Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Obama Has Failed Black Americans
Townhall.com ^ | January 16, 2012 | Lurita Doan

Posted on 01/16/2012 4:49:59 AM PST by Kaslin

>Today Americans are remembering a great leader of our past, while at the same time thinking about how poorly our current President’s leadership compares. President Obama has done a great many things to undermine our nation and his failed policies have only deepened our economic troubles, expanded our debt, coarsened our dialogue and divided our citizens. Obama's policies have been especially damaging and painful to the Black American community, for no modern President has served the Black community as poorly as Barack Obama.

Obama's historic presidential victory provided him with a splendid opportunity. He had the bully pulpit and the opportunity to use it to talk about important matters. Obama could have advanced an important message to the Black American community about education, independence and initiative. Instead, Obama chose to reinforce the ties of dependency and, to quote Margaret Thatcher, "to entrap, to demoralise and then ignore" the plight of Black Americans in the United States.

During his term as President, Obama has produced a woeful record of poorly conceived policies combined with equal parts of failing to lead. Obama has made a mockery of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of race relations.

Reverend King urged advancement based on "content of character" rather than "color of our skin". Americans, and especially blacks, once had hoped that Obama's historic rise to the Presidency would signal a new rebirth of effort and interest in the “content of our character’’ but that hope is now lost.

Obama is uninterested in the "content of character" issue. What a pity, for there is nothing more urgent. Consider that today, despite the fact that Obama has run up impossible debts with borrowed money to spend on pet projects, the unemployment rate for Black Americans is stuck at nearly twice the national average at approximately 16 percent, rates not seen since the Great Depression.

For younger Black Americans, in cities such as New York, the unemployment rate is a shocking 34 percent. But the misery continues. Far too many Black Americans are idle in prisons and jails. Obama once lamented that there are more Black men in prison and jail than in college. And perhaps saddest of all, nearly 70% of all Black American babies are born to single mothers.

Ironically, years ago, as a candidate, Obama seemed more determined to address the "character content" issue and received widespread praise for a speech when he said "if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many fathers are missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it."

But sadly, once elected, Obama never again has taken up the issue.

Obama has pushed a mishmash of policies and ill-considered schemes that are making the problems with the Black American community much worse. Take for example the urgent need to reform schools and the specific need to give minority kids an honest chance at a decent education, instead of being forced into a failed public school system that is widely recognized as a dead end.

Obama, could have taken the side of thoughtful reformers (such as Michele Rhee), many of whom are members of his own Democratic party but Obama choose not to do so. Instead, with eyes focused only on the next election, Obama has been unwilling to confront the politically powerful teachers' unions.

Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr. who, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, argued against Black Americans being, " completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodyness", Obama encourages the "hatred and despair of the black nationalist", advocating dependency and class warfare, creating expectations that only government entitlements can create wealth, and that government has the right to redistribute wealth.

Martin Luther King, Jr. called for " normal and healthy discontent" to be "channeled through the creative outlet", but Obama does not believe in free enterprise, or the American Dream or the ability of entrepreneurship to improve one's lot in life. Nor does Obama believe, as did Dr. King, that in the Black Community, " our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America"--and when Obama espouses policies of dependency, he dooms another generation of Black Americans to the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Obama has never been a man of ideas. Even the title of his autobiography (The Audacity of Hope) was first coined by Rev, Jeremiah Wright in a sermon. Americans can see that Obama doesn't believe in free enterprise, and he doesn't believe in American exceptionalism. Obama is the "wooden ventriloquist" of the Democrat Party apparatchik, interested only in herding Black Americans, like sheep, to the polls, certain that despite his destructive policies, Black Americans, somehow, will vote for him again.

And so, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s bold vision for Black Americans, a vision of hope, a vision of equality and occupying an equal place in the execution of the American Dream must await a new generation of Black leaders because one thing is clear, Obama ain't it.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-37 next last

1 posted on 01/16/2012 4:50:03 AM PST by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

If it’s any comfort to “Holder’s People”, he failed us whites too!


2 posted on 01/16/2012 4:52:28 AM PST by airborne (Paratroopers! Good to the last drop!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
95% Still gonna vote for him...

whitey hate trumps all.

3 posted on 01/16/2012 4:54:46 AM PST by Happy Rain ("Newt Rick or Rick cuz four more with the Twit will put America in the....")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

the only people he’s doing anything for are the Arabs!


4 posted on 01/16/2012 4:56:40 AM PST by jrd (DO AWAY WITH THE EPA)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

The last Democrat President that had policies that didn’t harm Blacks was Abe Linc..... Oh, wait...


