Late Night: Obama’s Condescending Speech to the CBC

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.

From Politico:

“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.”

According to MSNBC though,

…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.