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President Obama’s Disastrous Record on Race
President Barack Obama and advisor Valerie Jarrett hold a White House meeting with Black Lives Matters activists, Feb. 18, 2016.
On Election Day 2008, many Democrats welcomed a new post-racial America. The hideous blight of slavery and Jim Crow could never be forgotten, but our first African-American President would in some small way help atone for those sins and ultimately transcend them. Even Republicans shared the emotions of Grant Park, where thousands crying elderly blacks finally saw that America could elect a person of color.
Despite these bipartisan hopes, the nation is more racially obsessed than it has been in 25 years. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 63 percent of Americans think race relations are “generally bad.” Shortly after Obama took office, that number was 22 percent. In the same time period, those who think race relations are “generally good” plummeted from 66 percent to 32 percent.
Of course, Obama fans assert that this increase in racial division is due to white contempt for a black president. This is illogical since months after he took office, the American people thought racial harmony was higher than it had ever been. So what changed?
Watching Ferguson, MO go up in flames, I ironically remarked, “My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.” Little did I know how many times people would republish that line in the years that followed.
Eric Garner’s death created racial unrest in New York City. Baltimore was racked with days of violence following Freddie Gray’s death. Five officers were murdered by a black separatist in Dallas. Other law enforcement officers were ambushed in Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The police-involved shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile sparked more violent protests in New York City, Chicago, St. Paul, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere. In each case, the major media misreported the facts, stoked the literal fires, and characterized the rampages as “mostly peaceful.”
Every time an officer of any race used lethal force against a black suspect, most of them ruled justifiable, Black Lives Matter cast it as another example of privilege and white supremacy. BLM harassed bewildered customers at malls and brunches, and regularly blocked traffic on major freeways. Concerned Student 1959 tried to shut down the University of Missouri as Amherst Uprising did the same for their school.
Did Obama comment on the widespread racial unrest wracking his country? Occasionally. But each time he used his “on the one hand, but on the other” formulation that defines himself as the moral fulcrum amidst the madness. The President didn’t mention that his fingerprints were all over the riots.
Before getting into politics, Barack Obama was a community organizer. This anodyne term was created by Chicago leftist Saul Alinsky who created the position to “rub raw the sores of discontent.” Many thought Obama’s moderate sounding speeches meant he had tossed Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in the dustbin. Instead, upon entering the White House, Obama created Organizing for Action, which has trained 5 million Americans in Alinsky tactics.
Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin’s anti-Walker protests, and Black Lives Matter didn’t arise of their own accord. They were the bitter fruit intentionally cultivated by OfA.
More disturbingly, Obama’s goal to “fundamentally transform America” is far from over. In his farewell speech, Obama repeatedly stressed the need for the crowd to “lace up your shoes and do some organizing.” The Hoover Institution’s Paul Sperry writes:
Obama’s presidential foundation — which hopes to raise $1 billion, roughly double what was raised for the George W. Bush library — may end up eclipsing OfA as a locus of destructive, nihilistic, antisocial activism in the post-Obama era. Obama intends to use his foundation, based at the planned Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side, to continue wreaking havoc in America and around the globe.
A “scaled down” version of OfA will reportedly reside at the Barack Obama Foundation whose website states ominously, “As President Obama has said, the change we seek will take longer than one presidency.” Obama’s “historic candidacy was never simply about winning an office; it was about building a movement to tackle challenges that would define a generation. This work will live on in the Obama Foundation, which will inspire citizens across the globe to better their communities, their countries, and their world.”
When I said, “My favorite part of the Obama era is all the racial healing” two years ago, I thought I could retire the tweet in January 2017. But perhaps the Obama era is just getting started.
Published in General
Obama and the Democrats needed to turn black against white to get their votes thus BLM.
Oh, a generation will be defined all right.
To see the towns people line up in support of this redefinition is, well, I don’t know what.
Obama-The-Emperor-With-No-Clothes.
Everybody raves about his empty suit.
