Obama Versus America
By Thomas Sowell
In his recent trip to India,
President Obama repeated a long-standing pattern of his -- denigrating the
United States to foreign audiences. He said that he had been discriminated
against because of his skin color in America, a country in which there is, even
now, "terrible poverty."
Make no mistake about it, there is
no society of human beings in which there are no rotten people. But for a
President of the United States to be smearing America in a foreign country, whose
track record is far worse, is both irresponsible and immature.
Years after the last lynching of
blacks took place in the Jim Crow South, India's own government was still
publishing annual statistics on atrocities against the untouchables, including
fatal atrocities. The June 2003 issue of "National Geographic"
magazine had a chilling article on the continuing atrocities against
untouchables in India in the 21st century.
Nothing that happened to Barack
Obama when he was attending a posh private school in Hawaii, or elite academic
institutions on the mainland, was in the same league with the appalling
treatment of untouchables in India. And what Obama called "terrible
poverty" in America would be called prosperity in India.
The history of the human race has
not always been a pretty picture, regardless of what part of the world you look
at, and regardless of whatever color of the rainbow the people have been.
If you want to spend your life
nursing grievances, you will never run out of grievances to nurse, regardless
of what color your skin is. If some people cannot be rotten to you because of
your race, they will find some other reason to be rotten to you.
The question is whether you want to
deal with such episodes at the time when they occur or whether you want to
nurse your grievances for years, and look for opportunities for
"payback" against other people for what somebody else did. Much that
has been said and done by both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder
suggests that they are in payback mode.
Both have repeatedly jumped into
local law enforcement issues, far from Washington, and turned them into racial
issues, long before the facts came out. These two men -- neither of whom grew
up in a ghetto -- have been quick to play the role of defenders of the ghetto,
even when that meant defending the kinds of hoodlums who can make life a living
hell for decent people in black ghettos.
Far from benefitting ghetto blacks,
the vision presented by the Obama administration, and the policies growing out
of that vision, have a track record of counterproductive results on both sides
of the Atlantic -- that is, among low-income whites in England as well as
low-income blacks in the United States.
In both countries, children from
low-income immigrant families do far better in schools than the native-born,
low-income children. Moreover, low-income immigrant groups rise out of poverty
far more readily than low-income natives.
The January 31st issue of the
distinguished British magazine "The Economist" reports that the
children of African refugees from Somalia do far better in school than
low-income British children in general. "Somali immigrants," it
reports, "insist that their children turn up for extra lessons at
weekends." These are "well-ordered children" and their parents
understand that education "is their ticket out of poverty."
Contrast that with the Obama
administration's threatening schools with federal action if they do not reduce
their disciplining of black males for misbehavior.
Despite whatever political benefit
or personal satisfaction that may give Barack Obama and Eric Holder, reducing
the sanctions against misbehavior in school virtually guarantees that classroom
disorder will make the teaching of other black students far less effective, if
not impossible.
For black children whose best ticket
out of poverty is education, that is a lifelong tragedy, even if it is a
political bonanza to politicians who claim to be their friends and defenders.
The biggest advantage that the
children of low-income immigrants have over the children of native-born,
low-income families is that low-income immigrants have not been saturated for
generations with the rhetoric of victimhood and hopelessness, spread by people
like Obama, Holder and their counterparts overseas.
Poster’s comments:
1) I have many advantages when it comes to race
and racial relations.
2) As a
Marine I know there are many enemies who don’t want blacks on our side. Said
another way, there are plenty of good and smart black people, and some of them
join the Marines, thank goodness.
3) Now are
there a lot of black people who lack in most every kind of the civilized skills; of
course there are.
4) That
Barack Obama frittered away most of the wonderful educational opportunities he
had, well that is his problem. I did not “fritter” them away, he did.
5) Is Obama
morally bankrupt, probably.
6) Is Obama
kind of dumb, most likely
7) Is Obama a
good speaker, almost certainly.
8) Does Obama
believe what he says, who knows?
9) Are fellow
politicians approving his nominations to high office, it sure seems so. Just
look at the track record
10) Will the
consequences of this poor leadership affect my life, most likely.
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