an excuse allows President Obama to create a set of excuses for his own significant, even embarrassing, lack of action to help alleviate the clearly documented, undeniable, legislatively enforced poison of racial inequality that continues to impact our society.   

As he tells the Morehouse men to take more responsibility for their own lives, the mirror of personal responsibility should also be turned on the most powerful black man in the history of the world to use his massive platform to help confront systematic racism that affects us all.  I also wonder if the president is going to follow this speech with one telling gay men that they can’t use homophobia as an excuse to complain, or that women shouldn’t be speaking out about s****l assault.   The double standard is actually borderline frightening:  The president’s skin color creates a human shield protecting the White House from being attacked for saying things that would lead to riots were Obama 100% white instead of just 50%.

Meanwhile, anti-racism lecturer Tim Wise calls Obama out for what he says is a racialized double standard for how he talks to blacks versus whites:

Needless to say, Barack Obama will never tell white people at a traditionally white college or university to stop blaming affirmative action for every job we didn’t get, or every law school we didn’t get into, though we’ve been known to use both of these excuses on more than a few occasions.

He won’t tell white graduates at a traditionally white college or university to stop blaming Latino/a immigrants, for “taking our jobs,” which excuse we’ve also been known to float from time to time.

He would never tell graduates at a mostly white college to stop blaming immigrants, or so-called welfare for our supposedly high tax burdens, even though these remain popular, albeit incorrect, scapegoats for whatever taxes we pay.

He won’t tell white grads at white colleges to reject the entreaties of their right-wing radio hosts and talking heads, who keep blaming the Community Reinvestment Act and other fair housing laws for the mortgage and larger economic meltdown, even though such things were not to blame.

In short, to Barack Obama, it is only black people who need lectures about personal responsibility.

For the record, you can add me to the list of those who are tired of Obama always picking black audiences, especially audiences with large numbers of black men, as the targets for his inner social conservative. 

On Campaign Trail

He did it on the campaign trail, in part (I believe) to score political points, with his 2008 Father's Day speech. He did it to the Congressional Black Caucus. Even Africans accused him of doing it on his travels to the Motherland.  

Mind you, it's not that I or any of his other critics believe that all black men are above the tut-tutting. Rather, it's that, when it comes to talking to black folks, far too much of Obama's time is squandered with these backhanded accusations that black people simply complain, make excuses, dodge personal responsibility and use racism as a cop-out.

Where's the talk about foreign policy? (Or, better yet, talk about an effective urban policy?) Where are the long-winded passages about economic recovery and sticking up for Main Street and workers' rights and tax reform? At what point will the President give a major address to blacks and spend the bulk of his time dealing with us as citizens in full rather than as some prop or punching bag?

Obama doesn't lecture whites like that. He tried once. Remember when he accused "small-town voters" (read: white people) of being "bitter" and said "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them…?"

And do you remember how he backpedaled with the quickness? He has yet to pull that stunt again.

But here he is in his second term thanks largely to huge black voter turnout, his African-American support still astronomical. Still,  it sometimes seems that all the man really wants to do when he steps in front of predominantly black audiences is discuss the ways in which he thinks we can't get right.

Thing is, the men who collected those sheepskin scrolls at Morehouse this past weekend are among the brightest examples of young brothers who've answered the call to personal responsibility and to achievement in spite of circumstances. 

And while I'm sure the students were beyond honored to have the first black president speak at their graduation, Obama could've done a better job of honoring them by spending less time telling them what not to be and more on acknowledging who they really are.



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