He’s been vilified as
the anti-Christ and lauded as a savior. He’s been called a liar, a terrorist-sympathizer,
a credit to his race, a traitor to his people, incompetent, a fine citizen, a
role model, arrogant, un-American, the
"perfect American," highly accomplished, a dedicated civil
servant, and a closet socialist.
You get it. President
Obama has been called a lot of things. Some people hate him, but overall, most
black people love him.
Or … at least they did.
But with double-digit
unemployment in the black community as well as a general sense that promises
made have not been kept, some black folks are getting a little restless. Others
are taking the opportunity to declare that they always knew Obama doesn't have
black people’s best interests at heart.
This has not been a good
month for the President. Between the Associated
Press scandal and the IRS
scandal and the lingering questions about Benghazi, he’s taken a fair
amount of heat. And now some black people are up in arms about Obama’s Morehouse commencement speech, during
which he told the young graduates:
"We
know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices … Growing
up, I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just
another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency
sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing. But one of the
things that all of you have learned over the last four years, is there's no
longer any room for excuses."
Some
black people consider this statement offensive and misdirected. Dr. Boyce Watkins
wrote:
“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."
A few have been
supportive, stating that Obama is only speaking the truth, but many others have
been anything but. One commenter on a popular blog targeted at African Americans wrote:
“What I
don’t understand is WHY did it take so long for [people] to realize Obama has
been selling this brand of racial pathology since 2004.”
Another said:
“I
have consistently been disappointed by the way this president addresses Black
people. The only time that he dares to mention Black people is when he is
reprimanding them. He never mentions that the Black middle class has been
decimated by the recession that he is presiding over…His policies and lack of
backbone has caused a lot of problems for many Black people and it’s time for
us to stop blindly supporting him.”
So I ask. Have black
folks fallen out of love with President Obama? What do you think?
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