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.

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  1. TeeJaw Inactive
    TeeJaw
    @TeeJaw

    Retail Lawyer (View Comment):
    Seriously, did anyone out there think race relations would improve because America elected this man?

    Well, a few million white people voted for him because they believed that. At the same time Rush Limbaugh was saying that electing this particular black man was not going to improve race relations, and in fact was going to make them worse. We now know who was right.

    The reason for the disaster is that Barack Obama is an inveterate player of the race card. Hillary is an inveterate player of the woman card. So the American people decided to play their Trump card.

    • #31
  2. Eustace C. Scrubb Member
    Eustace C. Scrubb
    @EustaceCScrubb

    @kozak

    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?

    Disastrous record on pop culture, a major focus of his administration.

    • #32
  3. Hugh Member
    Hugh
    @Hugh

    Eustace C. Scrubb (View Comment):
    @kozak

    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?

    Disastrous record on pop culture, a major focus of his administration.

    Well I used to think that the Obama Family Dog was a pretty good choice.  But now I think Sunny wasn’t properly socialized which is a pretty clear indictment of the President’s record.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/01/13/white-house-mum-reports-obamas-dog-bit-guest/96561934/

    • #33
  4. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    “The hideous blight of slavery and Jim Crow”…..that has to be put in perspective.  Our country is not the most culpable when it comes to African slavery; it is the least culpable, by any measure: duration, intensity or sheer numbers.  As for Jim Crow: show me at nation where there is a population divided by race, religion, or language, where  one group doesn’t oppress the other.  It’s only because we let ourselves be made to feel guilty that charlatans like Obama, Sharpton, Farrakhan are actually given a forum for their views.

    Anyone who is here should be down on their knees thanking whatever powers that be .  Slavery is STILL being practiced in Africa.

    But to call Prez Omega’s record “disastrous” misses something important: it wasn’t and isn’t the goal,of the Left to improve and harmonize race relations, nor class relations.  It is  their goal to make every single individual dissatisfied with his or her lot, to make them all feel that the existing society  (which, in the case of Americans, has given them everything they have and made them everything they are) is intolerable, unjust, unfair, and must be leveled.

     

    So so from the point of view of his base, his record is not “disastrous”– it is , quite simply, stellar.

    .

    • #34
  5. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    • #35
  6. EugeneKriegsmann Member
    EugeneKriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    In 1972 I was teaching Special Education classes in a multiracial school in Seattle. There were terrific relations between teachers and between teachers and students of all races. It as nearly as perfect an environment for learning as one could find. That year in its infinite wisdom, Seattle Public Schools introduced its first Human Relations Task Force. The goal of this group was to go into the schools and hold one hour seminars every morning for sixty days in hopes of increasing the understanding between staff members of difference racial backgrounds. It was during these meetings that I heard the term “The White Collective” for the first time. It described the view that all white people had a collective responsibility for every act of depravity committed in the past by European-Americans against all the various minorities.

    The damage done to race relations in our building during that trimester took nearly three years to repair. Several great teachers simply left. Many close friend on the staff stopped talking to each other. Every relationship was defined by race and its awareness.

    Obama’s tenure has had the same effect on this country. Its insane premise is the same one used back in 1972 in Seattle, That is, that making everyone aware of race will help to resolve underlying problems between people of different racial groups. In fact, what it does is to stir resentments and exacerbates tribalism. Obama is as ignorant of reality as my former employers in Seattle. Good Riddance.

    • #36
  7. Daniel Brass Inactive
    Daniel Brass
    @DanielBrass

    Jimmy Carter is excited about the notion that he will soon no longer be our worst former president

    • #37
  8. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):
    Many close friend on the staff stopped talking to each other. Every relationship was defined by race and its awareness.

    Could you please give more detail here? I come from around the Seattle area. Where there any cases of whites and Asians not talking to each other? Was it more of a super-leftist white thing vs not-that-lefty white thing. (I assume there were almost no conservative teachers.) Did Mexican teachers not talk to black teachers?

    I hope I am not defeating the purpose of your argument by focusing on race and its awareness but I think the details matter in this example.

    • #38
  9. EugeneKriegsmann Member
    EugeneKriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):
    Could you please give more detail here?

    Good question, Henry. I had two friends, one Japanese, the other Chinese. Even they stopped talking to each other briefly. The biggest problems, not particular surprising, was Blacks and their relationship to whites and Asians. The head counselor, a Black woman, stormed out of one meeting saying that she would no longer help white students. I don’t recall that we had any Chicano teachers or staff members at that time.

