Well, you can probably guess where I’m going in this piece. It seems no matter how poorly President Obama’s economic policies play out, and no matter how bad the economy gets, he is not held accountable by those who are simply happy to have a black president. Whether it is on Facebook arguing with my liberal friends, or at the barber shop, what I constantly hear is that Obama inherited the worst depression ever and he has to spend gobs and gobs of money to fix the mess George Bush left behind. He just needs more time, and he has only had two and one half years (yes, only). It is all the Tea Party’s fault, and now Congresswoman Maxine Waters as well as Indiana Congressman Andre Carson have declared war on the Tea Party. According to Carson, the Tea Party wants to see black people hanging on trees, and so Ms. Waters would like to send them “straight to hell.” And all I thought they wanted (gasp!) was smaller government and fiscal responsibility. Guess I just plum missed the lynching at the last Tea Party event I attended, or was fortunate to have not been invited as the “special” guest.
What I think is abundantly clear is that Black America, goaded on by the likes of Congressional Black Caucus stalwarts such as Waters and Carson, are more interested in the concept of having a black president than having a competent one. Even today, when I noted to my barber that the unemployment rate is a whopping 16.7% in the black community (46.5% for black teens), and that this was one indication of Obama’s failed economic policies, he said it was probably because most of them were just sitting around and not doing everything they could to find a job. So if we have a black president and high black unemployment, then it is due to slothfulness, but if we have a white president and high black unemployment, then it is either bad economic policies or racism. We just can’t win. Nevertheless, I just cannot imagine that this level of unemployment would be acceptable under circumstances other than current, yet many blacks take it in stride with little complaint. Oh, and my barber is “gung ho” to work on the Obama campaign again next year.
A great deal of animus is directed towards the Tea Party as if it is the current source of all black ills. But how can this be? Will blacks not benefit if our government lives within its means and spends responsibly, or is the more and bigger government that Waters, Carson, and the CBC desire that will inevitably lead to bankruptcy a more desirable option? Will blacks not benefit from lower taxes and less government intrusion in their lives, or do they want to feed the government leviathan and lose liberties continually as the state places more burden and regulation on them? All indications are that as long as there is a black president who advocates for government-led job creation, increases of regulations on businesses, and redistribution of wealth, even to the detriment of the country and the destruction of job opportunities, then it is not only acceptable, but celebrated, solely because he is black.
It is a very sad day when the black community has decided that even with record unemployment, a flood of mortgages that are either under water or facing foreclosure, and mounting debt that puts our economy at risk for future growth, we should be satisfied because we cannot accept the fact that we have a black president whose economic policies are failing us. We have so internalized the notion that his success is our success that we can’t see competence is independent of color. It is not a truism that if President Obama succeeds then blacks succeed, and conversely, it is not a truism that if he fails to succeed then blacks as a people fail to succeed. We each succeed or fail on our own merits, as individuals, which is why the Tea Party puts so much emphasis on personal responsibility. I believe that if blacks were to embrace Tea Party values and principles, we would break away from the shackles of the destructive liberal thought from the CBC and other enabling types, which is the very thing binding us from moving onward and upward. We can do better, and that is the hope and change that we actually need.
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