5 posted on 01/16/2012 5:04:38 AM PST by trebb ("If a man will not work, he should not eat" From 2 Thes 3)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Happy Rain

I wouldn’t bet on it


6 posted on 01/16/2012 5:07:54 AM PST by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: airborne

You beat me to it.


7 posted on 01/16/2012 5:08:38 AM PST by RipSawyer (This does not end well!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
I would just love to be wrong on this.

Most minority organizations are run by the radical Left who have the majorities ostracize or shun any member of said minority if they display even minute signs of common sense that could be remotely interpreted as conservative behavior.

This means they must either vote for Obama or not vote for Obama and then lie that they did.

Hard choice to make and such a dang shame they have to make it.

8 posted on 01/16/2012 5:16:49 AM PST by Happy Rain ("Newt Rick or Rick cuz four more with the Twit will put America in the....")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Obama didn’t fail black people, black people failed themselves.

Blacks have taken EVERY opportunity given to them, FREE OF CHARGED, and ‘p—sed it into the wind’.

Blacks don’t need a Moses to lead them out of their problems, they need a mirror to see the cause of their problems.


9 posted on 01/16/2012 5:20:25 AM PST by Le Chien Rouge
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
They can all become runaway slaves.
10 posted on 01/16/2012 5:26:15 AM PST by mc5cents
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Failed “black” Americans. It all depends on what you mean, exactly, by the term “black”.

When Nobel Prize winning poet Tony Morrison, who is African-American, can write an October 1988 New Yorker article titled “Clinton as the first black president”, then what is “black”? When the NAACP calls the black conservative Kenneth Gladney, “not black enough”, and “not a brother” then what is “black”? When Time magazine’s Jack White calls Supreme Court Justice Thomas, “the scariest of all the hobgoblins”, saying “Washington seems to be filled with white men who make black people uneasy”, than what is “black”? And when Obama, a man whose mother is Caucasian, can tell us in a widely read autobiography that in his youth he struggled with his racial identity before *deciding* to be black, what is “black”?

When Bill Maher, during a panel discussion on HBO complains that Obama’s policies are “half-assed” “because he’s only half black.” and that “if he was fully black, I’m telling you, he would be a better president.”, and that “there’s a white man in him holding him back”, than what is “black”?

“Black” in all these contexts, as well as Juan Williams’s complaint on Fox News that the extraordinarily lopsided expression of Missouri voter sentiment in August of 2010 rejecting ObamaCare (in one county by 92%) was really about race, is not about “race” at all. It is about ideology, socialist ideology.

With respect to BHO being black: it is not about the racial characteristics he was born with, it is about the ideology he adopted. It is not what percent black he is, it is about how thoroughly red he is. He has advanced socialism in passing Obamacare. By that measure alone, he has not failed “black” Americans at all.


11 posted on 01/16/2012 5:30:21 AM PST by theBuckwheat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2833301/posts

Obama adviser (Jarrett) tells worshippers at King’s church: ‘Change is hard.’ (Channels MLK)
AP ^ | January 15, 2012

ATLANTA — A top White House adviser delivered a message of hope at Martin Luther King’s church in Atlanta.

Valerie Jarrett spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sunday and told worshippers that she believed King would “join with us in celebrating the progress we’ve made” if he were still alive.


12 posted on 01/16/2012 5:38:08 AM PST by maggief
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: airborne
Actually, I think it is a GREAT comfort to them.

Most covetous people who seek to empower others to give "voice" to their covetousness would be just as satisfied, if not even more satisfied,

if those who "have" simply having it taken from them, rather than having more stuff given to them, the "have-nots".

A genie went to the Middle East, where he saw a sad looking Arab. He asked the Arab what he wanted most in life. The Arab answerd, "My cousin Abdul has the most beautiful flock of goats you ever saw, while I don't have any goats at all. It's not fair! I'm just as good as he is. Why should HE have such beautiful goats and not me?"

The genie smiled and said, "So, you want a beautiful flock of your own?"

The Arab snarled, "Of course not, you idiot! I want you to kill all of Abdul's goats!"


13 posted on 01/16/2012 5:42:10 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: theBuckwheat

Well said!


14 posted on 01/16/2012 5:46:09 AM PST by doberville
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: airborne

Amen! He’s failed us ALL!


15 posted on 01/16/2012 5:56:34 AM PST by rfreedom4u (Forced diversity causes dissent!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: theBuckwheat

That was brilliant, and right on the money.

Blacks will never raise themselves out of the pit they make for themselves because if they try the other blacks will keep dragging them back down.