    There were a lot of set ups. The moderators would deliberately attempt to create conflicts by asking one  person about their relationship with another. The questions were designed to create conflict, and they succeeded .

    My building, Asa Mercer Junior High School (this was before the concept of Middle Schools became fashionable), was an experiment, the first to be tried. Later iterations of the task force were not as successful in creating dissension. Principals, forewarned by my principal interceded when necessary.

    One other point which I think is most important. The head of the task force was a white guy. Other members were Black, Asian, Native American, Chicano, and, if I remember correctly, a Pacific Islander. The white guy was the most active at spurring problems into existence. He had to prove how pure he was and how free from the taint of the White Collective.

    • #39
  10. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):
    The biggest problems, not particular surprising, was Blacks and their relationship to whites and Asians. The head counselor, a Black woman, stormed out of one meeting saying that she would no longer help white students. I don’t recall that we had any Chicano teachers or staff members at that time.

    When I was in college I noticed that the gap between blacks and whites was unusually large and I’ve noticed it ever since. Though that gap was rather difficult to put in words. As Allan Bloom put it in his Closing of the American mind.

    White and black students do not in general become real friends with one another. Here the gulf of difference has proved unbridgeable… White students feel uncomfortable about this and do not like to talk about it. This is not the way things are supposed to be. It does not fit their prevailing view that human beings are all pretty much alike, and that friendship is another aspect of equal opportunity. They pretend not to notice the segregated tables in dining halls where no white student would comfortably sit down.

    Thus, just at the moment when everyone else has become a “person,” blacks have become blacks. I am not speaking about doctrine, although there was much doctrine at the beginning, but about feeling.

    Bloom blamed this on the black separatism that followed the Civil Rights movement and the Affirmative Action programs instituted by colleges. Same old same old I guess.

     

     

    • #40
  11. EugeneKriegsmann Member
    EugeneKriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):
    Bloom blamed this on the black separatism that followed the Civil Rights movement and the Affirmative Action programs instituted by colleges. Same old same old I guess.

    Truth is, I know it exists. Have had Black friends in teaching. We worked closely together at work, ate lunch together, gossiped, all the stuff you might do with a white friend. But, at the end of the day he went his way and I went mine. Ultimately, I think that there are cultural differences that are almost impossible to overcome. Perhaps, the effects of slavery, segregation, and just the simple fact that so few Blacks live in close proximity to whites, close enough to begin to share a common culture. The gap is there, and, in the end, it may not be totally bridgeable in most cases. That is not to say that it is impossible. It happens, just not as often as we would like.

    • #41
  12. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):

    Perhaps, the effects of slavery, segregation, and just the simple fact that so few Blacks live in close proximity to whites, close enough to begin to share a common culture.

    That’s an interesting way to phrase it, when (going by the numbers) proportionally fewer Whites live in proximity to Blacks.

    I don’t believe that things were so great when Obama was elected (66% rate race relations: awesome!) because if they really were that good, they wouldn’t have been so fragile. (8 years later: 63% rate race relations: bad.)  People were kidding themselves – or at best, good race relations depended on a consensus that was not sincerely felt.

    This was not due to racism.

    All majorities function that way (and so do all minorities.  My hunch is that the 36% who thought race relations were bad 8 years ago were mostly minorities.)

    Majorities tend to assume that their view of the world (and themselves) is objective – but really all of our views are subjective (and subject to confirmation bias).

    When minorities pay lip service to the majority point of view, the majority thinks relations are great. (Who’s disagreeing?) When they don’t, majorities don’t like it one bit. (Who would?)

    The quickness with which things went South in the examples given – one day it was all great, then suddenly they were angry – tells me that everything being great depended on something so fragile that calling it into question made it untenable.

    • #42
  13. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Zafar (View Comment):
    (and so do all minorities. My hunch is that the 36% who thought race relations were bad 8 years ago were mostly minorities.)

    This line of argument is convincing if minorities now think race relations are awesome.  But if the people who were unhappy before are still unhappy, and have been joined by a large new cohort, then it is less so.

    • #43
  14. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    (and so do all minorities. My hunch is that the 36% who thought race relations were bad 8 years ago were mostly minorities.)

    This line of argument is convincing if minorities now think race relations are awesome.

