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 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.
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.
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.
...it aint cool that barack keep giving black audiences these trite and bombastic pep talks but he not saying anything out of character--
...
reading both you and @
Obama's not Mexican or gay. And "I'm not just the President of big business" translate to the Main Street-Wall Street memes we've seen the GOP use frequently.
