Obama owes the American people, not any specific ethnic group

By Sylvia Thompson

Barack Obama recently announced a program called "My Brother's Keeper." It is supposed to be a privately funded initiative to address the conditions plaguing children in minority communities. With characteristic vagueness, he explained that he will create a government task force to evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches. Regarding the new program, Don Lemon, a black news reporter for CNN, gushed over the significance of this move by Obama toward black Americans. The reporter elaborated that because Obama is "from the black community," his focus of interest should be toward the black community from which he came.

It is time that we drop the delusion (or purposeful lie) that Barack Obama came from the black community. Obama grew up in the home of his white grandparents in a decidedly un-black community of middle-classed people in the State of Hawaii. His black experience, I would wager, did not start until he married a black American woman, well after he became an adult. I did grow up in the black community, and I know what that entails. Further, I grew up in that community in the thick of legalized segregation of blacks from all the other ethnic groups: primarily white, Hispanic, and Asian.

By the time that Obama came into the world, laws of separation were no longer on the books. But centuries of mind-conditioning on the part of all ethnic groups would take time to be neutralized. Thus, communities of people remained relatively separate immediately after integration. To some degree, that is still the case, and much of that attitude can be attributed to the fact that people are comfortable around what is familiar. It often has nothing to do with racial animus and is more of a "birds of a feather" syndrome. Maturity, which comes with education and interaction with other groups, lessens the discomfort with difference.

What has made America so exceptional is that different peoples were encouraged to embrace the ideas of America: the Judeo-Christian ethic, the importance of the individual, and freedom from tyrannical rule, among a host of other things. The importance of your group is only to the degree that what you bring to the table from your group enhances America, for all its citizens.

It is interesting that none of the young black leftists of today ever experienced legal segregation, and I suspect that Mr. Lemon is part of this group. They are, however, the most hell-bent on promoting the divisiveness that currently pollutes the culture. Could this mentality result from guilt over never having had to endure what our ancestors, my parents' generation, and to a lesser degree, my generation endured to ensure that their generation and others following would be afforded the same opportunities as all other Americans? Makes you wonder.

Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, in his "Washington Update" (2/28/2014), gave a rundown of the "My Brother's Keeper" program and added that he agreed with Obama on sentiment but not on substance. Obama's penchant for lying makes it difficult to take him at his word and assume that anything that he does will not be a government power-grab. Perkins' statement at the end of his article reflects the sentiment of many Americans:

Focusing on minority kids could have a huge impact on American society – if the President realizes that marriage, life, and faith are essential ingredients. While we support this [program] as a priority, what we don't support are the President's actual policies, which undermine the family he speaks so highly of. If liberals were serious about rescuing minority children, they would encourage couples to get married – not penalize them for it. They would fight for upholding marriage – not depriving kids of a dad by redefining it. They would defend children in the womb – not excuse the "choice" that destroys it.

Obama would not be President of the United States of America if it were not for white people voting him into office. There are not enough blacks to have pulled off that feat alone. And some blacks, like me, never voted for him in the first place. So, a man who is not part of the American black experience and who could not have become President without white voters, does not owe allegiance to blacks or any other single ethnic group, nor would any President, whatever his ethnicity.

Presidents owe allegiance to the American people in total. And if Obama's policies and directions were not geared solely toward advancing a leftist, socialist agenda, those policies might be effectively working to enhance the plight of all Americans, blacks obviously included.

It is patently clear that if Obama cared anything about the black community in America, he would be working toward building a stronger, more efficient America. But, he is doing the exact opposite, to the detriment of all Americans.

© Sylvia Thompson