Juan Williams; BHO is no MLK

I met Juan Williams once as we were both scurrying off to lunch at Union Station in Washington DC several years ago. Despite our polar-opposite political views, I found him quite amiable. We only spoke briefly, mostly about his and my wife’s shared Panamanian heritage. Because of that pleasant encounter, I’ve always struggled to give him the benefit of the doubt on his views. I read his book “Eyes on the Prize” and found him to be more rational than most on race.

Today he has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Obama and King“. First, Williams presented a picture of the Civil Rights movement that I remember;

While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.

When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming “ourselves with dignity and self-respect.” He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from “assuming primary responsibility” for achieving “first class citizenship.”

Then Williams contrasted what the civil rights movement was with what it’s become;

But as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to transcend racial arguments and transform the world.

He has stopped all mention of government’s inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America.

And he chooses not to confront the poisonous “thug life” culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.

Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright’s racial attacks as the right of the Rev.-Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation’s future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother’s private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright’s public stirring of racial division.

Williams, of course hits the nail squarely on the head. When Jesse Jackson was seeking the Democrat nomination in 1984, I once saw him tell Black grade school students that no one would give them anything – that they’d have to study hard and work hard for everything they have. I know that seems like a dream now compared to today’s Jesse Jackson. Of course, I now realize that Jackson was just playing the media, the same as Obama is playing the media today.

Booker T. Washington once said;

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

Dr. King was a puller, what is Barak Obama?

Category: Politics, Society