No Role Model
JANUARY 20, 2010.
By J. KENNETH BLACKWELL
"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears..." So began Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction at the Inauguration last year of President Barack Obama. Black Americans' hearts leaped at those majestic words. They come from the anthem of our people, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." That anthem speaks to our hopes and our long centuries of struggle in this favored land.
While I fully appreciate what Barack Obama's election means to my fellow Americans of African descent, I dissent from his policies. I do not embrace the liberal political philosophy that animates this administration—whether it's about a government takeover of health care or rising taxes, whether it's about about following the liberal leadership of the National Education Association or seeking a treaty on climate change.
How strange. Barack and Michelle Obama and their beautiful daughters are a model for the black community, for the entire nation. But the Obama administration is presently working to undo welfare reform—the most important bipartisan achievement of the past 20 years. That reform stressed marriage and work over single parenthood and dependency.
A Needle Unmoved
I find the president's leadership on the issue of race equally distressing, full of wonderful rhetoric but woefully lacking when it comes to the actual performance.
I judge all performances of politicians and all policies they adopt on race relations by that wonderful standard Dr. King put forward on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial: Let all be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
How has President Obama measured up to that high ideal? Unfortunately, in the past year, he has not moved the needle in the positive direction. It was asking too much of him to bring the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. But it was not asking too much that he should practice what he so eloquently preached.
Take the case of the Cambridge cop who collared Prof. Henry Louis Gates in his own home. On the surface, it could surely seem like a notorious case—which black Americans are only too familiar with—of cops mistreating a black man because he's a black man. And President Obama, in a news conference, jumped onto the Cambridge police with both feet.
It soon turned out he had put those feet in his mouth. The cop in question, James Crowley, was no Bull Connor figure. He had for years been the man to teach the police of Cambridge how to behave in racially sensitive cases. This was Cambridge, Mass., in 2009, but the President acted as if it was Cambridge, Md., in 1967.
Worse for the president, Cambridge's finest—including black, Hispanic, and white officers—stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sgt. Crowley. The president managed to salvage his dignity with a beer summit at the White House, in which he brought Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley together for a friendly chat. Then, embarrassingly, he roped Vice President Joe Biden into the photo op. What was he doing there? He had no part in the dust-up. This was perhaps the only verbal kerfuffle in the administration's first year that Joe Biden had managed to stay out of. But there he was, as if the president needed another white guy in the picture.
Absolution to Reid
That was early. Then, at year's end, the president gave Sen. Harry Reid a pass for his offensive racial comments. Harry Reid's comments that Mr. Obama would make a fine nominee because he was "light-skinned" and "does not speak with a Negro dialect" were patently offensive.
By giving absolution to Harry Reid, the president makes people think that there are two rules at work: One for people we don't like, whose political views we don't share. They should be examined under a microscope, and any hint of racialism should be magnified and amplified. But the other rule is for people we like or need politically.
Americans yearn for Dr. King's ideal. We all want our children to be judged, as he did, for their true worth. We want a color-blind society, one marked by liberty and justice for all. President Obama, unfortunately, is leading a party that has left too much of its proud history in the past and now seeks to impute racism to any who disagree on principle. We had hoped for better. It's not too late for President Obama to turn a new leaf. It would be a great New Year's resolution for his second year.
— Mr. Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council in Washington.
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