Obama delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College today. Here’s some coverage of that.
Obama said that too many young black men make “bad choices.”
“Growing up, I made quite a few myself,” Obama said. “Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.”
But, the president implored, “We’ve got no time for excuses.”
“In today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil, many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did, all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven’t earned,” he said. “Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.”
“Moreover,” Obama continued, “you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured — and if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too.”
Obama told the graduates they needed to be role models for others in their communities and not just chase after high-paying jobs and fancy cars. If they get a law degree, he told the graduates, they shouldn’t only defend the powerful, but also the powerless. If they get an MBA and start a business, Obama said, they shouldn’t merely try to make money but also consider the broader purpose their business might serve.
“No one expects you to take a vow of poverty,” Obama said. “But I will say it betrays a poverty of ambition if all you think about is what goods you can buy instead of what good you can do.”
Discuss.
Oh, my. That section is dreadful.
Substitute “too many black men” for “too many girls” make bad choices and we’d be right back to the 1950s when pregnant girls were married off to the boy (that didn’t want to marry) or that didn’t want to be married or were shipped off to a facility for a forced adoption at birth by the finger-wagging priests/preachers/parents. Is it any wonder that women risks their lives to get a back-alley abortion?
why does he always give morality talks to black audiences but not to white ones?
And yet, all my friends on fb and fam on twitter are all talking about how on point his speech was.
Because we watched the entire speech and watched him link history to the Black men sitting there.
and, he didn’t say anything that our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, church elders haven’t said to us throughout our lives.
This. Ms. R has got this one.
Never a doubt. She always speaks the truth.
Seems Tim Wise agrees:
http://www.timwise.org/2013/05/bullying-pulpit-racism-barack-obama-and-the-selective-call-for-person
al-responsibility/
That take-down is brutal. I’d love to hear Booman’s, or anyone else’s opinion on that matter, of what Tim Wise’s said.
from the President’s speech:
Graduates, I am humbled to stand here with all of you as an honorary Morehouse Man. And as I do, I’m mindful of an old saying: “You can always tell a Morehouse Man, but you can’t tell him much.” That makes my task today a little more difficult, I suppose. But I think it also reflects the sense of pride that has always been a part of the Morehouse tradition.
Benjamin Mays, who served as the president of Morehouse for almost 30 years, understood that tradition perhaps better than anyone. He said, “It will not be sufficient for Morehouse College, for any college, for that matter, to produce clever graduates… but rather honest men, men who can be trusted in public and private life – men who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society and who are willing to accept responsibility for correcting [those] ills.”
It was that mission – not just to educate men, but to cultivate good men – that brought community leaders together just two years after the end of the Civil War. They assembled a list of 37 men, free blacks and freed slaves, who would make up the first prospective class of what later became Morehouse College. Most of those first students had a desire to become teachers and preachers – to better themselves so they could help others do the same.
………………………….
That’s the unique sense of purpose that has always infused this place – the conviction that this is a training ground not only for individual success, but for leadership that can change the world.
……………………..
So what I ask of you today is the same thing I ask of every graduating class I address: Use that power for something larger than yourself. Live up to President Mays’s challenge. Be “sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society.” And be “willing to accept responsibility for correcting [those] ills.”
I know that some of you came to Morehouse from communities where life was about keeping your head down and looking out for yourself. Maybe you feel like you escaped, and now you can take your degree and get that fancy job and the nice house and the nice car — and never look back. And don’t get me wrong — with all those student loans you’ve had to take out, I know you’ve got to earn some money. With doors open to you that your parents and grandparents could not even imagine, no one expects you to take a vow of poverty. But I will say it betrays a poverty of ambition if all you think about is what goods you can buy instead of what good you can do. (Applause.)
So, yes, go get that law degree. But if you do, ask yourself if the only option is to defend the rich and the powerful, or if you can also find some time to defend the powerless. Sure, go get your MBA, or start that business. We need black businesses out there. But ask yourselves what broader purpose your business might serve, in putting people to work, or transforming a neighborhood. The most successful CEOs I know didn’t start out intent just on making money — rather, they had a vision of how their product or service would change things, and the money followed.
………………….
I understand there’s a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: “Excuses are tools of the incompetent used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness.” Well, we’ve got no time for excuses. Not because the bitter legacy of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they have not. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; we know those are still out there. It’s just that in today’s hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil — many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did — all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything that you have not earned. (Applause.)
Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination. And moreover, you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured — and they overcame them. And if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too. (Applause.)