    That does not follow.

    But if the people who were unhappy before are still unhappy, and have been joined by a large new cohort, then it is less so.

    Only if you assume that the new cohort now thinks that race relations are bad because they have come to agree with the first cohort’s reasons.

    I’m positing that the second cohort has come to think that race relations are bad because the first cohort no longer pretends to agree with them about stuff.

    (I overstate, but you get my point?)

    • #44
  15. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    (and so do all minorities. My hunch is that the 36% who thought race relations were bad 8 years ago were mostly minorities.)

    This line of argument is convincing if minorities now think race relations are awesome.

    That does not follow.

    But if the people who were unhappy before are still unhappy, and have been joined by a large new cohort, then it is less so.

    Only if you assume that the new cohort now thinks that race relations are bad because they have come to agree with the first cohort’s reasons.

    I’m positing that the second cohort has come to think that race relations are bad because the first cohort no longer pretends to agree with them about stuff.

    (I overstate, but you get my point?)

    I get your point, but I don’t agree.  The original cohort weren’t exactly silent before, and weren’t big on pretending.

    • #45
  16. MJBubba Member
    MJBubba
    @

    In the 70s, in college, I befriended a couple of black guys who lived down the hall from me.  When I saw them hanging out with a group of their friends, I walked over to greet them and introduce myself to their buddies.  They were all friendly.  As I walked away I heard one of the “brothers” starting to ridicule my friends for being friends with me.  It became clear that he was an enforcer in the group.  Sure enough, the next year he was an officer in the Black Students Association, and the following year he was the president, and also an agitator on the Student Council, and a writer of inflammatory racist opinion pieces for both the student newspaper and a local black newspaper.

    What happened under the Obama Administration is that these sorts of agitators, enforcers and community organizers came into leadership positions in the federal bureaucracies, and they were rewarded in all the big cities under Democrat control.  Their toxic influence has grown.

    • #46
  17. EugeneKriegsmann Member
    EugeneKriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    What Obama did in his tenure is to legitimize the worst complainers, to give them greater power to influence opinions. I don’t like talking about groups. I prefer talking about individuals. I think as individuals there were a lot of Black people who held, as Zafar says (if I may paraphrase), negative views about race relations. However, like most individuals, they chose not to express their views, but to try to see positive things. Under Obama the negatives were given more legitimacy, were elicited. The more negative people heard, the more they believed things were negative. It is a kind of infection. It has given rise to Black Lives Matter, and, through that, to the murder of police officers and the insane justification of those murders.

    To a large extent, race relations in this country will always be a matter of the glass is half empty or half full. I believe prior to Obama the latter view dominated, even though there was a sense of the former still present. His years have given the half empty side a much greater impetus which, given he was the first Black president elected in the United States, should have been the opposite. His demagoguery turned what started as a truly magnificent accomplishment into a very negative one.

    • #47
  18. Chris Campion Coolidge
    Chris Campion
    @ChrisCampion

    Hugh (View Comment):

    Eustace C. Scrubb (View Comment):
    @kozak

    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?

    Disastrous record on pop culture, a major focus of his administration.

    Well I used to think that the Obama Family Dog was a pretty good choice. But now I think Sunny wasn’t properly socialized which is a pretty clear indictment of the President’s record.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/01/13/white-house-mum-reports-obamas-dog-bit-guest/96561934/

    Was the guest a Cuban refugee?  Then it would make sense.

    • #48
  19. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):I think as individuals there were a lot of Black people who held, as Zafar says (if I may paraphrase), negative views about race relations. However, like most individuals, they chose not to express their views, but to try to see positive things.

    Humans have a powerful herd instinct to agree with what we perceive to be the consensus.

    Because when consensus breaks the herd dissolves – or at least by disagreeing we become separate from it, which feels less safe.

    But when the consensus basically ignores the opinions of 33% of the herd, I think it’s just a matter of time before either a new consensus is formed, which synthesises both points of view, or the herd splits.

    There don’t seem to be any other options.  And ignoring or stigmatising dissent at this point encourages the split. (If there were a smaller proportion of dissenters the enforcement [hey! @mjbubba!] might work to preserve the status quo, but 33% seems over critical mass, whatever that is.)

     

    • #49
  20. dittoheadadt Inactive
    dittoheadadt
    @dittoheadadt

    POSt-racial, indeed.

    • #50
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