by Mike Ely
As everyone probably knows, Jesse Jackson was overheard saying that Obama was “talking down to Black people” over Black fatherhood and religious faith, and adding that this made Jesse Jackson want to cut his nuts off.
The mainstream media jumped all over Jackson — saying he was outdated, eclipsed, wrong and spiteful.
Fox’s African American commentator Juan Williams said Jackson was expressing the politics of the past — blaming all the problems among Black people on discrimination and the government. this was typical, and gets at the political heart of this matter.
Obama was praised for being willing to blame black people for their own problems, promote “personal responsibility.” Jesse jackson, it was said, was expressing a view of the “older civil rights generation” that focused on “Black victimhood” — while Obama represented (finally) a fundamental and permanent break with that.
The press was filled with charts that showed how Black men abandon their children — leaving the home and reneging on child support payments. And that same press was devoid of any discussion of the economic changes that have swept over the lower tier of the working class (to which so many of black men have been confined). Young Black men are concentrated in a section of the economy that has been desperate to find and hold stabile work, and where wages (when they have work) have been less and less able to support the job holder (let alone a family). Reading the discussions of all this in the press, you would just think Obama had finally spoken an obvious truth, and Jackson was defending an outdated sense of self-pity.
In this discussion, let’s set aside the corrupt and pathetic figure of Jesse Jackson himself and focus on what this reveals about Obama:
This whole episode brings to the surface part of what Obama means when he talks about moving beyond “politics of the past.” The Republican party has championed a militant “anti-60s” politics for over 40 years. But Obama (in his own way, and with his own appeal to a new generation) has been calling for burying the “divisive politics” that emerged from the 1960s. Understanding what that actually means…. and would mean as a dominant political climate… is one of the key things to uncover about the Obama campaign.
The elevation of Obama has gone hand in glove with pounding down any expression of Black anger over oppression. This media frenzy raking Jesse jackson is just the latest episode — coming after Obama’s repudiation of Reverend Wright, the official silencing of Rev. Pfleger in Chicago and even Obama’s recent rebuke of Bernie Mac.
Anyone who talks about the oppression of black people at the hands of white people gets targeted — as simply wrong, outdated and irresponsible. Targeted by a tag team of the media and the Obama campaign.
Among Black people, the public discussion of black oppression is portrayed as an obstacle to the next great stage of black advancement — the elevation of a black president.
To dig into this some more, here is a little noticed essay written by the respected African American theorist and commentator, Michael Eric Dyson. Dyson was writing about the same remarks Jesse Jackson was protesting — in Obama’s “Father’s Day” speech. And unlike Jesse Jackson’s soundbite actually digs into these issues in some depth.
* * * * * *
By Michael Eric Dyson
(Time magazine, June 19, 2008)
On father’s day, when Barack Obama assailed absent fathers as a critical source of suffering for black communities, he sought two political advantages for the price of one. He embraced a thorny tradition of social thought that says black families are largely responsible for their own troubles. And he was seen in a black church not railing at racism but rebuking his own race. Obama’s words may have been spoken to black folk, but they were also aimed at those whites still on the fence about whom to send to the White House.
The notion that black families are mired in self-imposed trauma stems from Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report, in which Moynihan argued that the black family was a “tangle of pathology” whose destruction by slavery had produced female-headed households, absent fathers and high illegitimacy. Interestingly, Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the few Negro leaders who refused to condemn the future New York Senator’s report. “The shattering blows on the Negro family have made it fragile, deprived and often psychopathic,” King said at the time. “Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people to pull themselves out of poverty and backwardness.” But King also insisted that Moynihan’s report offered both “dangers and opportunities.” The danger was that “problems will be attributed to innate Negro weaknesses and used to justify neglect and rationalize oppression.” The opportunity was the chance that the report would galvanize support and resources for the black family.
Four decades later, King’s misgivings have been realized more than his hopes. Stereotypes about negligent black fathers persist, promoted most vehemently by Bill Cosby, who has embarked on a national crusade against the alleged misbehavior of poor black families. And yet such stereotypes may have little basis in reality. Research by Boston College social psychologist Rebekah Levine Coley found that black fathers not living at home are more likely to keep in contact with their children than fathers of any other ethnic or racial group. Coley offers a more complex view of the causes of absenteeism among black fathers: the failure to live up to expectations to provide for their families–owing to stunted economic and educational opportunities–drives poor black men into despair and away from their families. Such findings undermine the arguments about black fathers’ inherent pathology or moral lassitude. These men need jobs, not jabs.
