How The Obama Administration Talks to Black America

[CACtain Planet]

To be honest I don't know much about Allen West or Tim Scott or the fact that this is a "conservative narrative". But I will say that the messenger does matter. If you go out and tell young black kids to "try harder", then go back to your day job and fight to preserve and create more barriers to our success. I can't respect your message.

You seem to confuse rhetoric with policy. Politicians SAY a lot of shyt. It's what they DO that matters.

Sounds like you described President Obama

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Sounds like you described President Obama

Nope. People who don't like Obama try to downplay his achievements and his fights for black people/middle class. But he has done more for us than any other president i can think of. Is he perfect? No. But he has done a lot and continues to fight for causes that I see as important.

 

[CACtain Planet]

Nope. People who don't like Obama try to downplay his achievements and his fights for black people/middle class. But he has done more for us than any other president i can think of. Is he perfect? No. But he has done a lot and continues to fight for causes that I see as important.

Speak in specifics, not in generalities... I see he's done alot for latinos, gays, the insurance lobby, and corporations in general but I dont see where he's done more than any other Democratic President as it pertains to blacks by tossing a few bones here and there... Please enlighten me

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Speak in specifics, not in generalities... I see he's done alot for latinos, gays, the insurance lobby, and corporations in general but I dont see where he's done more than any other Democratic President as it pertains to blacks by tossing a few bones here and there... Please enlighten me

Enlighten yourself.

Who do you think Obamacare and things like the auto bailouts helped?

He has addressed drug sentencing disparities(although there is plenty more to be done)

School loan reform, he's bolstered loans for black businesses, he's put plenty of money in programs for inner city kids( although more is needed).

And the list goes on. I fully understand that he is a politician just like the rest of them, but you can't deny the things he has done, and the things that other presidents have flat out ignored.

 

[Type Username Here]

To be honest I don't know much about Allen West or Tim Scott or the fact that this is a "conservative narrative". But I will say that the messenger does matter. If you go out and tell young black kids to "try harder", then go back to your day job and fight to preserve and create more barriers to our success. I can't respect your message.

You seem to confuse rhetoric with policy. Politicians SAY a lot of shyt. It's what they DO that matters.

Nope. People who don't like Obama try to downplay his achievements and his fights for black people/middle class. But he has done more for us than any other president i can think of. Is he perfect? No. But he has done a lot and continues to fight for causes that I see as important.

When I get home I'm dispel these non-truths you have just uttered with facts and figures.

My point is that the conservative narrative doesn't match the policies, but like I said, I'll prove it.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

When I get home I'm dispel these non-truths you have just uttered with facts and figures.

My point is that the conservative narrative doesn't match the policies, but like I said, I'll prove it.

 

[Type Username Here]

 

[Mowgli]

What a white boy he is. He should have kept it all the way funky and told them theyll be working twice as hard to get half the accolades.

 

[CACtain Planet]

Enlighten yourself.

Who do you think Obamacare and things like the auto bailouts helped?

He has addressed drug sentencing disparities(although there is plenty more to be done)

School loan reform, he's bolstered loans for black businesses, he's put plenty of money in programs for inner city kids( although more is needed).

And the list goes on. I fully understand that he is a politician just like the rest of them, but you can't deny the things he has done, and the things that other presidents have flat out ignored.

Obamacare, School Loan reform, and Autobailouts helping black folk?

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Obamacare, School Loan reform, and Autobailouts helping black folk?

I know your gonna say they helped big money. They did. But that's how a capitalist society works. You support capitalism right?

In a capitalist society if it doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense, but you can't deny that it's black people who overwhelmingly need support in jobs, healthcare, and educational opportunity.

I live in ohio I'd say at least 75% of the older black men/women I know have ties to the auto industry. They either retired from it or still work there. Without those bailouts these people would have been fukked. No jobs, no pension, nothing.