You now hail from a lineage and legacy of immeasurably strong men — men who bore tremendous burdens and still laid the stones for the path on which we now walk. You wear the mantle of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, and Ralph Bunche and Langston Hughes, and George Washington Carver and Ralph Abernathy and Thurgood Marshall, and, yes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These men were many things to many people. And they knew full well the role that racism played in their lives. But when it came to their own accomplishments and sense of purpose, they had no time for excuses
but, what do I know…I listened to the ENTIRE SPEECH.
Look, I like Tim Wise, but guess what, he’s speaking from an ivory tower here.
I don’t know about Tim, but I’ve heard this “speech” a million times given to me, given to my cousins, given by my uncles, given my my own damn mother and father.
And guess what I heard it a whole lot longer than I ever heard of Barack Obama.
So the people like me, like rikyrah, like all the members of my fam and friends from high school(I went to an all-Black magnet high school in NOLA and aside from being H.S, it was much like Morehouse and Spelman) who liked and enjoyed the speech and thought the speech was on point are what exactly??? Too stupid to realize that we are being condescended too, or maybe we are just blinded by our love for Obama his Blackness and all and the majority of my peeps giving kudos are Black too.
I would love to have Tim Wise talk to those people and those graduates down their who thought the speech was excellent, and who did not feel as if Obama was talking down to them. But I guess they are just not as smart as Tim Wise and the rest. Those poor pitful sheeples who don’t even realize how Obama is demeaning their values.
This is my point. How often does a person want to keep hearing what they already know? You say you’ve heard the same thing a million times already. Does anyone ever get tired of hearing it after about the 500 hundredth time? How about moving on to solve the problems. Solutions that work for the people, and not just Wall Street?
Actually no you don’t, you keep giving it. Why?
For some kids maybe this may be the one and only time they here a tale like it. This “talk” is what kept me off the streets I grew up in. It saved my cousin’s life, cause he mother never let him leave without giving him this speech.
I have young fam now who I still give this speech to. Some kids get this speech from parents and some from school, but the state of schools in public schools in Louisisna are such that they are probably not learning anything better than they are at home.
Also what pray tell should we tell this kids who have to live in these neighborhoods, “the world ain’t fair, but just wait until so and so comes along to solve the problem.” No you don’t many of these kids can’t wait for politicians to get their shit together, or for liberals on blogs or purity trolls to FINALLY get that level of purity they want from their favorite pols.
Nope, you tell ’em, the world aint’ fair, there are people trying to fix it, but until they do, you got to fight “them” in the world we live in now, not the world we wish to have someday.
I’m sorry, but you’re expecting a commencement address to be something new and to tell the graduates something they haven’t heard before? Do you even remember the speech at your graduation (or any of your graduations, if you have multiple ones)? The point if the commencement address is for the new graduates to be able to tell people in the future, “So and so spoke at my commencement” and to have them walk out of there with a vague sense of inspiration and accomplishment. As long as Obama didn’t actively offend anybody, I’d say he did all he needed to do.
Maybe you’ve seen TNC’s take:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/how-the-obama-administration-talks-to-black-amer
ica/276015/
I’m the first to admit that anyone is better off reading him.
ok, my other Tim Wise comment wasn’t fair. my response: why does he hear the speech as scolding? it’s inspirational as a commencement speech should be. A good commencement speech both acknowledges the tremendous amount of work the students have done, with the support of their families and friends, and points to the road ahead. Obama’s speech does that.
I liked both of your comments.
thanks
Shorter Tim Wise: although our president was giving a commencement address at a Historically Black College and University for men, the event really was all about White pundits
Wise captured my response:
But I cringe whenever he preaches to Black folks and he doesn’t do much better with young Americans in general as he sells something out of the 1950s, and it wasn’t all that true then either.
TNC also agrees
m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/how-the-obama-administration-talks-to-black-america/27601
5/
Working link: How the Obama Administration Talks to Black America
The First Family are more and more coming to look like a Democratic version of Clarence Thomas. I really am surprised that there are still some Democrats who call themselves progressive who are still defending him.
Thanks for the link. It didn’t copy right on my phone. Anyway, I defend the administration a lot. I don’t even feel it is necessarily my place to be involved in this particular issue tbh, not being black myself. My knee jerk reaction was that of both Wise and TNC, and even after watching discussion about it I still feel that way. But again, I don’t feel comfortable lecturing anyone one way or another. Just not my place.
“The First Family are more and more coming to look like a Democratic version of Clarence Thomas.”
Come, my brothers and sisters, and let us meditate on the insight contained in this wisdom.
Tim’s not having his best week ever.
Because if he talked morality to a white audience, discussion of his uppityness would become so deafening that the whole exercise would become counterproductive.