Obama’s Father’s Day speech did tilt gently in that direction: he noted the need for more cops and more money for teachers, for more after-school programs and fewer guns. But he laid most of the blame on black families and fathers, in blunt–and occasionally belittling–terms. He said many of them acted “like boys instead of men.” He also said, “Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
The trouble is that the problems Obama identified won’t be solved solely through tough talk in black churches. We’ve heard these themes before. In the 1970s, Jesse Jackson said, “You are not a man because you can make a baby. You’re only a man if you can raise a baby, protect a baby and provide for a baby.” But like King before him, Jackson understood that one must beat back the barriers that stand in the way of individual initiative. Obama brilliantly cited a Chris Rock routine about black men expecting praise for things they were supposed to do, like stay out of jail and take care of their children. But Rock’s humor is so effective because he is just as hard on whites as on blacks. That’s a part of the routine Obama has not yet adopted.
Obama’s rebuff of black fathers and his firm insistence on personal responsibility were calculated to win over socially conservative whites who were turned off by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s tirades against persistent racism. But in his desire to appeal to such voters, Obama may have missed the balance that King maintained. Personal responsibility is a crucial, but only partial, answer to what ails black families. Huge unemployment, racist mortgage practices, weakened child-care support, stunted training programs for blue-collar workers who’ve been made obsolete by technology, and the gutting of early-childhood learning programs are all forces that must be combated. If we rightly expect more black fathers to stick around to raise their children, we’ve got to give them a greater opportunity to stay home.
by Mike Ely
celticfire said
What I find most disconcerting is the attribution that Obama is somehow post-racial as if such a thing existed in contemporary American politics. I think some on the progressive left are correctly beginning to see that Obama is the new spokesperson for Western imperialism, and though perhaps a welcomed change from the Bush style protofascism, Obama is not qualitative change. It is a difficult point for me to argue here where Obama received his biggest crowd of support when showed up in town, and many white liberals prove just how un-racist they are by showing off their Obama paraphernalia. Jackson, for all his flaws only struck a sensitive chord for the white-supremacist power structure when he pointed out what Barack has already done before being president – that is selling out Black people, and I imagine Jackson is thinking like I am: what will he do in office? A frightening prospect for me. Every time there is Kendra James in Portland, an Amadou Diallo in NYC, or another Mumia in Philly, it will all be excused because we will have a Black president and our society will be “postracial.”
Carl Davidson said
Has anyone bothered to read Obama’s entire speech?
It stressed both social and individual factors fairly well. Certainly the need for jobs and a number of new initiatives as well as to assist young fathers and families.
The right wing sure noticed them, and used them to dismiss his speech.
Pretending it didn’t stike a balance doesn’t do anyone any good. Obama didn’t say anything that Jackson, Farakkhan and many others haven’t said, at least in substance. There’s are reasons why Obama got the ovation he did in that church, just as there was a reason the Nation of Islam got one million Black men in DC for a ‘Day of Atonement.’
I don’t believe any of this ‘post-racial’ nonsense, nor do I think Obama walks on water. Far from it.
Family-wage blue collar jobs were gutted from the Black community, en masse and practically overnight. Restoring a stable family structure requires their restoration.
But if you think that’s all there is to it, you’re mistaken. I worked in some of the toughest schools on Chicago’s South and West Sides for years. There’s a cultural battle being waged in the Black community as well, and some sides of it, you do not want to support, ignore or otherwise gloss over. And if you do read all of Obama’s speech, try doing it from a Black woman’s point of view.
Mike E said
We have published Obama’s entire speech here, so that everyone can compare and debate.
celticfire said
The concept of “personal responsibility” is a concept for making sure the oppressed and disadvantaged feel personally responsible for their plot in life. Are the single mothers working two jobs “personally responsible” for their children who turn to gangs? Are the working families in the country in this country who cannot afford health insurance “personally responsible” for their lacking of financial wealth? I question that whole method of thought entirely because it sounds a whole lot like victim blaming. This is bourgeois liberalism at its worst. Sure Obama throws in some populist antics to offset his general social-conservatism, but tell me is that liberation? Is that what the millions of oppressed in the world need? To simply take personal responsibility for their lot? I doubt. Is our aim to simply make a “balance” with the right wing?
