OBAMA TELLS! BLACK AMERICANS “WE NEED A NEW MINDSET!”
// July 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
the truth is much like a tree of knowledge ... only difference ... the truth killed Christ and left many fighters in the civil rights movement hanging from its limbs!
“We went down in some dungeons where captives were held. There was a church above the dungeons, which tells you something about saying one thing and doing another. We went through the door of no return, and I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities, on the voyage from slavery to freedom“
President Barack Obama walks onto stage to speak at the NAACP annual convention July 16, 2009 in New York City. Obama discussed the civil rights movement and the importance of carrying on civic responsibility at the 100th anniversary of the nation‘s oldest civil rights organization.
HOTT LOOK@POLITICS!
Preach on, Brother! Preach on!
In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed by a group of blacks and whites in response to lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Ill., the political birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln. After a century spent fighting for racial equality and social justice, a black man is leading the nation. So it was only fitting that at the NAACP’s Centennial Convention in New York City, attended by Black Voices, President OBAMA took the opportunity to thank the civil rights organization for laying the foundation of his success.
“Because ordinary people made the civil rights movement their own, I made a trip to Springfield a couple years ago – where Lincoln once lived and race riots once raged – and began the journey that has led me here tonight as the 44th president of the United States of America,” he told those gathered at the NAACP Spingarn Awards Dinner yesterday at the New York Hilton in Manhattan. “Because of them, I stand here tonight on the shoulders of giants.”
His address, which he clearly enjoyed making, had the air of a homecoming. The preacher-like intensity he reached at its climax brought the crowd of dignitaries and NAACP members to its feet three times, with thunderous applause. Perhaps Obama’s recent trip to Ghana had stoked the fire in his belly. “Michelle and I took Malia and Sasha to Cape Coast Castle, where captives were once imprisoned before being auctioned, where, across an ocean, so much of the African American experience began,” he described. “We went down in some dungeons where captives were held. There was a church above the dungeons, which tells you something about saying one thing and doing another. We went through the door of no return, and I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities, on the voyage from slavery to freedom.”
Though it was clear Obama’s mission last night was to thank and to inspire, he did cite some of the efforts his administration is making to address the education and achievement gaps between blacks and whites, as well as to protect consumers against predatory lenders and reform health care. He pointed to the creation of the still-embryonic White House Office of Urban Affairs and also mentioned a recent report by New York City controller Bill Thompson that the number of unemployed blacks in the city rose four times as fast as the number of unemployed whites between early 2008 and early 2009. However, those looking for meat on the bones of efforts benefiting African Americans would go away hungry from the Spingarn dinner.
Instead, Obama seized the moment to exhort the group — and all black Americans — to take responsibility for overcoming the economic and social inequalities that still plague our our community, while acknowledging the role of institutional racism. “Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land,” Obama said. “We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves.” He left the group with this message: “If three civil rights workers in Mississippi…could lay down their lives in freedom’s cause, I know we can come together to face down the challenges of our own time. We can fix our schools, heal our sick, and rescue our youth from violence and despair.”
Though black Americans must continue to hold the president accountable for addressing our needs, it’s clear that as Obama attacks the many-headed hydra of a failing economy, a dysfunctional health care system and two wars, indeed, the task will largely fall on our own shoulders.
