Words.
"President Obama's speech Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the NAACP's founding was widely reported as a "tough love" message directed at black America. "I've noticed that when I talk about personal responsibility in the African American community, that gets highlighted," Obama said in an interview Friday. "But then the whole other half of the speech, where I talked about government's responsibility . . .that somehow doesn't make news."
Fair enough, but he misses the point. The real news wasn't in the content but the visuals: the nation's leading black civil rights organization being addressed by the nation's first black president. Obama could have read nursery rhymes and the event still would have been noteworthy.
In his six months in office, Obama has taken few occasions to confront the issue of race head-on. This moment was inescapable. But his words about the deficits that still plague black America were delivered to a room full of NAACP convention delegates who are, by and large, highly educated and comfortably affluent -- men and women who already have high expectations for their children and know how to hold their elected officials accountable. Missing was the too-large segment of the black community that has been left behind.
...there was a time when no one had to ask what the NAACP was supposed to do -- when black Americans, living with the common constraints of overt discrimination, had an obvious and urgent common purpose.
Said Obama: "I do think it is important for the African American community, in its diversity, to stay true to one core aspect of the African American experience, which is we know what it's like to be on the outside.
"If we ever lose that, then I think we're in trouble. Then I think we've lost our way." "
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