Late Night: Obama’s Condescending Speech to the CBC
Posted: September 26, 2011 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: African American experience, Barack Obama, Civil Rights Movement, condescension, Congressional Black Caucus 33 Comments
I know this was discussed on the morning post, but I thought I’d write a little more about Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on Saturday. If it hadn’t been for the ending, it would have been a good speech. The CBC members probably would have been OK with it, even though Obama isn’t really “attacking the cycle of poverty” and making it easier for kids to go to college, and all the other claims he made. He managed to make it sound like he’s done a lot for the economy when he’s really just tinkered with things around the edges. So why did Obama have to patronize his black audience like this?
So I don’t know about you, CBC, but the future rewards those who press on. (Applause.) With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. (Applause.) I’m going to press on for equality. (Applause.) I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. (Applause.) I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on. (Applause.)
I expect all of you to march with me and press on. (Applause.) Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. (Applause.) Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC. (Applause.)
WTF?! How tone deaf is that? I think it’s incredibly insulting. In the previous paragraphs, Obama was talking about how hard people in the audience had fought for advancement for African Americans:
Throughout our history, change has often come slowly. Progress often takes time. We take a step forward, sometimes we take two steps back. Sometimes we get two steps forward and one step back. But it’s never a straight line. It’s never easy. And I never promised easy. Easy has never been promised to us. But we’ve had faith. We have had faith. We’ve had that good kind of crazy that says, you can’t stop marching. (Applause.)
Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop. (Applause.) Even when somebody fires you for speaking out, you can’t stop. (Applause.) Even when it looks like there’s no way, you find a way — you can’t stop. (Applause.) Through the mud and the muck and the driving rain, we don’t stop. Because we know the rightness of our cause — widening the circle of opportunity, standing up for everybody’s opportunities, increasing each other’s prosperity. We know our cause is just. It’s a righteous cause.
So in the face of troopers and teargas, folks stood unafraid. Led somebody like John Lewis to wake up after getting beaten within an inch of his life on Sunday — he wakes up on Monday: We’re going to go march. (Applause.)
Dr. King once said: “Before we reach the majestic shores of the Promised Land, there is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead. We must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resistance. But with patient and firm determination we will press on.” (Applause.)
But then Obama follows this with the “bedroom slippers” and “complaining” and “crying” accusations. This kind of thing gives me the sense that Obama is clueless when it comes to the black experience in America. It honestly makes me wonder if he unconsciously looks down on ordinary African Americans.
Of course Obama didn’t have the same experiences as many of the people he was talking to on Saturday. He attended only private schools and didn’t experience the kind of discrimination that most of them did. But he has read about the the Civil Rights era and he often speaks about it. Presumably, he has talked directly to some poor African Americans while campaigning. Why would he expect these people to like the tone of those final paragraphs in his speech?
Well there have been some negative reactions. As she has a couple of times recently, Maxine Waters took the lead.
“I don’t know who he was talking to, because we’re certainly not complaining,” said Waters, who has been critical of Obama in the past. “We are working. We support him and we are protecting that base because we want people to be enthusiastic about him when that election rolls around.” ….
Waters said she found some of the language Obama used “not appropriate” and said it “surprised me a little bit.”
“I found that language a bit curious because the president spoke to the Hispanic Caucus and certainly they are pushing him on immigration and despite the fact that he’s appointed [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, he has an office for excellence in Hispanic education right in the White House, they’re still pushing him and he certainly didn’t tell them to stop complaining,” she said.
“And he never would say that to the gay and lesbian community who really pushed him on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Or even in a speech to AIPAC, he would never say to the Jewish community ‘stop complaining’ about Israel.”
…other members of the CBC, including its chairman, Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D), have had different reactions to the speech, which they defended as a rallying call to African American voters, whose large turnout in 2008 helped fuel Obama’s election, and whose 2012 turnout could be pivotal to the president’s reelection effort.