The same can be said for healthcare and student loans. These are things that black people really need. So if a big CEO made some money in the process I'm fine with it, cause he would have made his money anyway, at least this way my people got some support instead of not getting it at all.

 

[bright black]

i see what he gettn at but black men dont rely on excuses...we not that stupid...we know people aint accepting any excuses from us...black men that do use excuses just testin' them out,..they dont expect it to work...

 

[Guess Who]

I suggest that all y'all complaining to actually watch the speech. The quotes in the article are taken completely out of context of the actual speech. It was a good speech.

 

[The Real]

No, he's not right and neither are you. This is just another example of people reading to deep except as a means to vent their frustrations.

On the contrary- I think you're missing the larger picture here by both accepting some of the framing assumptions and also decontextualizing his statement. Furthermore, I don't buy any general argument about "reading too deeply" into a political speech- these speeches are carefully crafted by expert speechwriters who choose words very carefully in order to convey very specific messages to different demographics. Their entire job rests on precision, detail, and hairsplitting.

Like you said, this message is "played out." That's really all you have going for you in this discussion. You're tired of hearing it. You want him to "go deeper" and talk about race in a deeper manner. But that has nothing to do with your original post.

There are several points at work here. Let me recoup them:

1. This speech is ultimately the same in content as every major speech Obama has given to and about Black people. I don't think that requires citations to prove, but I'd be happy to get some if need be.

2. Only Black people constantly receive this kind of messaging, from Obama AND from white politicians. This is because the Black voting bloc was and still is uniquely toxic for politicians.

3. The messaging itself involves the promotion of counterproductive (to the Black cause) assertions- that Black people shouldn't "make excuses," and that addressing systemic race issues simply isn't a priority or, even worse, impossible. Of course, the assumptions upon which these points rest are that Black people do make excuses, downplaying legitimate criticisms about systemic racism, and that Black people expect some kind of unearned privilege, as this speech itself makes clear with its constant use of those specific terms.

I can support 2 and 3 with a comparison to Hillary Clinton's last big speeches to and about women, from the recent Women in the World summit. Let's look at the tone and substance of this speech as encompassed in some key quotes:

"We had to make the case to the whole world that creating opportunities for women and girls advances security and prosperity for everyone. So we relied on the empirical research that shows that when women participate in the economy, everyone benefits."

"But fighting to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t a nice thing to-do. It isn’t some luxury that we get to when we have time on our hands to spend. This is a core imperative for every human being in every society."

"And yes, we now have American women at high levels of business, academia, and government—you name it. But, as we’ve seen in recent months, we’re still asking age-old questions about how to make women’s way in male-dominated fields, how to balance the demands of work and family. The Economist magazine recently published what it called a “glass-ceiling index” ranking countries based on factors like opportunities for women in the workplace and equal pay. The United States was not even in the top 10. Worse, recent studies have found that, on average, women live shorter lives in America than in any other major industrialized country."

"But the fact is that for too many American women, opportunity and the dream of upward mobility—the American Dream— remains elusive."

"Because if America is going to lead we expect ourselves to lead, we need to empower women here at home to participate fully in our economy and our society, we need to make equal pay a reality, we need to extending family and medical leave benefits to more workers and make them paid, we need to encourage more women and girls to pursue careers in math and science."

Notice the stark difference between this and Obama's speech- It actually lists real problems facing women in the US (let's restrict it to America, for fairness' and context's sake,) centralizes those issues instead of glossing them (whereas Obama's speech does the opposite, making the modern problems secondary to the progress made,) and, instead of telling women to stop making excuses and work harder because "no one cares," we see a push towards convincing all people that investing in women is a good thing, and towards actual policy that would effect the systemic imbalances by empowering women. Finally, this push towards correcting inequality is presented as a moral duty AND a necessary element for the success of the US. Even in Obama's most progressive speech (the one on HBCUs, with that whole initiative,) we never got this kind of fire, and that speech was maybe the only one that got close, whereas Hillary and others give speeches like this about women all the time.