16 posted on 01/16/2012 6:01:16 AM PST by Venturer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Blacks have failed themselves almost everywhere.
Has there ever been a group of people that just quit doing ANYTHING for themselves?

Public school cafeterias are now staying open just to feed (3 meals) the children of mostly Black, lazy slobs that won't feed their own children.

Remember when a mind was a terrible thing to waste?
What about a whole culture.

17 posted on 01/16/2012 6:03:09 AM PST by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

This piece could have been called, Black liberation theology has failed black America and it would have described where the militancy of his marxism comes from.


18 posted on 01/16/2012 6:03:41 AM PST by Track9 (There IS revolution brewing..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

If black Americans only knew about their history beyound MLK and Malcom X, they would never vote for Obama or any Democrat. Ever. But history has erased the truth about the Democrat roots in racism.

The Democrats are the party of Jim Crow

The Democrats gave birth to the KKK which original purpose was to suppress the black vote (who voted 100% Republican) by intimidation, murder, and terrorism.

The Democrats voted against all anti-lynching laws proposed.And all anti-lynching laws were proposed by Republicans.

The Civil Rights movement did not start in the 1960s it stared 100 years earlier, and it was the Democrats that harshly opposed giving former slaves Civil Rights, and kept that fight up for over 100 years.

It was the Democrats that began poll taxes, literacy test, grandfather clauses, hide-and-seek polling places, and several other ways to keep the Blacks from voting (because blacks voted 100% Republican).

It was the Democrats who would lynch Blacks & Whites trying to advance Civil Rights and Voting rights for former slaves.
It was a Democrat who shot the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln.

And it was Democrats that did not elect their first Black to Congress until 1935 while Republicans have been doing it for 67 years.

The First Blacks In Congress Were All Republicans
United States Senate.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (1822-1901); Republican – Mississippi; 1870-1871
Blanche Bruce (1841-1898); Republican – Mississippi; 1875-1881
House of Representatives
John Willis Menard (1838-1893); Republican - Louisiana; 1868
Joseph Rainey (1832-1887); Republican - South Carolina; 1870-1879
Jefferson F. Long (1836-1901); Republican – Georgia; 1870-1871
Robert C. De Large (1842-1874); Republican - South Carolina; 1871-1873
Robert B. Elliott (1842-1884); Republican - South Carolina; 1871-1874
Benjamin S. Turner (1825-1894); Republican – Alabama; 1871-1873
Josiah T. Walls (1842-1905); Republican – Florida; 1871-1873, 1873-1875, 1875-1876
Richard H. Cain (1825-1887); Republican - South Carolina; 1873-1875, 1877-1879
John R. Lynch (1847-1939); Republican – Mississippi; 1873-1877, 1882-1883
James T. Rapier (1837-1883); Republican – Alabama; 1873-1875
Alonzo J. Ransier (1834-1882); Republican - South Carolina; 1873-1875
Jeremiah Haralson (1846-1916); Republican - Alabama; 1875-1877
John Adams Hyman (1840-1891); Republican - North Carolina; 1875-1877
Charles E. Nash (1844-1913); Republican – Louisiana; 1875-1877
Robert Smalls (1839-1915); Republican - South Carolina; 1875-1879, 1882-1883, 1884-1887
James E. O’Hara (1844-1905); Republican - North Carolina; 1883-1887
Henry P. Cheatham (1857-1935); Republican - North Carolina; 1889-1893
John Mercer Langston (1829-1897); Republican – Virginia; 1890-1891
Thomas E. Miller(1849-193); Republican - South Carolina; 1890-1891
George W. Murray (1853-1926); Republican - South Carolina; 1893-1895, 1896-1897
George Henry White (1852-1918); Republican - North Carolina; 1897-1901

The Democrats did not elect their first black American to the U.S. House until 1935, and he was from the North. The Southern Democrats waited until 1973. The first Black Senator was not elected until 1993.
And if you are wondering why so many Black Republicans could get elected in the racist south during the reconstruction period, it is because many whites of the old confederacy refused to take the loyalty oath. No oath, no right to vote. Others just stayed away out of protest.


19 posted on 01/16/2012 6:25:46 AM PST by NavyCanDo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: airborne

You’re right! Hasn’t “Bam” failed us all?!

By allowing “race” to be somehow implicated in the cause, don’t we do a disservice to everyone?

Regardless of race, Obama is one truly horrible president of us all!


20 posted on 01/16/2012 6:25:59 AM PST by cpa4you (CPA4YOU)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-37 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson