14. OBAMA STRIVES TO "CHANGE" AMERICA

OBAMA'S PROGRAM OF DEEP SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE

An incident that occurred in Florida in early 2012 pointed to how a local event was once again going to become a national matter – and a revival of bitter "identity politics" – especially when the President and his Department of Justice signed onto the matter. A man (of mixed race) George Zimmerman, who was undertaking nighttime community watch (the neighborhood had been hit by a number of burglaries), got into a fight with a young Black, Trayvon Martin, and Martin was shot and killed.

Zimmerman was of enough "whiteness" that the incident, pushed heavily by the national media, was slanted into a new example of White v. Black racism, supported even by Obama, who went on record stating that "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" (Obama had only two daughters). Others, such as sports figures and celebrity stars, also signed in on the event, including (naturally) the Reverend Al Sharpton. An online campaign run by "Change.org" gathered over two million signatures calling for Zimmerman's arrest for murder, even before the full evidence in the matter was assembled. It simply had become Black v. White, with Obama himself part of the chorus demanding "justice" – also, even before the matter had been put under the scrutiny of a court trial.

But interestingly, leaders in the Black organization NAACP came out against this very racial hyping – convinced that such heightening of racial tensions served no very good purpose in improving the nation's race relations. Ultimately a jury also found that under the circumstances, Zimmerman, in the struggle, had acted fully within the law and thus was guilty of no crime. Even when Obama's Department of Justice looked into the matter, try as it might, it could not find any grounds for Zimmerman's arrest either. And the effort to cast mixed-race Zimmerman as a racist just could not stand up to the facts of the matter, though it did nothing to satisfy those determined to depict this event as nothing more than White racism in action.

Ultimately, Zimmerman and his family had to leave their homes and go into seclusion as the threats against them mounted (and still continue to this day). Overall, the whole incident heated up the nation to the point that it would take months for America to get past this tragedy.

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But that was mild in comparison to what happened across the nation as a result of an event in Ferguson Missouri in August of 2014, when a White policeman, Darren Wilson, shot a Black youth, Michael Brown, in a conflict between the two. 

Michael Brown and officer Darren Wilson

Once again, even before the facts of the matter were in, Americans began to take action against "police brutality," especially when undertaken by a White policeman. Protests broke out immediately once the event hit the national news, and soon local pillaging and torching began to take place across the nation. Naturally, the Reverend Sharpton was quick on the scene to cultivate the outrage of Blacks, registered in the refrain "hands up; don't shoot" which Brown's friend had (falsely) claimed Brown had uttered just before being shot.

"Hands up Don't shoot" becomes the mantra of angry Blacks
and social justice warriors (despite the fact that as far as
Brown was concerned this was pure fiction)

August 12 – The Rev. Al Sharpton – ever ready to stir up racial 
anger in the name of "justice" – on the steps of the St. Louis 
Missouri Court House with Michael Brown's father Michael
Brown, Sr. (t-shirt), St. Louis attorney Crump, and Lesley 
McSpadden – Brown's mother   ... cheering on those who 
turn out to "fight racial injustice."

October 2014 – Students at St. Louis University protesting against injustice and poverty

Most ironically the main theme of the protests that hit the country (including in many college campuses) was "Black Lives Matter." Certainly they do. The death toll of young Blacks in America is a huge national tragedy. But it only seems to matter when a White is involved, which is actually only a small percentage of the time. And why does it not seem to matter when it is a case of Black-on-Black? Those deaths are just as tragic. And yes, their lives matter too.

But that is not how this incident was being developed. Again, this was simply identity politics in action. And also, once again, President Obama quickly signed on to the event, identifying with the young man who died so tragically (Obama certifying that he too had felt the racism that Brown had experienced) , and once again promising to send the Department of Justice, even its Attorney General Eric Holder himself, to look into the matter, to make sure that the local police investigation did not just sweep the matter under the rug (implying that this was what could easily be expected in such events).

Obama sends Attorney General Eric Holder to Missouri 
(August 20th)  to run his own investigation of the shooting.

However, little by little the actual facts in the case began to come out, though it did not seem to matter much to those committed to defending the "Black Lives Matter" crusade. It seems that Brown was hyped up on PCP, the huge youth had just pushed aside a store clerk who was contesting him over some cigars that Brown was determined to walk out with (caught on a security camera), and then was walking down the middle of the street with his friend Dorian Johnson when officer Wilson pulled up alongside them and told them to move to the curb, an order that Brown was in no mood to obey. A struggle ensued when Brown reached into the car in an attempt to grab Wilson's gun, shots were fired inside the police car, Brown and Johnson then ran off, with Wilson in pursuit – until Brown turned and charged Wilson, and got shot and killed in the process. The "hands up; don't shoot" statement coming from Johnson was countered by observers at the scene who said that Brown had said no such thing, and that officer Wilson was under full assault when Brown was shot and killed. Forensics confirmed the latter account.