“Race relations” can’t just be a function of the Presidency – meaning the rest of you probably have some influence on them as well.
This is only because everyone else is racist.
If the President of the United States of America twists the truth and lies serially about Martin-Zimmerman, Freddie Gray, The Gentle Giant, etc., then his influence is huge, especially since he’s endowed with some melanin. He invited the race mongers BLM to our White House, aiding and abetting their foul agenda. And it wasn’t just the Presidency either. How about his entire administration doing all it could. For example, Eric Holder called me a coward. He’s the coward and a law-breaking one at that.
I didn’t wake up one day sometime in the last eight years and decide I’d start increasing my race bias. These race-baiting morons deserve the credit I give them for fracturing our country racially, unfortunately right at the very point in the arc of our race history where such concerns were fading. We’re well shut of Obama, and much of his deviltry will be rescinded by Trump, a guy who actually aspires to increase national cohesion and erase tribal identity politics.
Obama early on knew his talents lay in race grievance huckstering. And its easier than a real job. Thats why he moved to Chicago after law school. It had the best opportunities for hucksters. I never thought he was anything other than a charlatan. He would never do anything good for America, and especially with race relations – racial healing is not what race grievance hucksters do. They foment discord. Demand stuff. Attempt to make innocent people feel guilty. Condescend. Feign moral superiority. It can be a good living, and he is the most successful huckster, ever.
So now we are left with a bloated race grievance / identity politics industrial complex that he nurtured. What are these people going to do? Get real jobs, get real clients? I think not.
The whole “ascendent democratic majority” is really all people “of color” against white people. That will not work out well.
Seriously, did anyone out there think race relations would improve because America elected this man?
I sure as hell didn’t!
Every word of your comment is absolutely true. So many didn’t see this dude for what he really was at his debut, and many still don’t. Shame. His legacy will be a difficult period of rebuilding and recreating a normal society. We’ll do it.
Perhaps the country shall transcend the era of Obama’s racism.
I agree with you.
But I don’t think anybody is suggesting that race relations should be just a function of the Presidency.
And I do think it’s fair to suggest that Obama had a unique opportunity to steer this discussion into more productive channels and to set an example. And that not only did he fail to do so, but he actively steered the discussion in divisive and damaging directions, set a bad example, and made things far worse. A President may not be able to “fix” race relations on his own. But he can sure make a mess of them on his own, if he’s so minded. And Barack Obama has appeared “so minded” since just after taking office.
I seem to remember several Republicans and so-called conservatives who thought it would. Idiots, the lot of them. I called it in 2008, that for the entirety of Obama’s term, anyone who objected to Democrat policies would be branded a racist, and race relations would only worsen.
If only I’d been wrong.
On the other hand, this is nothing new. I’ve long gotten used to being called everything but a Child of God for daring to oppose the leftist agenda. It didn’t start in 2008, it just metastasized then.
I did not think that race relations would improve just because he was elected, no.
What I hoped was that he would have the dignity, the grace, and the care for his country to, himself, work together with his fellow citizens for their improvement. I think there’s a difference.
But sadly, he did not. In my opinion.
The failure of the Obama presidency is broad and deep. He even failed at being the first black president. It was supposed to bring greater unity. The end isn’t coming fast enough. Good riddance.
So I wrote my two cents on the same topic. Short version, Obama never consistently said, “A fundamentally and systematically racist society doesn’t elect me twice.”
He’s on the wrong side of history.
And nearly on the right side of the front entry to the White House. Ha.
Good post, Jon.
I do believe the divide is due to two distinct end states that do not coexist well.
Many whites hoped for a color blind society , where we were all Americans and race was not an issue
Many black wanted pride in their race and had a vision of racial identity as their preferred future. Race would always be present and primary.
American was always about blending and eventually that will happen as marriage and mixing occurs naturally. I believe the last forty years have been a temporary hiatus from that process, another holiday from history, or in this case demography.
