Earlier this week, tigger500 wrote a post titled “What’s wrong with Obama’s speeches on race.“  Read it.  And allow me to extend that discussion.

The problem with Obama’s speeches on race is that his job as a politician– more specifically, a politician with tenuous support and job security– necessitates that he makes people feel good.  He needs to make people feel good or else he gets nothing done and he’s not the president.  That position is fundamentally incompatible with having any kind of honest discussion on race, because an honest discussion isn’t going to make anyone feel good.  If you don’t walk away from a serious discussion on race with your head in your hands, something got sugarcoated.

Obama lectures black audiences on personal responsibility despite the fact that he’s smart enough to know that personal responsibility and accountability aren’t even in the top ten problems facing the black community.  He does it because he knows black audiences will feel good about themselves and motivated to do better, and white observers will feel good that someone is finally giving those irresponsible Negroes a good talking to.  Everyone feels good, Obama wins, and black fathers continue to get incarcerated, undereducated, and unemployed at double and triple the rates of white fathers.

He doesn’t lecture white audiences on personal responsibility and accountability, despite knowing that they need the pep talk as much as we do, because the politics of doing that aren’t nearly as good.  Likewise, he lectures black audiences in metropolitan Atlanta on homophobia because he knows they’re 90% behind him regardless, and he knows white folks will feel good that it’s the Negroes’ fault, not theirs.  Lecturing white audiences in Utah or Alabama on the subject would have far greater impact, but again, the politics of doing that suck.

To Obama’s credit though, he’s a brilliant politician, and the game ain’t easy.  Especially for– and you really cannot say this enough– a black man named Barack Hussein Obama.   The line he has walked thus far on race has been flawed, but flawed in the way the Apollo 11 mission was flawed.  Yeah, some things went wrong, but they put a man on the moon.  On the moon, son.

Fact is, the best thing Obama can do regarding race in America is to work towards fixing the institutional inequities.  Black fathers don’t abandon their families because they don’t feel like being dads, they do it because they get thrown in jail more often, lose their jobs more often, and don’t have generations of wealth built up to fall back on as a cushion.  The playing field is badly tilted.  It’s at a 45-degree angle or worse in some cases.  You can lecture the players about working harder to get up that hill, or you can pressure the league to flatten the field.  Both approaches are worthwhile, but which is more likely to turn your squad around?

Related posts:

1. What’s Wrong with Obama’s Speeches on Race
2. Obama’s conclusion on Gates arrest: Can’t we all just have a beer?
3. Don’t inject race and politics into Pittsburgh gym shooting