Because it ain’t mine.
Carl Davidson said
You’re off base here, ‘Celticfire.’
Personal responsibility has to do not much with their ‘plot’ or ‘plight’ in this life. It has to do with being responsible the choices they make, even when dealt a harsh hand of little but poor choices in oppressive conditions that few liberals, and even some radicals, really know much about.
That’s a lesson I learned, and taught, for many years, in all the classes I taught with ex-offenders just out of the joint or on work release, and with gang kids, teaching computer repair skills.
I learned it from Ra Chaka, an African American revolutionary. When he and I would meet with groups coming out of the joint, he would give them a rap stating ‘Right now each of you, as a piece of living meat, is worth about $30,000 a year to the prison industrial complex. That’s what they’ll make off of you if you wind up back in the joint. It’s just like the old slavery days, or not far from it. And if you don’t do anything, that’s exactly where you’ll end up. But if you do do something, and make some decisions to take a different direction, you’ll have a better shot at avoiding all that. But YOU have to decide, and hold yourself to it.”
It was stunning to watch how these blunt truths got everyone’s attention, as he went on to describe various programs, and the necessity of the ongoing struggle for justice.
In our little program, a drop in the bucket, about one out of three ended up back in prison, as opposed to two out of three generally.
I could go on and on about this, including a story about one of my young students, trying to do right by his two children, even while dumped on the streets, and his arguments with his roomate, bragging about the status he had as a ‘baby daddy’ with seven different girls, but I’ll spare you the details.
In short, it helps to be a Marxist-Leninist on social matters, but it also helps to be a street-level existentialist on personal matters and choices, even if it stings, if you really want to move things forward.
Nando said
I think Carl’s arguments are exactly wrong on a number of levels.
First, it is necessary to be a revolutionary communist at all levels of the discussion (personal and social). Because the personal sphere (though very real) has to be understood in the context of the social (and the treatment of the social mustn’t forget that it is an aggregate of actual people).
The idea that you have one philosophy at one level (existentialism or whatever) and another at another — really imagines reality as a fragmented terrain. And it really is (itself) an expression of a single philosophy (one of eclecticism and relativism).
Yes people need to take personal responsibility — not just (or mainly) patriarchal/paternal responsibility for THEIR kids — but personal responsibility for the world and for the fate of humanity. Yes people need to integrate their lives, learn coping skills, learn to analyze and act in productive ways — not just to “hold their families together” but because you can’t transform society if you can’t think-and-act in disciplined ways.
But the issue here is not whether personal discipline is a postive thing for individuals, or whether personal responsibility is a positive thing in this or that family situation.
the issue here is “why are Black people oppressed?” The issue here is “what is the solution to the continuing, frustrating, infuriating problems among the poor in society?”
Liberals look t “social pathologies among the poor” — and they say that this ociety has produced “damaged people,” and the solution is social support coupled with education and self help. The Obama gospel (that Carl likes so much) is firmly in that camp. It is not devoid of social analysis (or even social programs) — it is just rooted in social analysis that justifies the system, social programs that will not solve the problems, and an overall thrust that blames the people for their oppression (without seeing their struggle as the motive force in its transformation).
Yes, Jesse Jackson DOES see the people as “victims” to be “helped” by a social welfare state. But here come the new liberals who unashamedly preach the “tough love” of blame the people, and have added the new imperialist mantras of “traditional values, family and personal responsibility” to their rhetoric. And when the media upholds the neo-liberal Obama over the pressure-politics social democrat Jesse Jackson, I don’t think we should jump to applaud.
Without romanticizing the people, i think we can and should put forward a radically different view from Carl and the other liberals.
Yes, people in horrific situations do desperate things. Yes, people in desperate situations “internalize” complex cultures and ideas that arise from desperate situations. Yes people do very fucked up things to each other (including abandoning each other, and even bragging about it).