“The Congressional Black Caucus supports the president; we intend to be as strongly pushing his reelection as anybody in the country,” Cleaver said Monday morning on MSNBC.
“I was like most of the crowd there — incredibly enthusiastic by the fighting spirit the president was showing. I think the president is right-on-message,” Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards (D), another CBC member, said in a separate appearance on MSNBC. “I think it’s incredibly clear, the difference, like night and day, between Republicans, who want to give special breaks to the wealthiest in this country, and the president of the United States. And it’s important that we reelect him because we have to really get this country back…the president was on that message, and we’re going to be on that message, too, for 2012.”
Frankly, I’m also offended by the way the President takes on the tone of a preacher when he speaks to black audiences. But since I’m not black, I can’t speak to whether the audiences find it patronizing. To me it seems condescending.
There have been other times when I thought Obama was incredibly tone deaf when talking to African Americans; for example, the time he lectured Black fathers who don’t support their children.
Saying that too many black fathers are “missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Obama said these men “have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”
Speaking at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, with his wife and two daughters in the audience, Obama said that more police on the street and job training programs are essential for a safe and sound society, “But we also need families to raise our children.”
The phenomenon of absentee fathers and single mothers certainly isn’t limited to African American families. Plenty of white men are deadbeat dads and worse.
I guess I just have a problem with stereotyping in general, and I’m particularly turned off by people in power who speak condescendingly to the rest of us. Again, I can’t speak for the CBC members, but I have to wonder if a lot of them didn’t feel like Maxine Waters did and feel a little bit resentful.
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Strange article in NY Daily News:
That sounds like a very thinly disguised backhanded slap from Rangel. He and Maxine have nothing to lose anymore–good for them for speaking frankly.
He seems to think a lot of people hang around in their jammies and slippers these days. The professional left hangs around in its jammies and complains too. Weird turn of words.
Did MLK say things like that to motivate people? If he did, I missed them.
Good, a very good point indeed.
When he said that thing about the slippers, I thought of the scene in Blues Brothers, where Aretha Franklin is singing in her soul food restaurant, and she is wearing pink slippers.
I felt it was a condescending generalization, a dig and a jab…but like you say BB. I cannot speak for the CBC, but I wonder if there are some members and obviously some of their constituents feeling a bit slighted by his closing remarks.
Righteous post, BostonBoomer!
“Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop. (Applause.) Even when somebody fires you for speaking out, you can’t stop. (Applause.) Even when it looks like there’s no way, you find a way — you can’t stop. (Applause.) Through the mud and the muck and the driving rain, we don’t stop. Because we know the rightness of our cause — widening the circle of opportunity, standing up for everybody’s opportunities, increasing each other’s prosperity. We know our cause is just. It’s a righteous cause. ”
I’ll bet at least half of the CBC participated, were alive druing, or had parents who actually experienced, the turbulent brutality of the civil rights era of the 50s and 60s. Many of us remember that era first hand. Obama hasn’t a clue.
Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name, followed by Obama, like a child, mimicking Dr. King by raising his tone, tenor and, cadence in imitation, as if he was actually touched by The Spirit, as Dr. King was. Is there anything / anyone Obama wouldn’t co-opt to achieve and in service to his personal agrandizment?
Did that part about “you can’t stop marching” remind you of Hillary’s oft repeated “Harriet Tubman quote,” (which apparently is apocrophal, but so what)?
It’s like he’s copying her homework again.
Oh man, you are good!!
Yes, she sure is! Awesome point BB.
Didn’t I read earlier last week where Hillary was talking about slippers/and needing to put on boots? Something about a group of women in another country, do you recall her statement?
Obama does have a way to stealing her and other’s information……………and thanx BB, because I can’t stand Obama when he wears Rev. Wright tongue.
“Is there anything / anyone Obama wouldn’t co-opt to achieve and in service to his personal aggrandizement?’