It all comes down to jobs and schools. Solve that and it goes away.
Disastrous record on race.
Disastrous record on defense.
Disastrous record on economy.
Disastrous record on deficit.
Disastrous record on foreign policy.
Did I miss anything?
The hate is so deep now that it will take generations to overcome. While blacks were rapidly overcoming slavery/kkk/jim crow legacy, we now must overcome the liberal legacy that destroyed black families and communities and the Obama legacy that blamed the resulting chaos on white racism. Black leaders will be among the first to oppose eliminating the programs that destroyed their families, schools and churches because these destructive programs enriched them. It calls for real leadership and courage. We just witnessed the sorry state of black leadership in the Sessions confirmation hearings.
You know, @kozak, I agree with all your points with one exception…the economy. On that point I cannot call it a disaster. Obama entered his Presidency with an economy in the midst of a disaster for sure. Fortunately we have an abundantly blessed country. Even though nothing Obama did that I can think of helped us climb out of that economic disaster, we still did climb out, just by the force of our great people and system, if nothing else. So even though we could have done better…and will do much better under Trump…it is only fair to give Obama credit, for if we were still in the depths of the 2008 despair, he would surely be getting the blame.
It began in the financial sector where most recessions begin, we were leveraged beyond anything we’ve seen, but these always recover rapidly and this one would have as well. The economy always has inertia in its favor and makes do and always chugs along but not not this time. Recessions clean out distortions and weak players, over investment in boom sectors, preparing the economy to leap forward. Not this time. He expanded government control, which is always part of the problem quashed new entrepreneurial activity everywhere except in the new digital economy where the regulators haven’t figure out exactly how to milk it. There is more dependency, slower productivity growth, higher risks, fewer workers, fewer start ups, less innovation, our schools are worse, we are less competitive, less economically diverse. The thing is economies are organic, their nature is to grow and change and it takes special efforts to keep them from doing so. Obama accelerated the sludge that has been weakening the economy for a century.
This.
OK, so I was just trying to show a little generosity. I knew it wouldn’t go over well. Especially if the guy never leaves.
The country might; the politicians won’t.
Yes. This has been the longest transition in history. From November to next week has been forever. Will he leave? Not without doing as much damage as possible and there’s a week to go.
Indisputably the most racist President our nation has had since the era of Woodrow Wilson, the fruits of his labor are manifest all around us.
It will take a great deal of work to fix what this man has done.
Division does not produce harmony. A focus on race is inherently a focus on differences, which is divisive. Focusing on diversity emphasizes differences and is divisive.
Harmony requires us to focus on our commonalities and de-emphasize what is different. A true post-racial society would not mention race much, because that emphasizes our differences, rather than our commonalities.
Obama was racially divisive even if (giving him the benefit of the doubt) that was not his intent. There is no easy fix.
In the same sense that presidents get both too much credit and too much blame for the economy, he inherited a recession but so did Reagan, so did Clinton (to a degree), and so did Bush. The length and breadth of the recession was far, far longer than prior recessions. Considering the steps he took regarding spending and policy “fixes” for the economy, his fixes, not anyone else’s, and the recession stretched into the longest “recovery” in the last 100 years, well, I call that a fail.
If you look at median household incomes and the federal increase in spending, spending that was sold to the public as the fix for what ails the economy, it’s perfectly clear that that does not work, ever. And yet he still sold spending and infrastructure, etc, as the spending that would fix everything.
It did not, because it cannot. So fail. Fail again, for the flailing and failing community organizer who has absolutely zero knowledge of economics, business, and simple day to day transactional accounting, other than what hippies and commies taught him growing up.
Oh, and they were wrong. They were wrong about economics, and they’re wrong about patchouli, too.
Yep.
The “beer summit” crap set the tone. That was just Barry warming up to getting a giant adze to split the racial log into separate fires to stoke, with cheap gasoline whose price he also took credit for lowering.
Lincoln split rails to build America. Barry split races to tear it down.
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”