These two video clips are a perfect example of what I’ve been saying I believe Barack Obama will bring to the black vote in 2008 should he be the Democratic candidate. It’s an authenticity that black conservatives simply cannot achieve, and why when they come knocking on the door to sell, black voters – and voters at large, do not buy.
Obama talks about the psychology of “acting white” in the black community:
Obama talks about blaming the “other” instead of looking internally and figuring out that half the battle to achievement is internal. The words on absentee fathers rings true for many black Americans (including myself).
Obama is addressing the complete reversal of priorities in the black community from the Civil Rights era to the here and now.
Blacks in the Civil Rights era fought and died for the opportunity for blacks to receive education. In fact, they EMPHASIZED education and mental and spiritual enrichment.
I don’t know when it became shameful to be an educated Afro-American, but that attitude that being a mature, level-headed black male isn’t being a “real nigga” and “acting white” is the biggest shame I feel for my people. ESPECIALLY here in the South.
If you’re an educated black with a job that speaks proper english and doesn’t dress like a rap-video reject, you’re ostracized. Obama is speaking out against that mentality.
Thanks for posting this Oliver. Now I need to find and watch the whole speech. This guy Obama may just be the real thing. I was concerned that some in the black community were rejecting him recently. I couldn’t understand why they would latch on to Hillary. Maybe they just hadn’t heard Obama speak enough. I think he’s the kind of candidate that most people, (other than the extreme-racist authoritarians) can feel good about and be inspired by.
thanks for posting this… from john in seattle
working here to make sure that this great man is President it is going to happen I feel it …….is curious that I do not support Sen.Obama because he a person of mixed race or African American and.. I work on his campign locally I…. face two things……. many who work with me to support him have different motivations and even different views on some or many issues WE must practice what he preaches in our relations with each other and focus on what many differing persons see in him a rare combination of integrety intellegence life experience from which he has taken mostly the good …GOD BLESS him
John (white and 65 years old)
Wow. My jaw dropped. I am an ardent supporter of Wesley Clark, but Obama literally took the gas out of ever candidates chances with that speech. It was authentic(something every candidate so far whether Republican or Democrat has FAILED to do.)
Please. ANY Democratic candidate gets the black vote + or minus 90%. Thats a done deal. Hillary gets it. Edwards gets it, etc.
Obama has to show some maturity in foreign policy. Right now his position on any one foreign policy issue seems to depend on the last group he talked to.
Hey Dugger, I’ve seen the GOP talking points too. Bring your “A” game here or shut up.
To be fair to other candidates, if, say, Edwards had come to this event and said the same thing, with “We” and “Us” changed to “You” (or unchanged, giving the impression that Edwards thought he was part of the black experience) he’d no doubt not have been received so rapturously.
I don’t think that it’s a double standard, but it is an asymmetry.
That said, when reading Obama’s first book, I liked what he said about the appeal of the Nation of Islam to black Americans – namely, that it was a way to criticize black culture by claiming that all the bad things about black culture were due to evil whites. It’s one of the things I really liked about his book – that he sees the human needs that drive people to believe ideas that are wrong or counterproductive or sugar-coated. He sees that tendency in himself, in his mother, in his grandparents. He doesn’t seem to feel contempt for those needs, but rather a kind of affection for the human capacity to survive.
I watched this twice on cspan today. The man has a way of spellbinding his audience and really feeling and understanding what he is saying.
I liked that he addressed the need for us to take up where the elders to fought battles left off. Fight for decent education and jobs and to combat an anti intellectualism (which is common in the white world as well).
The sad thing is that a little while after seeing this I saw a story where a 17 year old uncle was giving his nephews pot. This is the combat that the Joshua generation has to fight. A culture of apathy, selfishness and disregard for the young.
The most remarkable thing about Obama’s speeches is how quiet the crowd gets–it’s really pretty easy to get people to scream and cheer–it’s like pavlove’s dog–a few certain words and a particular audience will cheer. But he makes people actually listen and that’s much more difficult to achieve.
And he never bloviates or throws out gratuitous lines.. he is serious and serene and respects the intelligence of his audience.
I truly believe that he is unique, special and destined for greatness.
O-Dub,
Obama said his father got here due to Kennedy. Um. He got here two years prior to Kennedy’s inauguration.
“Hey Dugger, I’ve seen the GOP talking points too. Bring your “A” game here or shut up.”
A. I have never seen anybody’s talking points.
B. Your childish taunting doesn’t warrant even my ‘C’ game
C. How typical of the ‘progressives’, when confronted with debate, to just tell someone to shut up (global warming, anyone?). Many of your idiot posters do it, but now you too.
And one would have thought that Congressional majority would have lessened the paranoia.
Actually his father arrived right before Kennedy was sworn in. And he did not literally mean the kennedy’s brought his father in. Just that his father arrived, just as Kennedy became president, so kennedy gets credit for the program that brought his father in. Same way my mum won the Green card lottery (sure you didn’t even know this existed did ya) which allowed us to move here from West Africa in 1993 (during Clinton’s first term). Not sure who implemented the program, but Bill Clinton gets all the credit in my household….thats how it goes….
Wally, you can take the “Obama apologist” hat off now.
Dugger,
Calling something “B.S.” doesn’t make it so, if progressives wallow so much in name calling and not debating at least explain yourself.