The answer is clearly: No.
Obama and his team will pull out any card, co-opt any idea or speech, obliterate any obstacle in the pursuit of the win. We’ve seen this tap dance before–cheat, lie, accuse, whatever. The amazing thing in my mind is the group stood up and cheered for a man who has done literally nothing for the AA community. Unemployment is in the ‘official’ range of 16+%. For young African American men [in the 20-25 age range], unemployment is a staggering 50%.
And yet, the caucus cheers in a circle the wagon moment.
As long as the Administration can deflect and distract, beat the drum with pep rally enthusiasm, pour on the preacher-man nonsense and remind everyone how crazy the Republicans are [and they are truly crazy] then they’ll prevent an honest examination of Obama’s record of results.
Which are dismal, grim and absolutely fraudulant.
The man is simply another corporate frontman, claiming to be a Democrat.
And yet, the caucus cheers and stamps its feet.
Maxine Walters and Rangel get gold stars for at least questioning the faux-excitement and tone of the ‘speech.’
BB, this is amazing. I dropped by this evening because I was dissatisfied with my remarks this a.m. on “racism.” Regardless of what was going on here, I intended to say more on the topic – and, lo and behold, it’s like you’ve read my mind.
White guilt? I have none. Besides which, backing a candidate because of his skin color is about the dumbest thing I can imagine. However, the blogger boyz wanted to prove they’re not racists. They’re loaded with white guilt. It is so transparent it makes me ill. (And they got so played.) But this is what I marched for? To be called a racist because I saw through this incompetent, arrogant faux intellectual from the start? Because I’m smarter, street-wise, than kos and booman and yet-to-reach-puberty Ezra and all the others?
And, by “from the start,” I mean this. When Obama gave that keynote address way back when, I was deeply offended. There he was, lecturing the black male, when he had not one whit of knowledge of what life is like in the less-fortunate parts of town, of not being able to find a job, of not being able to get an education. How dare he? Seriously, how dare he? I knew then that this man was a huckster, a phony rainmaker, and arrogant to boot, acting as if he were a black preacher. (Didn’t he disown his black preacher? Goddam hypocrite.)
And he’s still doing it, now to the CBC. I can barely read what you wrote I’m so angry. He’s half white, for heaven sake, and he was raised white. And he did not one thing for the blacks in his district when he was a state senator. He hangs with the black glitterati and that’s it. Otherwise, it’s the white boys club from Wall Street. He never marched. He never fought in the trenches of the criminal injustice system. And yet he dares to lecture others? Me?
Now, this Perry female from this morning’s post, she wants to be in with the in crowd. She is an Obama apologist, pure and simple. There’s another one like her, ABG, over on TalkLeft. Because he is black, Obama can do no wrong. (This is very similar to treating women as princesses, or putting them on a pedestal. It’s discrimination. When you treat people differently, based on gender or skin color, it’s discrimination. Even if you’re pretending to treat them better.) But he’s only half black. So, is that the only pure part? Then I read all this stuff about how Obama treats women (only corroborating what I already knew), and I cannot understand how any female could ever say one complimentary thing about this pig. Only women can change bedpans? That’s beneath men? Bad for their egos? OMeffingG. So Perry has some serious issues of her own.
This racism BS is such a diversion from the train wreck that is the Obama administration. The CBC better speak up, more than in whispers amongst themselves. He is hurting their constituencies the worst of all. Stop protecting this loser because of his skin color. Just stop it. Get him the hell out of there.
Great rant, mjames!
Damn BB, ya beat me to it, I was going to post that same exact thing…but I wanted to read the rant again…cause it was so good.
Yes! Great comment MJames.
I’m glad that you made the point that 0bowma is half white — in Hawaii where he grew up any kid who is hapa any race that gave him the tanned skin had it made. He was hapa haole and he could pass as any mixed race kid — mixed race are the majority in Hawaii.
