President Obama must be feeling constrained lately. Last week, he let it slip that at times, he feels like “going Bulworth” Bulworth is a movie about a fictional president who after winning, starts telling the truth, and saying what he wants. As explained greatly by the co-writer of Bulworth, Obama is a kept figure by the powers that be, and will never do such a thing. However, there is one group of people that the President never fails to unload on. That group is none other than his most loyal constituents: Black America.
Of course, this post is referring to President Obama and his commencement address this weekend at Morehouse. In what has become a trope in the President’s communication with the Black community, Obama, addressed a crowd of Black college graduates and said there were “no excuses” for them.
The framework in which President Obama sees Black people and their reasoning is very skewed. According to his “tough love” logic, Black people make excuses, while others have legitimate reasons for social impediments. We all know that such broad statements would not have been made at a predominately white institution of higher learning.
Since we are on the topic of excuses, what is President Obama’s explanation for the AP spying scandal? It is a major violation of the first amendment, and to date there has been little mention of it. Why? While we wait for the answer for that (Don’t hold your breath, folks) let us get back to the subject. The point of this is, while it may seem like these sort of remarks come from a good place, it is heavily calculated. Black college graduates are a safe target to assail. When Black people make demands for things to be improved from Black politicians, it can be framed as asking for handouts. While Bill Cosby laid the foundation early for Black 21st century classist warfare, Obama has perfected the narrative. Browbeating Black men is the safe thing to do for Black politicians. It is a tool readily available for public use, and always gets more than a few “amens” from some of the targets themselves. It makes it much easier to spread the slander.
Addendum: This post was picked up this week over at Let Your Voice Be Heard
Related articles
BS
This was a spot on piece Marc and more more people are starting to see things for what they are really worth and if we collectively had more understanding of our self worth, we would make it a little more difficult for the President or any other person that speaks to African people, a little more difficult to come into our realm and continuously verbally assault our community with what we NEED to do and how we are supposed to be void of any type of societal issue that affects us as compared to every other community of people in these United States. Its tired…
Will see if Obama gets any Amens, when those college grads have pay back those student loans.
Condescending is Obama’s style.
Word
President Obama made a speech every Black man need to hear. If only they would listen. I work in The Dept of Corrections and when Black men get in front of the judge… No one want to hear any Excuses/ No Sad Stories…
Thank you Ali. I think that slowly, people are starting the recognize a pattern.
J.P. – Every Black man? Even the ones who have their stuff together that we don’t hear about? The ones who stay out of trouble? Seriously? We have been browbeaten enough.
Obama is what we use to call a “JAM”. We used this term a lot in my youth. Jive ass MF
Couple this new Drug policy “reform” from the White House with new pop culture “reform” efforts like Russel Simmons letter, the corporations taking over marijuana reform and the implementation of the affordable Care Act (Obamacare) we are looking at an all decriminalization system that still promotes drug courts as a solution. Obama with some talented tenth types, entertainers, Black/Brown “scholars”, corporations, and civil rights activist are about to turn drug policy reform into the quagmire education reform has become. In short everyone will agree to do something but nothing productive will get done without us tamping up our efforts to demand the legalization of all drugs and re-appropriation of federal funding and state resources to support legal access. LJ He is simply a JAM as we use to say in our youth http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/15998-time-to-end-the-war-on-drugs
Good morning Clifford. Thank you for your commentary. we will see what comes of this reform.