But the solution to all of that is not to preach to the people the importance of traditional values, patriarchal family and “personal responsibility.” It is not to say “in politics, social responsibility; in family, restore the rites.”
The solution lies in the importance of radically TRANSFORMED values and social relations — and the personal responsibility to become part of that. It takes revolution. In fact, it is ultimately in the context of the hope and insight that a rising revolutionary movement creates, in that wave of “the times are changing” that millions of people actually see themselves in a new way and “transcend” the fucked up frameworks that push them into the dog-eat dog.
This is a world of difference.
Once again, Carl thinks that in a “non revolutionary situation” only non-revolutionary thoughts are possible. It is like Huey Newton’s famous capitulation under the slogan “survival pending revolution” (where there is no ‘interpenetration of opposites.”) For Huey, “survival” came to mean electoral politics linked to drug deals and prostitution — a particularly ugly decline. But is it so much better if we were to embrace a “non-revolutionary” program of temporary self-improvement based on strengthening fatherhood, holding a job, keeping your nose clean, and not returning to prison?
And, dare I ask, what are the real world implications of preaching and embracing the virtues of “fatherhood”? The whole notion (now or taught) that “young boys need a father image” — is inseparable from the upholding of traditional sex roles (and the rightwing critique of the galloping “feminization of modern society.”)
No, we don’t need to bring back and enforce father right and sex roles as a “solution” to the suffering and poverty of Black youth. The program we are debating here is not even vaguely progressive! It is one of those places where the modern liberal (i.e.Obama) program is lifted straight from the rightwing playbook — and passed off as a truth that no one should deny.
That is why the quick, shallow, automatic and sweeping dismissal of Jesse Jackson’s complaint is so revealing — The media didn’t even think they NEEDED to dig into the issues underlying it: because to them the Bill Cosby/Barack Obama line on father right is axiomatic, it is simply true.
One side point: TV political pundit Tim Russert was hailed with gushing praise after his death — as a blue color original. but the ugly facts that were not discusses is that he rose as the pointman for Senator Patrick Moynihan — a democrat with powerful Republican leanings who first put forward this thesis that the “collapse of the black family” was the key “pathology” that underlay the poverty and stagnation of Black people. Moynihan was also the bastard who secretly suggested to Richard Nixon that the best federal policy toward black people was “benign neglect.” Russert, like so many prominent Democrats (Ed Rendell!) made their bones in the politics of white supremacy. And the praise of them and their theories should be exposed. And the fact that Moynihan’s theories (after several incarnations and refinements) now ocme out of the mouth of a Barack Obama (or a Carl Davidson) just means that we need to take some time and some care to unravel this talk of Black fatherhood — and unravel why the “Black family” has been shattered. And what the solution to the surrounding problems and dynamics is.
One final point:
Go read zola’s great novel Germinale, about the life and revolutionary struggle of 19th century French coal miners. (The film sucks, imho, among other things when the overly plump Gerard Depardeux starts talking about the starvation of his family!)
But one of the things that is so clear there is the ways the family structure gets crushed at the bottom of the working class — when the desperation of unemployment, underemployment and low wages weakens the links of economic dependency that are so central to the “traditional family.” Suddenly men have little to offer “their families,” and women have little compulsion to put up with all the shit of abuse, and kids have little reason to obey…. and in the absense of a more enlightened framework of equality and mutual respect, the bounds of family themselves shatter. And a culture of many other things emerge.
When I first read that during the Nixon years, it startled me, because you could see all the so-called “pathologies” that the Moynihan types claimed to see among “the black family” — and you could see that this is a product of the mechanisms of a system (especially at the stages when it is marginalizing whole tiers of the working class).
Now, of course, it is true (as Carl says) that we can’t REDUCE these social conditions to “the workings of the system” — as if they don’t work THROUGH people, and as if they only work ON people. Ideas, habits, assumptions etc. take on a life of their own — black boys DO brag about making babies from many women etc. (its own form of patriarchy without much family). But that is just one more reason to see the personal in correct relationship with the personal, and to see the superstructure of ideas and relations in the context of the framework of social PROPERTY relations.
Carl Davidson said
Nando, I don’t know what you’re trying to get at here. What ‘liberalism’ are you talking about?
