What I Heard: President Obama calls for African American leaders to get fired up and march for jobs, equality and opportunity
Several members of Black Women’s Roundtable were also in the room when President Obama addressed the closing CBCF ALC Gala and shared his vision for getting America back to work through the American Jobs Act. So, it puzzles me why some mainstream media headlines quoted only the last minute (3 lines) of 27 minutes of President Obama’s speech and interpreted it as chastising the CBC and Black people to “stop complainin’, stop cryin’, take off their slippers and put on their marchin’ shoes.”
Were these reporters in the room?
What I heard was a powerful call to action delivered in classic civil rights cadence. When President Obama said, “throughout our history, change has often come slowly. Progress often takes time. We take a step forward, sometimes we take two steps back. Sometimes we get two steps forward and one step back. But it’s never a straight line. It’s never easy. And I never promised easy. Easy has never been promised to us. But we’ve had faith. We have had faith. We’ve had that good kind of crazy that says, you can’t stop marching” it brought us to our feet and motivated many of us to action.
I cannot speak on why some in the media focused on the last three lines of the President’s speech, but, I can speak for what I heard, along with what was heard by many members of the Black Women’s Roundtable who were also in the room and shared similar impression of President Obama’s call to action to African Americans.
The President made a strong case for how the American Jobs Act would help the African American community and he asked the CBC and other African American leaders to work with him, to focus on the future and work together to get the bill through Congress to get America back to work.
It was clear that President Obama shares the frustration that many African Americans and all Americans feel about the pace of the recovery of the economy and the rise of Black unemployment.
I heard the President explain that he doesn’t have time to complain, quoting Dr. King and John Lewis, saying that we should not be afraid to demand more, to know that we deserve more, and to “press on”. He said that instead of focusing on how difficult the challenges are, we in the African-American community have a history of pressing on, demanding change, and achieving it.
I heard the President lift up and thank Dr. Joseph Lowery, the Dean of the Civil Rights Movement, for staying in the fight for civil rights for “89 of his 90 years.”
I heard the President implore the CBC to work with him to achieve these mutually beneficial common goals, and he committed to working with them to keep moving, despite the criticisms from opponents, for our children and for the family members who have difficulty pressing on.
President Obama’s speech was an opportunity to discuss how the American Jobs Act would help the African American community through job training programs, tax cuts to small businesses, and expanding unemployment insurance that would benefit 1.4 million African Americans.
So, from what I heard, the real headline should have read, President Obama calls for African American leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus and all Americans to get fired up and once again march for jobs, equality and opportunity for future generations!
http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2011/09/transcript-president-obamas-remarks.html
Melanie L. Campbell is the president and CEO of The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of Black Women’s Roundtable.