And although cleared by the evidence in the case, here too officer Wilson had to leave Ferguson under death threats. And again, try as he might, Holder's Department of Justice also could find no basis for further action against Wilson – although Holder could not pass up the opportunity to deliver a sermon about the deep racial injustice that governed American society, and, being a minority himself, he could feel the pain of America's minorities. In short, Holder was inviting America to pursue its cultural animosities through bitter identity politics, rather than find higher ground to come together over. But that seemed to be the theme of the times, or at least the theme of the Obama Administration (and many of the Congressional Democrats).

November 2014 – Anger that the Grand Jury decision did not go
in the direction social-justice warriors wanted

"Black Lives Matter" and "Kill Cops"



More violence in Ferguson (November 2014)

Eight years of Obama's "change" indeed left the country just that: deeply changed. In attacking and bringing down Middle or "White" America at every opportunity, he left Middle America bewildered, and Blacks and other self-identified "minorities" very vigilant against any effort of Middle America to reassert itself. Obama (along with the federal courts and the lawsuit-happy ACLU and its associates) had succeeded in branding Middle American social-moral standards as racist, homophobic, sexist, etc., in other words, prohibited by law on every front.  But worst of all for America, this same group had finalized the understanding that the Christian religion was prohibited in public everywhere. Religion could be touched on publicly, but only as long as it was non-specific ("spiritually generic") in nature.

Worse, the legacy was to live on (supported strongly by Obama even out of office) in the form of the refusal of professional athletes to stand in respect during the playing of the national anthem, but to kneel as a sign of protest against all these "isms" that caused minorities to suffer so. This included very well-paid and highly popular football players, who just could not get enough of a social payoff to make them loyal supporters of the very idea of the American nation.

September 2016 – Reid and Kaepernick kneeling in protest
rather than standing in respect for the flag at the playing of
the national anthem



September 2016 – Obama (naturally) signs  in on the issue in
support of Kaepernick underscoring the huge problem of
racism afflicting America ... and the importance in standing
forth to show our opposition to this evil  (White America
being the source of the problem, of course)

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BLACK LIVES DO MATTER, GREATLY

Racism in any form, Black as well as White, serves no one honorably or even profitably. It's a sign of insecurity rather than any serious understanding of life and its challenges. Racism, just like nationalism (English and French killing Germans because, well they're just Germans and need to be killed, or so went the thinking of World War One), simply finds some great source of evil that, in being brought down, will supposedly make life much, much better. So racism in the 1950s and 1960s not only gave Southern poor Whites some sense that fighting the "Black peril" brought some logic to their difficult lives, it in no ways improved the picture, for anyone. Well, anyone except the segregationist politicians who promoted such racism in order to get themselves elected and reelected. And Joe McCarthy did the same thing with the Red Scare, until the shallowness of what he was up to finally got exposed.

There's much the same problem in the way Blacks explode easily over the difficulties they are having gaining the social standing that any person naturally craves. No one can claim that there are no serious problems confronting Black life. That just isn't so. But the problem is very complex, with all kinds of causes behind this issue. Blaming Whites is, of course, the easiest explanation, one that hustling Black politicians at all levels of American society have been exploiting for their own political purposes. But as with all racist responses, this is not likely to bring serious solutions to the social problems facing the Black community.[2]

The Black murder rate is most disheartening. A government report that came out in 2011, early in the Obama Administration, pointed out that murder constitutes the biggest cause of death of Blacks in the 15-34 age group, almost 40 percent of those deaths (compared to 3.8 percent in the same age group of Whites). Most all of that is Black-on-Black action, though the police are sometimes involved. Actually, police shooting of Whites is twice the number involving Blacks, a tragedy for everyone involved. But nearly all of even those incidents show that the police were doing exactly what they were hired to do, in the line of duty in often very violent neighborhoods. There were tragic exceptions of course, but quite few considering the hundreds of thousands of police serving the country.

In any case, this very serious problem facing America is just not getting the serious attention it needs and deserves, because it has become much too politicized. Again, easy racist answers do not ever offer wisdom in the search for a solution to major social problems.

But thankfully a number of Black public figures have been speaking out about how racism is the wrong approach to the problem, something that racist politicians do not want to hear. But at least this former group is trying to get some serious action underway to improve the lives of young Black males – and Black neighborhoods – caught in a serious social crisis.

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[2]In 1965, as Johnson's Great Society got underway, 25% of Black children were born out of wedlock. That number in the 2010s was running at 70%.
     Even Obama himself – in one of his less ideological moments – once commented (on Father's Day of 2008, when first running for the presidency), "Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it."

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Go on to the next section:

The Obama Economy

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  Miles H. Hodges