Ian, et. al
Could you guys at least address the speech itself? I believe(and I am sure I will be corrected if wrong) the point of the post was how Obama connects with voters because he is authentic and addresses the black community in a different but compelling way. In contrast, black conservatives are not being “authentic”.(And PLEASE do not blame the media). It would be silly to not realize that African-Americans do have a conservative streak on certian issues but Lynn Swann is about as authentic USA t-shirt made in Tiawan.
Could you guys at least address the speech itself?
It’s content vs. character. Regressives got nuthin’.
“Address the speech itself?”
OK, he says his father came here under a Kennedy administration program — in 1959. And he says his parents were inspired by the Selma marches of 1965 — but were married in 1961, had Obama, Jr. in 1963, and separated in 1965 (later divorcing).
It was a pretty good speech, and he really did connect with the crowd. Too bad he had to fudge the hell out of the truth (much like Hillary being named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the climber of Mt. Everest, despite being born six years before he achieved the summit).
But it’s “truthy,” so I guess that makes it all right.
J.
Agreed Jay Tea. A couple of inconvenient lies in an otherwise outstanding speech.
Very well chosen points Oliver. Same thing Bill Cosby has been saying for the last couple of years, but I don’t think Obama will get near the pushback that Cos did.
Maybe with “Joshua” Obama saying it, it will finally get some real traction in “the community.”
And as someone whose father actually came to America from Nigeria when Lyndon Johnson was President, I’ll still give Eisenhower credit for the program. (As I’ll still give him credit for sending the troops to Little Rock…)
By the way Oliver- it’s also authenticity that Hillary Clinton simply cannot achieve.
I’m just sayin’.
OK WW,
Heres what I see as the point. OW is saying Obama will bring in the black vote. Technically true, but my point is that Democrats already own the black vote – around 90%. Its theirs/yours now – pre Obama. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. So maybe Obama brings a little better turnout of those voters already owned by the Democrats.
And I don’t know what “authentic” means when applied to race. Itself, it sounds a little nasty – racist like. Can a black who is conservative be ‘authentic”? Does it mean blacks who vote Democratic? Are liberal? Don’t like whites? I don’t care about skin color. An idiot or a genius can be any color. I’ll take Thomas Sowell over Ward Churchill every day of the week.
The mark of a leader is the ability to get people to choose the difficult path.
If Mr. Obama’s message gets results, he’s a leader.
Quaker- I pray that on this message that Oliver highlights, that Obama is a leader.
After doing some digging, I’ve found an answer or two about this disputed timeline. And if anyone can clarify further, go right ahead.
While it is a historical given that Kennedy didn’t take office until January of 1961 (the same year that Barack, Jr. was born), it is entirely possible that the Kennedy clan was instrumental in his father’s stateside arrival some years earlier.
In 1958, Tom Mboya, politician/activist/unionist from Kenya, launched a movement called Education Overseas, leading to the first educational airlift to the United States.*
Add to this a paragraph from a 1961 TIME magazine article:
Until now, African students have mostly got to the U.S. on their own and with enough disorganization to damage their studies. Kenya’s passion, for example, led to the pell-mell “African Airlift” originated by Politician Tom Mboya that got so much publicity in the U.S. presidential campaign when the Kennedy Foundation beat the Eisenhower State Department to the punch with $100,000 air fare.*
So it is possible that early in the Kennedy campaign, Foundation money funded an airlift that brought Barack, Sr. stateside.
Is this a perfect explanation? No. But it makes the reference seem less like a bold-faced fabrication and more like a broad interpretation.
That is what happened. No interpretation. Obama Sr was a part of Tom Mboya’s “African Airlift.” The Kennedy’s paid for it.
Here’s what Obama said, ” So the Kennedy’s decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.”
There’s no interpretation there.
From Time Aug 29, 1960
“Visiting the U.S. in July, Mboya wanted to meet both candidates. Nixon was busy in Chicago at the G.O.P. convention; Mboya sought out Jack Kennedy at his Hyannisport retreat. Concerned about the wavering U.S. Negro vote,
Kennedy offered to contribute part of the airlift expenses from his family’s Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation (named after the brother killed in World War II) and to look around for other private funds to help the grounded students. Sargent Shriver, Kennedy’s brother-in-law and managing director of the family foundation, found no uncommitted funds in other charitable foundations, in the end recommended that the Kennedy Foundation put up the entire $100,000, and provide unstipulated help for students during their stay in the U.S.”
From Sept 11, 2006 WorldPress.org
“Why has he been so successful? His deceased Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama, had benefited from the famous airlift of Kenyans in the 1960’s, and won a scholarship to further his education in Hawaii — spearheaded by a former Kenyan cabinet minister, the late Tom Mboya.”
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2488.cfm
From Nov 1, 2004 The East African
“Like Obama Senior, I too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 [when hundreds of Kenyan students were given scholarships to American universities]. I first met Obama Senior in Tom Mboya’s Nairobi office [Mboya was then the secretary general of the Kenya Federation of Labour]. Obama and I met up again on returning to Nairobi and remained drinking buddies for many years.”
http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/01112004/Features/PA2-11.html
Excellent piece, Oliver, and kudos for putting in your personal feelings — which I think matter a lot, and which help make your point.
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