0bowma didn’t grow up in the AA culture so that culture just isn’t a deep rooted part of his personality. He has been able to pick up some of the AA culture — so he has to fake it — and using the Sunday preacher persona is how he relates.
This is why 0bowma was acceptable to his financial backers — he wasn’t really black like the Rev. Jessie Jackson is black.
Also shortly before MLK was assassinated — the Black Panthers and other Black groups turned their back on MLK — he wasn’t radical enough. The church that 0bowma went to in Chicago was from the AA groups who had split with King. So it is always interesting to me that 0bowma uses the King legacy — but he really had no concept who MLK really was. It was Hillary Clinton who knew MLK and walked and talked with him.
Next up Mrs 0 calling everyone racists.
Insulting people is not going change very many votes.
I hear ya, this Perry woman is strangling on here own saliva.
mjames,
Don’t faint, look:
Melissa Harris-Perry and President Barack Obama both have white mothers.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. I was judging her on the idiocy and illogic of her words, not the color of her skin.
Ooops
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Harris-Perry#Life_and_career
This vid is from Upppity’s.
This is what real men sound like:
Ooops, sorry. Thought the link only would show up. Feel free to delete.
That’s OK. When you post a youtube link the video shows up. We do it all the time.
Uh- wow.
I don’t think you guys need me- you’ve got quite a hot talk going! But someone above mentioned that they aren’t black, but were offended. Well, I’m black, and I’m EXTREMELY offended by the President’s speech to the CBC. It’s really so odd for him to make the ‘bedroom slippers’ comment too, because you have to really *reach * to find an insult that low. It’s another way for him to refer to blacks as * ghetto*. Ya know? Why would he choose a metaphor like that? And he’s often condescending to black audiences. He’s used a similar tone in the past while addressing the national NAACP and the National Association of Black Journalists. Someone earlier called him tone deaf, and I think that’s very apt. And no, he really doesn’t know what it’s like to grow up Black in this country. If he did, he wouldn’t be so rude and insulting each time he addresses a black audience. Talking to your audience that way is just bad manners. Whatever happened to being cordial or appropriate? Does he just save these qualities for white audiences? Can he just talk to blacks any ol’ way he wants? I think he believes he can. And that is very worrisome…
Yes, we do need you Tracy! Thank you for commenting…
Tracy,
Thanks for confirming my intuitions. I really thought that bedroom slippers remark was insulting, and I think Waters and Rangel did too. Last night Sheila Jackson Lee was on Tavis Smiley defending Obama, but it was hard to buy her excuses.
The “bedroom slippers” remark seems like a euphemism for “lazy” to me. If I were black , I would be extremely insulted by this stereotype. It reminds me of the Popeye’s chicken comment Obama made a few years ago. He might as well have said “You people are too lazy to cook a decent meal for your families”. He obviously doesn’t understand the lives of ordinary people – black or white or whatever. We are totally exhausted and just trying to keep our heads above water.
How about all those fairytale slippers – there Obama goes fantasizing again – the red slipper, the gold slipper, wait maybe it cinderella’s slipper, or the glass slipper.
You know and I know he refers to women, men use the term house shoes, not slippers.
Somebody take that damn glass slipper and break it for the 18 million females.
BB – you hit it out of the ball park! Commenters – keeping it real! How refreshing – one gets so exhausted from the WORMING. That Video was very welcome this am – thanks for posting it.There is intelligence out there – it’s just been stifled.
POTUS testy in BET interview
good read BB thanks 🙂
I’m not African-American, and I find this part of the speech condescending. I asked my African-American friends, and they said that they have to agree with Maxine Waters on this. The Black community is suffering from high unemployment. He should be more empathetic and respectful of the struggles that people go through. Whoever wrote the speech, and for Obama to approve it, shows a total lack of EQ.
Thanks for commenting Marileen, we appreciate your thoughts…welcome to Sky Dancing.