I think it is more the generational responsibility to give “the speech” to those who are coming after you. The President is telling them that he knows he is standing on the shoulders of generations of people who struggled. He is telling them that they are now inheriting the legacy AND the responsibility to carry on for the next generations.
It is a privilege to be able to deliver this particular message and it is an incredible privilege to hear this particular message from this President.
It seems to me like the people who think the President is being condescending are projecting their own assumption of the Morehouse graduates as being worthy of condescension. The President and the graduates know that they are the elites. There is zero condescension in the speech. The movement for full equality still has a long way to go. This is also the leader of the movement addressing the people who will be some of the most influential in terms of the future of this movement. If they fall into the trap of self interest ahead of the community they will fail previous generations, themselves, the next generations. Generational responsibility is heavy stuff and it is apparently going right over the heads of many people on this thread.
So if many of the listeners have heard “the speech” a million times–they have never heard it from the President who broke through the glass ceiling. It is an affirmation if you have heard it before. And if you haven’t heard “the speech”
Tim Wise is very good but he has only ever lived being a white man. He is not completely evolved by any means.
Has Bill Cosby been over for a sleep-over, and some pudding pop’s, lately?
Not that his points aren’t valid.
But like someone said earlier, that message about people in other countries starting-off with even less than our minorities, needs to go out to ALL of our younger people – and not just members of minority groups, who certainly best understand the disadvantages of being a member of such a group, in America.
I’m impressed with a lot of our young folks, like the ones in the Occupy Movement.
I think they “get it,” better than a lot of us “Boomers.”
Back then, this country, and the world, was a different place, and it was easier to live and earn a decent living – even without a college education.
We could protest whatever it was that we thought deserved correction, via protesting – from Civil Rights, to Vietnam, to Women’s Rights, to the Anti-nuke movement – and then go off and start lives, and careers, and families.
Now, at least 2 years of college is a prerequisite for almost any job that doesn’t involve fast-food.
Today’s young Americans have a much tougher row to hoe, than we did.
His comment about the hardships of previous generations was interesting. I assume he was referring to previous generations of black folks, given it was Morehouse. I’ve often thought that one thing that sustains Barack and Michelle through all the racism and insults directed at them for 5+ years is the knowledge that our elders had to endure far worse.
History can be very bracing. It sometimes seems like nothing ever changes until you really look at just how bad things used to be. Progress is real.
But one could make a good argument that we’re sliding backwards.
In some areas, yes. But progress tends to be two steps forward, one step back. It’s not linear. That’s why history helps. It allows you to see how things have changed over the course of generations. And that’s the scale of time you have to use to see whether true progress is being made.
good point
this is something that many Whites refuse to acknowledge, and it underpins the support of the First Family from the Black Community
because we have lived here, in America, under the Previous 43 White Presidents, and understand that the fundamental baseline of respect that was given to the 43 White Presidents, but seemed to be erased when it comes to this President.
Support of this president from the Black Community is entirely understandable. But it is also true that 90% of black voters went for Al Gore in 2000.
You could also look at it like this. The racists that refuse to respect the president are the same racists that have always been with us. In fact they comprise a significantly smaller percentage of the population than they used to.
But this racist contingent now faces a crisis they never once had to confront during the entire time of those 43 white presidents. It is the mother of all scandals: a black man sitting in the White House. So of course they are pulling out all the stops, because to them, being president of the United States is no excuse for being black.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama was elected then releected by a healthy popular majority of American voters, six out of every ten of whom were white. That figure is from 2012, after four years of nonstop, mind-bending anti-Obama propaganda and an election campaign in which considerably more than a billion dollars was spent to defeat Pres. Obama and the Democratic Party.
The GOP is now more dominated by that racism than ever, because essentially neither they nor the racists have anything or anybody else left to turn to.
“Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.”
That’s some hard-nosed reality there in the context of global job marketplace. Employers really really don’t give a horse’s patoot about anyone’s upbringing. They want to know if you’re going to show up to work or not.
I think a lot of what he was telling these sterling young men is what he would be telling his own son if he had one.
I tell my boys these things.
More platitudes of praise for those who “get ahead”. More subtle implication that those who drive a bus or become nursing aides or just do what they love to do or are good at are making “bad choices” because they didn’t do “the right thing” and be “competitive” enough. More dog whistling that those who have weren’t given anything they haven’t earned.
And, of course, more of young black men making the bad choices. Or to sum it all up, that poor folks, especially of the dark kind, are letting the country down because they didn’t try hard enough to become commodities for the American economic system to fuel its dying spasms with. I wish he’d throw away the antique glasses and get some that can resolve reality.
it’s a commencement address at a top men’s college
why would he be talking about driving a bus or being a nurses aide at a COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT.