Take Chaka’s rap to the 30 guys just out of the joint. What’s wrong with it? What would you discard if you had to give the talk? Or maybe you wouldn’t because the program is too reformist for you, working to get guys hired so they can be exploited by capitalism as a wage slave?
Or what would you have said to my student to support him against the ridicule of his ‘Baby Daddy, Times Seven’ roommate? Lecture him on the need to deconstruct bourgeois notions of ‘fatherhood?’ Please. We’ve had liberals for decades writing off Black men, applying band-aids to Welfare Moms, but here I’m helping a kid who wants to take an equal share of caring for his kids with his girl friend, resisting taunts from the ‘thug life,’ and you want to get on his and my case about ‘patriarchy’ and ‘non-revolutionary options’?
And you think dealing with this in some way makes my politics equal to Obama’s?
I’ve pointed out every day what’s caused these oppressive conditions, and what needs to be politically and economically to reverse it, things that can be done and fought for NOW, the deep structural reforms that will strengthen the Black community and all else besides, without waiting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, posing reform vs revolution as the main task of the day. If you think you can skip over all that as so much ‘liberalism,’ you’re welcome to it, but I plead guilty to the former, and you can pin whatever label you like on it.
Nando said
I am in favor of making distinctions. And don’t think it would be accurate to simply equate your views with Obama’s.
And i don’t feel any value in fighting over what “label” to pin on you personally, or on your personal tapestry of political and philosophical views.
There is a method that the Kasama Project has tried to break with: where you create established verdicts on the nature of various political trends, and then your political task when encountering a person or an idea is simply to toss it into the appropriate “settled question” bag. It is a method that relieves its practitioners of any dynamic interaction with the particularity of contradiciton, or the new ways that old ideas influence people.
It is clear (as you well know) that you have (what mao called) “both goods in stock.” You pull out standard left-liberalism as your banner in some circumstances. and then the vague “progressive” banner in others (which to me is basically the social democratic wing of the Democratic party). And (on occassion) you pull out your “i’m an old jaded Marxist/communist” — especially when you find it useful to hack away at views you perceive as utopian or “ultra-left.”
How you describe yourself is your own business. I mainly made my considered observation that (watching your political trajectory since we were both in SDS) what defined your politics was a “black cat, white cat” pragmatism that always seems rather (uh…) ideologically chameleon-like (to put in a deliberately non-judgmental way).
But really, there is little value in fighting through “how to we evaluate Carl Davidson?” And i’m not going to do it.
Far more important for me (and for our discussions) is “how are we going to evaluate Barack Obama?” And that is because this is a mass question, and many people are newly awakening to politics and are starting (with the fuzziness of the newly awakened) to focus in on these questions.
What IS different between a liberal imperialist political stance, and one that offers real solutions to profound problems? What IS the problem with promoting an Obama (and voting) as something oppressed people should embrace?
I don’t think we can get into those things by waving at some imagined “principles” established somewhere (cuz they don’t exist except as our own inventions, and so we have to establish the verdicts and assumptions what our actual principles rest on.) We have to analyze the particular, the real, the unfolding.
And so i tried to examine your views of patriarchy and short-term solutions in that light. You find Obama’s remarks on “Black fatherhood” quite fine. And we are getting into that.
This is not aobut you (or how you are labeled). It is about Obama, and how millions of people should sum up this moments array of political opportunities and possible actions.
Nando said
On Carl’s particular posing of questions:
First of all, the very tone of this is deeply revealing. It is deeply dismissive of radical politics and of the very idea of raising people’s sights to radical change.
Yes I would talk to people getting out of prison about the nightmare it is to become a wage slave. And the argument that “being a wage slave is better for you and your kids than being a prisoner” is really not an argument I would make.
But really I would not focus on just them, and what “their situation” would be. The point (for us all) really is “what are you going to serve? What are you going to represent? What are you going to be part of?”
I would argue several things:
a) We need conscious people on the street, not in jail cells, because that is a better terrain for developing the revolutionary movement.
b) We need to channel our alienation into forms and methods that “serve the people,” not function as promoting a “dog eat dog” preying on the people.
c) We need to look at the madness and pain of our lives and be determined to liberate the people so that in the future this is not reproduced. Not by becoming “productive citizens” in this fucked up cesspool (in hopes that just-maybe our kids will escape) but by becoming much more conscious outlaws, much more cunning, much more determined, in our understanding of what needs to be done.