Now, you might counter that this was given at a summit specifically on women's empowerment, and was in front of an international audience, so the tone of the speech was affected by the global inequalities that women face, which in many other countries is much harsher than the US and requires that kind of rhetoric. I don't think that invalidates the parts of the speech that address America, especially since Obama's speech has a global outlook as well, but let's look at a domestic example.

Here's Obama talking about women's rights, just a few weeks ago: Obama Planned Parenthood Speech: Abortion Foes Want Return To 1950s

When was the last time he spoke about Black issues this way? The push against abortion and the "war on women" don't represent a set of issues that have no analogue on the Black community- on the contrary, there are deep-seated, active pushes against Black progress at this very moment- I don't really think I need to list them yet again, but the point is that we never get this kind of rhetoric from him on Black issues.

I could get into recent speeches on immigration, too, but this is already getting long, so I'll save it, for now.

The difference between what Obama said and what conservatives say is clear. They would say what he said and then everything surrounding it would imply racism and "pick yourself up by your own boot straps."

Translation: I know that the entire legacy of slavery and segregation isn't over. But you're now competing on a global scale and no one cares. No one is going to do anything for you to atone for this past mistakes. You will be judged on merit alone. Companies want the most productive worker, end of story.

You'll have to elaborate, because I see no such difference. Conservatives might have thrown a few more racist codewords into the mix, but substantively, this speech would have made Reagan proud- if Obama going on about taking responsibility for broken families, saying that Black folks should "stop making excuses" and that, as you put it, "no one cares" and "no one is going to anything for you to atone for past mistakes" isn't "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" rhetoric, then what is?

It may sound to you like sound, "realistic" advice, but combined with Obama's relative inaction on the issues that would actually help Black people consolidate themselves as a workforce, it sounds to me more like a tacit endorsement of the status quo, and an admission that he's not planning to take on those issues that most directly affect Black people. "There's real inequality, but we're not going to do anything about it" is not productive messaging or policy, for obvious reasons.

Paying lip service to systemic race issues by tagging them as "the legacy of slavery and segregation," the connotation of which clearly makes them a relic of the past, as if gerrymandering, redlining, rampant deregulation, and the erosion of social services, all of which are post-segregation developments, don't constitute an active set of contemporary issues that shape racial inequality, is something Conservatives do all the time as well.

Now, that's not entirely true because obviously people are racially biased against you many times in the hiring process. shyt, to keep it thorough, in law school we were straight up told by advisers to act "less black" in our interviews .

That's true, but again, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. The problems I'm discussing encompass more than the systemic issue of hiring bias.

 

[Type Username Here]

On the contrary- I think you're missing the larger picture here by both accepting some of the framing assumptions and also decontextualizing his statement. Furthermore, I don't buy any general argument about "reading too deeply" into a political speech- these speeches are carefully crafted by expert speechwriters who choose words very carefully in order to convey very specific messages to different demographics. Their entire job rests on precision, detail, and hairsplitting.



There are several points at work here. Let me recoup them:

1. This speech is ultimately the same in content as every major speech Obama has given to and about Black people. I don't think that requires citations to prove, but I'd be happy to get some if need be.

2. Only Black people constantly receive this kind of messaging, from Obama AND from white politicians. This is because the Black voting bloc was and still is uniquely toxic for politicians.

3. The messaging itself involves the promotion of counterproductive (to the Black cause) assertions- that Black people shouldn't "make excuses," and that addressing systemic race issues simply isn't a priority or, even worse, impossible. Of course, the assumptions upon which these points rest are that Black people do make excuses, downplaying legitimate criticisms about systemic racism, and that Black people expect some kind of unearned privilege, as this speech itself makes clear with its constant use of those specific terms.

