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Obama, Harris, and Black Men
At a Harris campaign office in Pennsylvania, former president Barack Obama expressed disappointment that black men (“the brothers”) weren’t adequately enthusiastic for Kamala Harris.
He contrasted two presidential candidates.
“On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,”
And
“And on the other side, you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/10/g-s1-27633/barack-obama-kamala-harris-black-men-pennsylvania
Although Mr. Obama doesn’t use names, I assume he intended the audience to hear “somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences” as a description of Kamala Harris.
But none of that is true, so what the heck does Mr. Obama think he is saying?
Few “brother” black men in the United States have much background experience in common with Kamala Harris.
I suspect the struggles, pains, and joys that Kamala Harris has experienced are quite different from the struggles, pains, and joys that many American black men experience because Kamala Harris’s experiences have been very different from the experiences of most American black men.
Both of Vice President Harris’s parents were tenured academics. After spending her first few years of life in Berkeley, California, she spent most of her childhood in Montreal, Quebec, Canada – a place quite different from where most American black men grew up. Unlike Kamala, few black men have attended college. (The college attendance gap between black women and black men is even larger than the gap between white women and white men.)
Early in her professional career Kamala Harris was carried into the halls of political power by a powerful benefactor. Few black men other than Barak Obama have had the experience of being carried into the halls of political power by powerful benefactors.
As to Mr. Obama himself, on what basis does he claim any connection with “the brothers” (black men in America) to justify his chastising of them? Mr. Obama’s “blackness” is based on a mostly absent Kenyan father with no connection to generations of black Americans living on the North American continent. Former President Obama spent most of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia with his white mother and white maternal grandparents. Other than a year as a toddler while his father attended graduate school, Barack Obama did not set foot on the United States mainland until he arrived to attend a prestigious college. What background experience does he have in common with most black men in the United States?
In my own experience, the last company at which I was employed made much ado about the “diversity” in the law department because we had several black female lawyers. The two highest-ranking of those black female lawyers were the daughter of a professor at an Ivy League university, and the daughter of a medical doctor. They both grew up in “middle-class” Connecticut suburbs. One of the outside lawyers I often hired for contract work for the company was a white man who grew up in poverty in the hills of Appalachia. I (a white man) was the child of a consulting engineer who became a professor and grew up in the “middle-class” suburbs of California and Florida. So my own background experience had more in common with those black female lawyers than I did with the white man who grew up in poverty-stricken Appalachia.
I’m not entirely convinced that common background experiences provide a decent measure of political alignment. But if Mr. Obama is going to assert that common background experiences should influence your vote, then shouldn’t there be some actual commonality between the candidate and the people he expects to vote for that candidate?
Few black men have much background and experience in common with Kamala Harris. It therefore seems to make little sense for Barack Obama to assert that common background and experience should lead black men to vote for Kamala Harris for President of the United States.
Published in Elections
I think you’re missing Mr. Obama’s point. He’s in favor of racial bigotry, not of considering backgrounds.
Obama has a simple point: Harris is part black. So if you’re part black, you should vote for her.
That’s it.
But he can’t just come out and say, “Hey, I’m a racist bigot, and I think you should be, too!”
The mainstream media would ignore such things, but some right-wing blogger might try to make a big deal out of it. So Obama is forced to speak in code.
Barely concealed code.
There was a mobile phone commercial during the Obama years that I thought captured him well, but it didn’t intend to. The scene starts at a grade school play with a young student as Abraham Lincoln. He can’t remember the Gettysburg Address. Camera pans to his dad and younger brother in the crowd. Back on Abe and he gets a text. Abe blurts out something like, “I love Susie Derkins.” Pan back to the little brother laughing in the crowd. I thought of Obama because the boy didn’t know the basics of American history and would say whatever the screen in front of him said.
I have long thought that the Obama “birther” controversy was a proxy that developed because Obama didn’t sound “American.” He seemed unfamiliar with America as most Americans experienced it.
Obama is telling Black males in America how they should act, think, and above all feel, and I think a lot of them are going to tell Obama just what he can do with his presumption.
Agree. I believe those who think the reason he’s kept his college transcript hidden is because he used the Indonesia connection to apply to college as a foreign student. More opportunities and scholarships probably, so why not twist the truth a bit. He is also lazy and not bright, so it could be the grades, but I can see that possibility too.
Don’t black men find that insulting? That’s not really different from slave owners and purveyors of Jim Crow laws noting that black men need to be told what is best for them, as they can’t be trusted to make their own decisions.
A black guy who used to comment at blogs once said that in his experience, black women with college degrees would not consider marrying a man without a degree, even if he was a skilled and well-paid tradesman and her degree was in some fluff subject. (He also said, ‘Watch out, white guys! If this hasn’t happened in your world yet, it will.)
To the extent that his experience is a common one, it will likely influence black men’s attitudes toward Harris… and toward Obama’s lecture.
Kevin Samuels (RIP) spoke and wrote about that a lot, along with other issues such as black women having children with multiple men and then expecting the next man to support ALL of them.
What blew my mind about Barry’s lecture is that he was giving it to Harris volunteers, some of them black men. He was telling the black men, working for the campaign for free, that they don’t support Harris enough.
Easy for me to say, but if I were one of those men I would have walked out.
Fortunately, we can look at the record of both candidates and determine who actually delivered for Black Americans and who is nothing but hot air…
Real median weekly wages of Black/African American full time employees (inflation adjusted wages expressed in 1984 dollars)
BLS Data series LEU0252884600Q
Obama 1st inauguration 272
Trump inaugurated 279
Change Obama 8 years +7
Trump inaugurated 279
Q4 2019 pre pandemic 294
Change pre pandemic +15
Trump inaugurated 279
Biden inauguration 304
Change Trump 4 years +25
Biden/Harris inauguration 304
Today 300
Change Biden/Harris so far -4
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252884600Q
So, in Trump’s 3 pre-pandemic years median real household income went up 10.4%
Real median wages went up 5.1% overall and 7.5% for Blacks/African Americans … far better than in Obama’s 8 years.
And people are demonstrably worse off today than in 2019.
I like Richard Roundtree and Pam Grier movies. Blaxploitation used to be more entertaining.
Do you think Obama’s motivation is more racial or more leftist? I think he’d try to shame black men into voting for a white leftist but not a black conservative.
Is Obama’s working assumption that black men owe their allegiance to the tribe he assigns them, or just to the leftmost candidate generally?
In particular, as most black American people experience it.
I think Obama’s motivation is entirely leftist, that his methods are racial, that he assumes that he is owed undying loyalty, and that he’s going to find that his account is overdrawn.
They should, especially considering that Obama is half white, and therefore half-racist.
Dennis Miller used to say that he – Miller – wasn’t racist because he only disagreed with Obama’s white half.
Obama shoved Obamacare down our throats with a parliamentary trick and the other day he was complaining about healthcare costs. These people are liars.
They did it with a stolen Senate seat and parliamentary tricks. Yes, people of the left are liars. Becoming a leftist involves becoming a liar, unless one is a sociopath and already one.
Completely missed Obama was speaking at volunteers in a Harris office. Makes it double plus ungood.
Preach!
https://x.com/XAVIAERD/status/1840778492298121658
The brothers should be voting for JD Vance if Obama’s analogy actually holds up.
They probably didn’t even get paid scale wages for their non-speaking parts.
I wrote about why black men are leaving Kamala Harris. Apparently, Nietzsche figured it all out. Who knew?