Ok, so I'm going to try and condense your argument as much as possible without distorting it.
The point is, the people who this message was directed at didn't take it that way and they are smart, and successful and determined people. To take away what you were initially asserting requires the usage of a certain type of heuristic that skews your perception.
I'll deal with this one first. Honestly, I don't find it compelling. Yes, they were all intelligent college grads, but they're also in the middle of the situation. It's quite easy for one's perception of these things to be colored by the situation at hand- in this case, an emotional graduation ceremony with a speaker of incredible celebrity status and historical importance. Just as you call my view biased, I see no reason to assume that the majority of the students sitting there weren't themselves looking through a very particular set of lenses at it. So let's leave that to the side, and try and focus on comparing the actual statements, so we don't have to try and prove one bias over another, which is pretty much impossible to establish.
As TWISM pointed out, other groups and more diverse groups, like that Michigan graduating class get general platitudes but black people, and in particular black men have always and will always get a more focused message from him. It is careful to the extent that he has to play the political game and general enough to be non-divisive, but specific enough to nail the point home.
I agree- he will always speak with a certain specificity to Black people. But what I find more interesting is that you seem to be conceding that even a speech in this particular forum is not just a specific speech- he is playing the political game. As with any Black-oriented speech, the assumed audience is as much white as Black, and the purpose is as much about the Black demographic as a whole- and indeed, about white America as a whole, as much as it is about the particular situation and subset of the Black community to whom it is given, and it will certainly be given that kind of scrutiny by white Conservatives.
So while I agree that the speech, is primarily about the graduates, I don't think there isn't room to criticize it more generally, too, since it's not just about that.
It is, and I think I already said that it was. Just like how every speech he gives to college kids at predominantly white schools is the same. All these speeches are more or less the same to varying degrees. I fail to see what is so poignant about that assertion.
Well, the assertion is that the tone and content of his speeches to Black folks in general are pretty much the same no matter the context, and they aren't productive. White audiences actually get more specificity and variability in messaging than Black folks do.
What you fail to realize in all your examples is what groups they are being given to. Political organizations, human rights groups and public policy organizations. This is not State of Black America, the NAACP, or anything of the sort. If he gives those speeches there after being reelected right now, then I’m with you... For this group of young black men, he gave them the “succeed in spite of the odds” speech and that rubs you the wrong way because you want him to delve DEEP into issues. Yet, he hasn’t done that at graduations at women's colleges either.
Well, he already gave patronizing speeches with the whole "stop complaining and work hard" message at Black political forums in the past- I see no reason to assume that will change. I also think you're giving him too much of a pass with the "after being reelected" comment- even back in his first term, there was no reason for him to say many of those things. As Coates said in that article, “perhaps they cannot practically receive targeted policy. But surely they have earned something more than targeted scorn.” There's a difference between tact, or avoiding some issues, and the kind of aggressive push to distance oneself from and chastise Black America.
Now, as for the context of my examples- it seems like you're conceding to some extent that Obama needs to address the issues, just in another context, so presumably, you accept that outside of the college speech context, there's a disparity between Obama's messaging to Black folks and Hillary's to women, or even Obama's to women, immigrants, etc. That being said, I think your point about the different contexts is fair, so let's just jump straight into the Barnard speech.
Now, you're right that the Barnard speech and the Morehouse speech are similar in form and content- they both mention, at some point, that there are still problems for both demographics, they both note that many people from those institutions have "overcome" those problems in the past, that the present generation might be poised for success because things are allegedly improving, and tell the graduates to do the same, and to be mentors and role models to the next generation. Yet even then, there are some pretty clear differences. I could just quote all my own points about the difference between Hillary's women speech and this one, with some slight modifications, because they all apply here, too.
1. The Barnard speech actually lists real problems facing women in the US. Whereas the Obama speech refers only once to a general "legacy of slavery and segregation," which, as I said earlier, is a common way to keep the present problems seem like fading residue from the past, and goes no further than that, the Barnard speech actually lists specific, modern, active problems, with specific statistics, whether it's that "insurance companies aren’t allowed to drop your coverage when you need it most or charge women differently from men," or that women "only account for 3 percent of the CEOs at Fortune 500 companies," or that "we’re actually refighting long-settled battles over women’s rights is because women occupy fewer than one in five seats in Congress." Forget even the prospect of Black folks getting a term like "war on women," even though sociologically, there is certainly enough evidence, if we accept a war on women, to accept a war on Black people- at least Obama could acknowledge a specific, active present of systemic issues, even though it's a college speech. Even when he starts to go down that road, bringing up Black people having to work "twice as hard" as other people to get by, he immediately downplays, negates and subsumes it with a with "President Mays put it even better: He said, “Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead, and no man yet to be born can do it any better," as if the latter statement about individual mentality has anything to do with
needing to work harder for the same results.
2. There isn't a single instance in this speech of Obama telling women to "stop making excuses," that "nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination," that your problems "pale in comparison to the previous generation" or anything of a remotely similar tone. That's a pretty serious difference between the two. He expressed the urgent need to get women educated, into the job market, and into positions of power, and that they had to earn it all by working hard, but he never even approached the assertion that some of them might be making excuses, or wrongly blaming sexism for some of their problems. There's only one implication to be drawn from that difference, and we both know what it is. Indeed, his tone was urgent, but completely encouraging, and littered with examples of modern women who didn't "indulge in self-pity." You might say that as a man, he couldn't go there, but that leads me to the next issue.
3. He did use himself as an example more than once in the Barnard speech- in fact, he talked about the specifics of his own life in this speech more than he did at Morehouse, (not so) strangely. Surely you notice something peculiar about him spending more time relating himself to women than to Black people? In the Morehouse speech, he even makes sure to pull out the old "my job, as President, is to advocate for policies that generate more opportunity for everybody"- you don't see any similar, cautionary, universalist statements in the Barnard speech.
Again, my point is not that Obama shouldn't tell Black people to work hard, or that the world isn't going to give out passes for racist histories, etc. It's about going above and beyond to treat Black people like a toxic demographic, worthy more of stern, or even scornful patronization than of the kinds of identification, support or frank acknowledgement of real problems expressed for other groups. The Morehouse speech isn't itself the problem, or a bigger problem among the other speeches, but it is a symptom of the very same, tired tendencies expressed by Obama in every speech to and about Black folks.
. People are growing tired of his incessant condescension and scolding amid conspicuous non-action 
and aren't afraid to call him out on this after this.