I can prove 2 and 3 with a comparison to Hillary Clinton's last big speeches to and about women, from the recent Women in the World summit. Let's look at the tone and substance of this speech as encompassed in some key quotes:

"We had to make the case to the whole world that creating opportunities for women and girls advances security and prosperity for everyone. So we relied on the empirical research that shows that when women participate in the economy, everyone benefits."

"But fighting to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t a nice thing to-do. It isn’t some luxury that we get to when we have time on our hands to spend. This is a core imperative for every human being in every society."

"And yes, we now have American women at high levels of business, academia, and government—you name it. But, as we’ve seen in recent months, we’re still asking age-old questions about how to make women’s way in male-dominated fields, how to balance the demands of work and family. The Economist magazine recently published what it called a “glass-ceiling index” ranking countries based on factors like opportunities for women in the workplace and equal pay. The United States was not even in the top 10. Worse, recent studies have found that, on average, women live shorter lives in America than in any other major industrialized country."

"But the fact is that for too many American women, opportunity and the dream of upward mobility—the American Dream— remains elusive."

"Because if America is going to lead we expect ourselves to lead, we need to empower women here at home to participate fully in our economy and our society, we need to make equal pay a reality, we need to extending family and medical leave benefits to more workers and make them paid, we need to encourage more women and girls to pursue careers in math and science."

Notice the stark difference between this and Obama's speech- It actually lists real problems facing women in the US (let's restrict it to America, for fairness' and context's sake,) centralizes those issues instead of glossing them, and, instead of telling women to stop making excuses and work harder because "no one cares," we see a push towards convincing all people that investing in women is a good thing, and towards actual policy that would effect the systemic imbalances by empowering women. Finally, this push towards correcting inequality is presented as a moral duty AND a necessary element for the success of the US. Even in Obama's most progressive speech (the one on HBCUs, with that whole initiative,) we never got this kind of fire, and that speech was maybe the only one that got close, whereas Hillary and others give speeches like this about women all the time.

Now, you might counter that this was given at a summit specifically on women's empowerment, and was in front of an international audience, so the tone of the speech was affected by the global inequalities that women face, which in many other countries is much harsher than the US and requires that kind of rhetoric. I don't think that invalidates the parts of the speech that address America, especially since Obama's speech has a global outlook as well, but let's look at a domestic example.

Here's Obama talking about women's rights, just a few weeks ago: Obama Planned Parenthood Speech: Abortion Foes Want Return To 1950s

When was the last time he spoke about Black issues this way? The push against abortion and the "war on women" don't represent a set of issues that have no analogue on the Black community- on the contrary, there are deep-seated, active pushes against Black progress at this very moment- I don't really think I need to list them yet again, but the point is that we never get this kind of rhetoric from him on Black issues.

I could get into recent speeches on immigration, too, but this is already getting long, so I'll save it, for now.





You'll have to elaborate, because I see no such difference. Conservatives might have thrown a few more racist codewords into the mix, but substantively, this speech would have made Reagan proud- if Obama saying that people "stop making excuses" and that, as you put it, "no one cares" and "no one is going to anything for you to atone for past mistakes" isn't "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" rhetoric, then what is?

It may sound to you like sound, "realistic" advice, but combined with Obama's relative inaction on the issues that would actually help Black people consolidate themselves as a workforce, it sounds to me more like a tacit endorsement of the status quo, and an admission that he's not planning to take on those issues that most directly affect Black people.

Paying lip service to systemic race issues by tagging them as "the legacy of slavery and segregation," the connotation of which clearly makes them a relic of the past, as if gerrymandering, redlining, rampant deregulation, and the erosion of social services, all of which are post-segregation developments, don't constitute an active set of contemporary issues that shape racial inequality, is something Conservatives do all the time as well.



That's true, but again, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. The problems I'm discussing encompass more than the systemic issue of hiring bias.

Damn, you didn't have to do that to him.

 

[vaudevillevillain]

i find that statement highly offensive