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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
12:18
The Best Political Debate on Racism: Obama vs Obama | Larry Elder
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You know the debate I'd like to see?
Barack Obama versus Barack Obama on racism.
There's the commencement Barack Obama, who's very positive about the country, and then there's the political Barack Obama, who knows that if you get black people angry enough about racism, they're going to march in there like Lemmings and pull that lever for the Democratic Party.
This is the commencement Obama.
What nationality, what gender, what race, whether you'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what Faith you'd be born into, you wouldn't choose a hundred years ago.
You wouldn't choose the fifties or the sixties or the seventies.
You'd choose right now.
In America, you would choose right now.
And it was that commencement speaker Obama who told 60 Minutes Steve Croft, no, racism will not stop me from becoming president of the United States.
You think the country's ready for a black president?
Yes.
You don't think it's going to hold you back?
No.
I think if I don't win this race, it will be because of other factors.
It's going to be because I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go that they can embrace.
And then there's that other Obama, the political Obama, who knows you gotta talk about race and racism, get black people stirred up so they march in there like lemmings and pull that lever 95% for the Democratic Party.
There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.
That includes me.
There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.
That happens to me, at least before I was a senator.
Those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets What happened one night in Florida.
But on election night, we had the commencement speaker, Barack Obama.
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, Tonight is your answer.
So we have stuck a fork in the notion that America is institutionally racist, right?
Not so fast.
The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, that casts a long shadow.
And that's still part of our DNA. That's passed on.
We're not cured of it.
Racism.
Racism.
We are not cured of.
Clearly.
But remember that 90% of the way there, Senator Barack Obama, the commencement, Obama.
I'll say it.
The Moses generation.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
But we got to remember now that Joshua still had a job to do.
As great as Moses was.
Despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the promised land.
God told him, your job is done.
You'll see it.
You'll be at the mountaintop and you can see what I've promised.
What I promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
And I promise to you, you can see that I will fulfill that promise.
Amen.
But you won't go there.
We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens.
There's still some battles that need to be fought, some rivers that need to be crossed.
Like Moses, the task was passed on to those who might not have been as deserving, might not have been as courageous, find themselves In front of the risks that their parents and their grandparents and great grandparents had taken.
But that doesn't mean they still don't have a burden that they have to shoulder.
That they don't have some responsibilities.
The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way.
They took us 90% of the way there, but we still got that 10% in order to cross over to the other side.
People in Washington, they wake up.
They're surprised.
There's poverty in our midst.
Folks are frustrated.
Black people angry!
But then there's a commencement Obama who knows full well the issue is not racism.
The issue is the absence of fathers.
After all, it was Obama who said, a kid raised without a father is five times more likely to be poor and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail.
That Obama knows the problem is not racism.
That Obama knows that the problem is the absence of fathers.
How can we as a nation Not just the government, but businesses and community groups and concerned citizens.
How can we all come together to help fathers meet their responsibilities to our families and communities?
But then...
I realize that America's critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals.
That America has plenty of problems within its own borders.
This is true.
In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri, where a young man was killed and a community was divided.
So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.
What to do?
What to do?
Godfather, I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do.
You can act like a man!
But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin.
You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.
I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that.
But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry.
Number two, that the Cambridge police...
acted stupidly.
But then...
It's important to note progress.
Because to deny how far we've come would do a disturbance to the cause of justice.
To the legions of foot soldiers.
To not only...
Incredibly accomplished individuals who've already been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads and grandparents and great-grandparents who marched and toiled and suffered and overcame to make this day possible.
But then...
And it's not just a matter of...
It not being polite to say nigger in the public, that's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.
It's not just a matter of overt discrimination.
Societies don't overnight completely erase everything that happened two to three hundred years prior.
To repeat, the debate I'd love to see is the debate between the commencement speaker, Barack Obama, and the political Barack Obama, who knows you've got to get black people angry, obsessed about racism, in order for them to march in there like lemmings and pull that lever to the tune of 95% for the Democratic Party.
Now, we all remember the name of George Floyd, don't we?
Well, actually, some of us don't.
For the families of Floyd Taylor, George Taylor, I only will do that if you tell me that this legislation is worthy of George Kirby's name.
But then, as MSNB hee-haw's Contessa Brewer could have told you, things can always get worse.
Joining me now to talk about this and the nation's real problem of joblessness, the Reverend Al Sharpton.
What's your reaction to hearing someone say, you know, when it comes to income inequality, all's well.
The rising tide floats all boats.
I'm Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Right.
You know what?
I'm so sorry.
The script in front of me said Reverend Al Sharpton.
I'm looking at your face.
I know who you are, Reverend Jackson.
We all do.
I'm sorry.
I love the way you've decorated in here.
Want to get away?
Now, as you know, my film, Uncle Tom, debuted on June 19, and it's really doing well.
I urge you to go to IMDB and check out some of the reviews.
Here's a trailer.
Obama tore this country down.
No one stood up to him.
Nobody.
Because he was black.
You need to wake up.
My parents didn't teach me that I was a victim.
They can turn back voting rights.
Didn't nobody donate to us the right to vote?
I didn't call you a nigga.
Oh, okay, that's a big difference.
Uncle Tom is somebody who has sold out by embracing the white man.
Uncle Tom.
Bedway.
Boot liquor.
Black white supremacist.
Chucking and Jarvis.
House Negro.
Coon.
Uncle Tom.
Coon.
Coon.
I have a Kool Award over there.
Kool of the Year Award.
Most black people don't believe that other blacks can be independent, free thinkers.
I believe the legacy and the ancestry of black Americans is being insulted every single day.
I will not pretend to be a victim in this country.
I know that that makes many people on the left uncomfortable.
Racist.
Racist.
Racism.
A thousand cuts of racism.
The liberal would try to control a black person through the concept of racism because they know that we are very proud, emotional people.
I never felt that because I was black or I was poor or a woman that I couldn't do something.
I grew up being told of my disadvantages, that this country is unfair to black people.
The ideology is implanted into you subconsciously to believe these things.
It's like a cancerous plague in the mind of black Americans.
We're brainwashed to think, well, is it because I'm black?
America's not ours, so we got shipped here.
No, our blood is on this soil.
We own this too.
There should be a pride that we have in the fact that this country was built by many great black men and women.
Are you trying to say that this country does not specialize in racism and bigotry?
So long as black people continue to have their psyche filled by that nonsense, we won't have an awakening.
I'm Larry Elder and we've got a country to save.
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