While delivering the commencement speech on Saturday at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama said something that rubbed many young white college students the wrong way.
“Be confident in your heritage,” he said, according to a transcript provided by The Weekly Standard.
He added, “Be confident in your blackness.”
Two things immediately come to mind.
First, why are there no historically white colleges? Perhaps because such institutions might be construed as racist? Second, how do you suppose liberals would have reacted had former President George W. Bush said something similar to white students during his tenure?
Look, Obama probably said what he said with good intentions, i.e., he wanted to encourage students at Howard University to be comfortable in their own skin. But he could have said it in a much more eloquent and less divisive way.
To make matters worse, the president also used his speech to preach the virtues of victimhood.
“We can’t walk by a homeless man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours allows that state of affairs to occur,” he said. “We can’t just lock up a low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely out of childhood, felt he had no other options.”
But what about personal responsibility? Obama spoke as if the circumstances faced by those who are homeless or deal drugs are of everyone else’s making, as if they themselves did not make the decisions to eschew studying and working hard to get high, party hardy or whatever.
To be fair, the usually divisive president did say something nice about empathizing with others.
“We must expand our moral imaginations to understand and empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling — the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person, and yes, the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages,” he said.
(via: Conservative Tribune)