Your snide comment on my belief in the “need to deconstruct bourgeois notions of ‘fatherhood’” is revealing as well as, patronizing. It implies that there is something scholastic, “petty bourgeois,” distant, unreal, elitist about opposing male supremacy and father right. this is raw bullshit, carl. And everyone knows it.
The need to break up male supremacy is a burning issue on our planet. It jumps from every corner of life. It presses itself into every personal conflict. It keeps both women and men awake at night — agonizing over their limited choices and their inability to accept them.
There is a reason why some guerilla armies in the world (the Maoists in particular) often have female fighters and leaders, while others in the world (the guevarists in particular) are wreathed in machismo and traditional sex roles.
Fatherright is an issue where you have been pretty consistently dismissive on this site. And that is wrong on many levels. Your attempt to portray this as some fru-fru issue of elitist deconstruction is quite intolerable. (as if fighting for traditional fatherhood is something with street-level creds!? puleez.)
No. The struggle over “traditional values,” the status of women, the continued imposition of father right, and all that is related to this is on the cutting edge of politics today — on a world scale. This is one where we either find the living and popular ways to bring it to the center of what we are doing and saying, or else we have discarded one of the deepest potential wellsprings of radical and revolutionary change.
If you think we should sit down with our brothers and seek to appeal to them on the basis of strengthening their male right (and their “rightful place” in traditional families) you really have not understood what time it is, or what changes people’s lives are really demanding.
Carl Davidson said
We have no common language to even discuss this further. We just live in different worlds. I’ll leave it at that.
Nando said
heh. that last remark piqued my curiousity.
Carl Davidson said
If anyone wants to criticize Obama’s real position on the matters here, here’s a concise statement of what it really is:
Obama’s NAACP speech. Cincinnati, July 14, 2008 Text.
Tonight Senator Obama will address the 99th Annual Convention of the NAACP. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery.
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama-(as prepared for delivery)
99th Annual Convention of the NAACP
Monday, July 14, 2008
Cincinnati, Ohio
It is always humbling to speak before the NAACP. It is a powerful reminder of the debt we all owe to those who marched for us and fought for us and stood up on our behalf; of the sacrifices that were made for us by those we never knew; and of the giants whose shoulders I stand on here today.
They are the men and women we read about in history books and hear about in church; whose lives we honor with schools, and boulevards, and federal holidays that bear their names. But what I want to remind you tonight – on Youth Night – is that these giants, these icons of America’s past, were not much older than many of you when they took up freedom’s cause and made their mark on history.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was but a 26-year old pastor when he led a bus boycott in Montgomery that mobilized a movement. John Lewis was but a 25-year old activist when he faced down Billy clubs on the bridge in Selma and helped arouse the conscience of our nation. Diane Nash was even younger when she helped found SNCC and led Freedom Rides down south. And your chairman Julian Bond was but a 25-year old state legislator when he put his own shoulder to the wheel of history.
It is because of them; and all those whose names never made it into the history books – those men and women, young and old, black, brown and white, clear-eyed and straight-backed, who refused to settle for the world as it is; who had the courage to remake the world as it should be – that I stand before you tonight as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.
And if I have the privilege of serving as your next President, I will stand up for you the same way that earlier generations of Americans stood up for me – by fighting to ensure that every single one of us has the chance to make it if we try. That means removing the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding that still exist in America. It means fighting to eliminate discrimination from every corner of our country. It means changing hearts, and changing minds, and making sure that every American is treated equally under the law.
But social justice is not enough. As Dr. King once said, “the inseparable twin of racial justice is economic justice.” That’s why Dr. King went to Memphis in his final days to stand with striking sanitation workers. That’s why the march that Roy Wilkins helped lead forty five years ago this summer wasn’t just named the March on Washington, and it wasn’t just named the March on Washington for Freedom; it was named the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
What Dr. King and Roy Wilkins understood is that it matters little if you have the right to sit at the front of the bus if you can’t afford the bus fare; it matters little if you have the right to sit at the lunch counter if you can’t afford the lunch. What they understood is that so long as Americans are denied the decent wages, and good benefits, and fair treatment they deserve, the dream for which so many gave so much will remain out of reach; that to live up to our founding promise of equality for all, we have to make sure that opportunity is open to all Americans.