Particularly at what is considered one of the top 3 HBCU’s in the country.
Seriously?
He’s going to talk about driving a bus in front of Morehouse Men?
These aren’t community college folks.
This is the Black Elite.generations of Black Elite in that audience. …Period.
the entire plain of thinking where someone thinks that the President of the United States
can go to a Morehouse College graduation..
and talk about being a ‘bus driver’ or ‘ nurses aide’
and believe that those folks won’t find THAT condescending?
for real?
from the President’s speech:
don’t just do for self…do for community….do for family.
Bizarre comments on this thread. Guys, do you not get that it’s a commencement address at a Historically Black College?
I’m really confused by some of the comments as well.
I’m just ignoring them.
So that means the President should deny reality? This:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-16/caterpillars-doug-oberhelman-manufacturings-mouthpie
ce
kind of reality?
Pure sociopath.
For a guy who says workers are expendable and has no trouble finding workers, and who also claims to know something about economics, I find this statement laughable. “I can’t find workers with the necessary skills!”
Simple economics, idiot: you’re not offering a high enough wage. I thought you loved the free market?
I also like how he touts moving back to Georgia for jobs. The amount of corporate tax breaks that it took to attract them there might as well be legalized bribery. Yeah, some success story.
I had an interview with them. Compared to most engineering firms in the same area, and especially my job now, the pay was shit.
not sure what you are getting at with this link – how is it pertinent to the Commencement address?
I am fecking sick to death of morality sermons from the mouths of the functionally amoral. “Real politnik” has made even well-intentioned persons (I’m assuming the best, here.) good cop/bad cop a population that is increasingly furious.
My point is not that he is saying the wrong things, just that he is saying them only at HBCs and other predominantly Black settings. He needs to be talking these things to white folks, too.
And if he did that, the next Civil War might erupt.
Like the Teahadists need that as an excuse? Have you paid attention to this past week?
Even though I was engaging in hyperbole when I was talking about a new Civil War, I suppose I might as well answer this: yes, I’ve been paying attention. And the Tea Party does not equal all white Americans or even the majority of them. But if a black man starts lecturing white people and how to live worthy lives, you can be sure shitstorms will erupt, and it will not just be limited to the rump party.
then he should quit lecturing black people and tell them what he tells white people.
what did he say at his Barnard Commencement address last year?
I think that some folks commenting don’t have a fucking clue about Morehouse being a HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY.
When President Obama tells them that they have to work twice as hard….
is there a Black parent/grandparent that hasn’t said it before to them?
Did you actually LISTEN to the speech?
From beginning to end?
The most important part of his speech was, from Black Man to another – imploring them to be the BEST MEN they can be in their private lives.
you want to make your Black parent laugh?
tell them that ‘ life isn’t fair’.
My mother, born and raised in Jim Crow Mississippi, always gave a side eye if I even tried to do ‘ oh woe is me’.
Lord, I’ve learned to never read the comments on blog post like this at certain blogs. It’s funny, but at least on the Conserv blogs, their blatant is appreciated and I know what I’m getting myself into when/if I read em.
I’ve got to learn to avoid the comment sections on this topic from my usual blogroll too.
Anyway, I was just watching the and talking to my friends on FB and twitter about this and they all thought the speech was great.
It’s funny what regular, average people of color think about this speech compared to some of the people who frequent the blogs.
Anyway. I liked the speech, but I guess I’m just a stupid O-bot who doesn’t realize when she’s being condescended to, even though in the projects where I was born and raised this is exactly the speech that we’ve heard since I remember hearing speeches.
Safer at TOD today.
from the President’s speech:
And I will tell you, Class of 2013, whatever success I have achieved, whatever positions of leadership I have held have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs, and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy — the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most, people who didn’t have the opportunities that I had — because there but for the grace of God, go I — I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me.
………………………..
but, what do I know…I only saw the entire speech.
Obama is the one who is continuing to put black people into prison for no good reason, with his vigorous continuation of the racist war on drugs, the third phase of the American white oppression of black people, after slavery and Jim Crow.
Also: The Expansion of Black American Misery under Barack Obama’s Watch.
But, hey. Empathy.
I remember when it was Sarah Palin fans who felt the need to cast about for something negative to say about Obama, no matter how irrelevant, to make sure that nothing positive about him could be allowed to stand.
When did you decide that was your job, Alexander?
I’m stunned to discover that exactly the same commenters who blasted Michelle Obama for saying that students should strive to be business leaders, and complained that she should have encouraged them to pursue public service, are now slamming her husband for delivering the speech they pretended to want Michelle to give.
And by “stunned,” I mean “should have seen it coming a mile away.”
Nice piece.