While 30,000 individuals saw fit to flood Bascom Hill last Thursday to see Presidnet Barack Obama, there were a number of staff and students that weren’t so enamored. The Daily Cardinal ran an article earlier this week discussing Professor Mayer’s and Professor Downs’ opposition to the visit; namely, political events taking place on school grounds were prohibited by the university’s own policies (an argument which Vice Chancellor for University Relations Vince Sweeney thought fit to completely sweep under the rug), classes were cancelled for which students had already paid and professors were forced to take a vacation day during the event. In addition, the requirement that students provide their phone numbers to the campaign to receive a ticket was controversial.
While all of these are valid points that former Chancellor Biddy Martin tactfully avoided when Obama last visited by having him speak off campus, I think that there is another more important reason why we shouldn’t have allowed the president to speak on our campus. The recently released video of then-candidate Barack Obama speaking about the hurricane Katrina victims was racially charged, offensive and goes against our strong tradition of accepting diversity and promoting equality.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you haven’t seen the video to which I’m referring. In 2007, Barack Obama gave a campaign speech to an audience in Hampton, Va. that was widely attended by members of the media. Somehow, these media representatives saw fit to only release certain portions of footage from the event, footage that was carefully edited and cut out remarks that many would consider to be abhorrently racist.
Liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan linked to a “transcript” of the speech which was actually, the prepared remarks provided by the campaign. CNN, the Associated Press and a number of newspapers released parts of the speech, but all of them somehow forgot to discuss the most divisive and racially charged remarks made by Obama.
In the speech, Obama starts with a callout to his Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright, who preached at Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama’s congregation. At the time, Wright had already publically announced he would no longer be speaking for the Obama campaign because of his own controversial remarks spoken during his sermons. Namely, Wright claimed that the U.S. government was “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
However, in his speech, Obama defended Wright, saying about critics, “they had stories about Trinity United Church of Christ because we talked about black people in church.” Obama, the public wasn’t critical about your church because it spoke about black people. The public was critical about your church because it was accusing the federal government of committing genocide against African Americans, intentionally hindering the growth of racial tolerance in our country.
In his speech, Obama also discussed the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, arguing that in New York after Sept. 11 and in Florida after Katrina, more money was given from the federal government because residents in those areas were “part of the American family.” Obama angrily states, “What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow the people down in New Orleans, they don’t care about as much!” The implication, of course, is that because New Orleans is composed of a large black population, the government doesn’t think aid should be given.
Not only is this statement racially charged, but it’s patently false. The federal government had sent $110 billion to New Orleans by this time, while Bush had only pledged $20 billion to New York after Sept. 11. In addition, the Bush administration had sent nearly $7 billion to New Orleans, free of Stafford Act requirement. As a Senator at this time, Obama should have been well aware of this information.
Before quoting Obama’s conclusion to his speech, I want to take a second here to also talk about another issue that I feel is tangential but related to Obama’s comments. In his speech, Obama is wailing that the government wasn’t helping New Orleans, as if the implication is that if the government wasn’t doing it, no one was. This is the archetypical liberal fallacy: Just because the government isn’t doing something doesn’t mean that it isn’t being done.
Obama’s comments are offensive to the thousands and thousands of workers and religious missions that took the time to travel to New Orleans on their own dimes to help repair the city. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has been working with residents of New Orleans since Katrina, and they still are. Some 30,000 youth travelled to the city when I was in high school, and the amount of work accomplished was remarkable. That sort of response did not take place in Florida or in New York to the scale that it did in New Orleans. Not only was the government sending aid to that city, but people all around America came together, completely color blind, to help out residents of New Orleans.
To those that were there, and those that labored to rebuild after the devastation without care or concern for the skin color of people in New Orleans, Obama’s comments incite anger and disgust. We, the people of the United States, made a strong statement after that event: We will help those who cannot help themselves, independent of the color of their skin, because it is our moral imperative and our moral right, and we will do it without the government mandate.
Obama ends his speech with these words, “America will survive. Just like black folks will survive. We won’t forget where we came from. We won’t forget what happened 19 months ago, or 15 years ago, or 300 years ago.” Obama, “black folks” are a part of America. “Black folks” are not independent of her; they comprise a vital and important part of the society in which all of us live. The kind of rhetoric that you are spewing is hateful and divisive.
As students on a campus that prides itself on being racially tolerant, friendly to diversity and accepting individuals as equals, inseparable from society on the basis of skin color, we should not condone the actions of the president. Obama’s words and his character are not becoming of our school or our nation.
Steven is a junior majoring in biochemistry and political science. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
