(ThyBlackMan.com) Last week President Obama stood before the Congressional Black Caucus and gave his final speech as the acting Commander-in-Chief. The tone was very relaxed. At times it was playful. He was on friendly territory, a familiar neighborhood where you know everyone by their first names. It was like he walked into the door at Cheers and everyone said “Hey Barrack.” Still, it was his swan song to an organization that, in terms of a relationship, has often had to assume the role of the dedicated sidepiece.
And like a dedicated sidepiece they sat there, dreamy-eyed and attentive, hanging on his every word and laughing at all of his well-timed jokes. As the evening progressed and his speech turned more nostalgic, his tone became more philosophical about his legacy as being the first Black President of the United States of America. During these more subdued moments of introspection you could 
almost hear the communal sentiment rising in the air. “Four more years”, someone said.
“No”, he replied. Besides the fact that First Lady Michelle Obama has made it very clear to him and anyone else who’s listening that she is looking forward to saying “we out”, President Obama’s concern, as expressed to the CBC on that evening, was that his legacy remain intact. Here is where the tone of his speech turned into the admonishment of a father bestowing his empire to the eldest son.
And just how could they, er, we, continue to make sure that the policies of his presidency live on in perpetuity?
Get out and vote!
More alarmingly is the fact that He said he would take it as a “personal insult” if black folks don’t show up to vote in the current election.
It doesn’t take a political genius to know that his not-so-subtle call to arms was, in fact, a surrogate rallying cry for the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton. What better way for a party that relies on the Black vote than to have one of its native son’s give the halftime speech? It is therefore no leap of logic to understand the language that the President not so coyly relied on when laying the gauntlet. It was “if you liked me, which of course you do because, well, I’m Black, then you have no choice but to elect Hillary because a vote for her is a vote for me.”
The Democratic Party has been masterful in its manipulation of the black voter. In so far as it has been the party of change in America, it has not necessarily been the party of liberation for the black community. For example, under its modern day icon, Bill Clinton, the black community saw one of the greatest out-migrations in modern history of its talent base (black men) to the prison system. And while this is a decision that he decries today as being an “overstep”, the damage that has already been done is nearly incalculable.
African-American unemployment is still in the double digits, highest among any other ethnic group. The poverty rate has gone down, but is still disproportionately higher than others. Most damaging has been the continued disintegration of the Black nuclear family. At last count close to 80% of all black children are born to single parent households, which, and statistics prove this, exponentially increases a person’s chance of living in poverty. These and many more ailments that are specific to our community can be attributed to a series of social missteps, including politically expedient solutions. And while we know no one person in office can magically make all of this go away, we have been awaiting an advocate who isn’t afraid to acknowledge the specific needs of such a dynamic community.
And, by all accounts, that still hasn’t happened.
The current-day Democratic Party expects blacks to be afflicted with a perpetual case of gratitude, ever thankful for the overly romanticized view of the 1960’s civil rights movement when the Democratic leadership of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson “willfully” ushered in a new era of civil rights. And even that looking glass has become cloudy as it is constantly being rewritten to serve the growing mixture of political and social interests who didn’t’ even exist at that time. It is no wonder that a post-1963 Dr. Martin Luther King who said, in 1967, “my dream has turned into a nightmare” doesn’t occupy the modern day lexicon of the modern day Democratic Party.
Ultimately it is this sense of perceived indebtedness that the Democrats rely on when it comes down to dealing with the black community. However, to a community that has been under siege for so long, whose problems overshadow its victories, it is the equivalent of being stuck in neutral while trying to go uphill. The roar of the engine sounds great, but there’s no progress.
https://youtu.be/0h4_bSsxKEk
Staff Writer; Steven Robinson
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