That is what I’ve been fighting to do throughout my over 20 years in public service. That’s why I’ve fought in the Senate to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create good jobs here in America. That’s why I brought Democrats and Republicans together in Illinois to put $100 million in tax cuts into the pockets of hardworking families, to expand health care to 150,000 children and parents, and to end the outrage of black women making just 62 cents for every dollar that many of their male coworkers make.
And that’s why I moved to Chicago after college. As some of you know, I turned down more lucrative jobs because I was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and I wanted to do my part in the ongoing battle for opportunity in this country. So I went to work for a group of churches to help turn around neighborhoods that were devastated when the local steel plants closed. And I reached out to community leaders – black, brown, and white – and together, we gave job training to the jobless, set up afterschool programs to help keep kids off the streets, and block by block, we helped turn those neighborhoods around.
So I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where social justice is being served and economic justice is being served; an America where we all have an equal chance to make it if we try. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America you’ve been fighting for over the past 99 years. And that’s the America we have to keep marching towards today.
Our work is not over.
When so many of our nation’s schools are failing, especially those in our poorest rural and urban communities, denying millions of young Americans the chance to fulfill their potential and live out their dreams, we have more work to do.
When CEOs are making more in ten minutes than the average worker earns in a year, and millions of families lose their homes due to unscrupulous lending, checked neither by a sense of corporate ethics or a vigilant government; when the dream of entering the middle class and staying there is fading for young people in our community, we have more work to do.
When any human being is denied a life of dignity and respect, no matter whether they live in Anacostia or Appalachia or a village in Africa; when people are trapped in extreme poverty we know how to curb or suffering from diseases we know how to prevent; when they’re going without the medicines that they so desperately need – we have more work to do.
That’s what this election is all about. It’s about the responsibilities we all share for the future we hold in common. It’s about each and every one of us doing our part to build that more perfect union.
It’s about the responsibilities that corporate America has – responsibilities that start with ending a culture on Wall Street that says what’s good for me is good enough; that puts their bottom line ahead of what’s right for America. Because what we’ve learned in such a dramatic way in recent months is that pain in our economy trickles up; that Wall Street can’t thrive so long as Main Street is struggling; and that America is better off when the well-being of American business and the American people are aligned. Our CEOs have to recognize that they have a responsibility not just to grow their profit margins, but to be fair to their workers, and honest to their shareholders and to help strengthen our economy as a whole. That’s how we’ll ensure that economic justice is being served. And that’s what this election is about.
It’s about the responsibilities that Washington has – responsibilities that start with restoring fairness to our economy by making sure that the playing field isn’t tilted to benefit the special interests at the expense of ordinary Americans; and that we’re rewarding not just wealth, but the work and workers who create it. That’s why I’ll offer a middle class tax cut so we can lift up hardworking families, and give relief to struggling homeowners so we can end our housing crisis, and provide training to young people to work the green jobs of the future, and invest in our infrastructure so we can create millions of new jobs.
And that’s why I’ll end the outrage of one in five African Americans going without the health care they deserve. We’ll guarantee health care for anyone who needs it, make it affordable for anyone who wants it, and ensure that the quality of your health care does not depend on the color of your skin. And we’re not going to do it 20 years from now or 10 years from now, we’re going to do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States of America.
And here’s what else we’ll do – we’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. Now, I understand that Senator McCain is going to be coming here in a couple of days and talking about education, and I’m glad to hear it. But the fact is, what he’s offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. Well, I believe we need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform.
That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities – and to pay them more and give them more support. And we’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.
But it doesn’t end there. We have to fight for all those young men standing on street corners with little hope for the future besides ending up in jail. We have to break the cycle of poverty and violence that’s gripping too many neighborhoods in this country.
That’s why I’ll expand the Earned Income Tax Credit – because it’s one of the most successful anti-poverty measures we have. That’s why I’ll end the Bush policy of taking cops off the streets at the moment they’re needed most – because we need to give local law enforcement the support they need. That’s why we’ll provide job training for ex-offenders – because we need to make sure they don’t return to a life of crime. And that’s why I’ll build on the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York and launch an all-hands-on-deck effort to end poverty in this country – because that’s how we’ll put the dream that Dr. King and Roy Wilkins fought for within reach for the next generation of children.
And if people tell you that we cannot afford to invest in education or health care or fighting poverty, you just remind them that we are spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. And if we can spend that much money in Iraq, we can spend some of that money right here in Cincinnati, Ohio and in big cities and small towns in every corner of this country.
So yes, we have to demand more responsibility from Washington. And yes we have to demand more responsibility from Wall Street. But we also have to demand more from ourselves. Now, I know some say I’ve been too tough on folks about this responsibility stuff. But I’m not going to stop talking about it. Because I believe that in the end, it doesn’t matter how much money we invest in our communities, or how many 10-point plans we propose, or how many government programs we launch – none of it will make any difference if we don’t seize more responsibility in our own lives.
That’s how we’ll truly honor those who came before us. Because I know that Thurgood Marshall did not argue Brown versus Board of Education so that some of us could stop doing our jobs as parents. And I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere. That’s not the freedom they fought so hard to achieve. That’s not the America they gave so much to build. That’s not the dream they had for our children.
That’s why if we’re serious about reclaiming that dream, we have to do more in our own lives, our own families, and our own communities. That starts with providing the guidance our children need, turning off the TV, and putting away the video games; attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, and setting a good example. It starts with teaching our daughters to never allow images on television to tell them what they are worth; and teaching our sons to treat women with respect, and to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; that what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one. It starts by being good neighbors and good citizens who are willing to volunteer in our communities – and to help our synagogues and churches and community centers feed the hungry and care for the elderly. We all have to do our part to lift up this country.
That’s where change begins. And that, after all, is the true genius of America – not that America is, but that America will be; not that we are perfect, but that we can make ourselves more perfect; that brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand, people who love this country can change it. And that’s our most enduring responsibility – the responsibility to future generations. We have to change this country for them. We have to leave them a planet that’s cleaner, a nation that’s safer, and a world that’s more equal and more just.
So I’m grateful to you for all you’ve done for this campaign, but we’ve got work to do and we cannot rest. And I know that if you put your shoulders to the wheel of history and take up the cause of perfecting our union just as earlier generations of Americans did before you; if you take up the fight for opportunity and equality and prosperity for all; if you march with me and fight with me, and get your friends registered to vote, and if you stand with me this fall – then not only will we help close the responsibility deficit in this country, and not only will we help achieve social justice and economic justice for all, but I will come back here next year on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, and I will stand before you as the President of the United States of America. And at that moment, you and I will truly know that a new day has come in this country we love. Thank you.
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Nando said
Carl writes: “If anyone wants to criticize Obama’s real position on the matters here, here’s a concise statement of what it really is:”
Are you implying that there are some who DON’T want to criticize Obama’s REAL positions — but who out of dishonest reasons want to invent non existant positions?
What is your basis for this? Or is it just a habit/tactic of dissing people who don’t agree with you by impugning their motives?
We have often seen this kind of smearing raised to an art on the left — and should agree not to use that method in disagreements.
Why don’t we assume that we all want to uncover, understand and (on that basis) critique Obama’s real position — and that our disagreements arise from different evaluations (not from dishonesty or stupidity)?
Nando said
And rather than just posting a whole Obama speech, would you help us by pointing which part of it is particularly relevant to understanding his views on issues we are discussing?
Carl Davidson said
You’re reading to much into my comment, Nando. By real position, I meant the whole thing, personal and family responsibility within the broader context of the fight for racial and economic justice, rather than just a piece of it. Some have also claimed, erroneously, here and elsewhere, that Obama has no interest in the fight against racism or the concerns of Blacks. This speech is still well within the realm of bourgeois reformism, and certainly not revolutionary, so I’m sure many here with find a lot wrong with it, if not rejecting the whole thing. But it helps to clarify things if the starting point is right.
And I didn’t pull out any quotes because the whole speech is relevant here.