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On Wednesday, President Barack Obama took to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to mark the solemn celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the civil rights motion’s march on Washington D.C. and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Obama’s performance was strong – speechifying is one of his most polished sills – however the substance of his address used to be additionally worth analyzing. It was as important for what concepts it embraced as those notions it rejected.
The president spent most of the opening of his speech reverentially recalling the oppression and struggles overcame via the civil rights movement’s activist leaders and followers alike. He touched on the lives taken by means of the palms of the hateful in that tumultuous period, and the tirelessness of the civil rights leaders who surmounted that fab injustice to vary America and the sector.
It was once a wide speech. It was once now not overly political or myopically all for the small concerns which dominate political debates on cable news as of late. It used to be a historic speech, spanning generations and crossing arbitrary national boarders to enchantment to a typical humanity. It used to be very a lot a speech that King would have preferred had he lived to look the nation’s first black president pay tribute to his legacy.
Then Obama admonished and repudiated people who say that “little has modified” in the 50 years due to the fact that MLK spoke on those steps. He stated that to declare full racial equality had been achieved would also dishonor the reminiscences of folks that died in quest of to reach it.
“We’ll undergo the occasional setback, but we can win these fights,” Obama stated. “This u . s . has modified too much. Folks of goodwill despite birthday celebration are too ample for these with in poor health-will to change historical past’s currents.”
Sure, the president spoke to his base. He mentioned the rising wealth gap between blacks and whites, high unemployment among minorities, poor schools, overcrowded prisons, his embattled well being care reform law and, of course, his political opponents who stand in the way in which of civic progress as he defines it. It’s forgivable for the president to take such an anticipated opportunity to develop his personal political agenda – nearly any capable flesh presser would.
Generally, though, when the president took on the issue of race he was once accountable, dignified, and confident. Obama advocated for overcoming bigotry and rejecting excuse for permitting families to fragment and youngsters to move uneducated and unsupervised. He used to be a role adaptation for the subsequent generation in that moment on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
It was a hovering speech deserving of reward. However distinction the president’s tackle with the smallness of some of his most dedicated supporters on MSNBC – a few of whom spoke at that podium just hours earlier than the president took the stage.
This morning, previewing the day’s speeches, MSNBC host Chris Matthews expressed his hope that the speakers – including the president – would lash out at the delicate racist assaults he sees constantly directed at the president. He attacked Republicans by means of name as being culpable in making an attempt to delegitimize the president – among the offenses Matthews listed in the past as efforts to strip Obama of his legitimacy are his opponents calling him by way of his name.
On Tuesday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz spent the majority of his program indicting conservatives across america for inciting “hate” in speak radio and on television. He linked proper-leaning media to the deliberate institution of a neo-Nazi camp in South Dakota, the refusal via a cafe to serve a black household out of worry, and state-stage voter identification regulations as evidence that racial development for blacks is in retreat. All this, at the back of a graphic of a map of the U.S. overlaid with a Confederate flag. When a viewer sent in a question asking if the GOP is “itching” for a “race battle,” Schultz acquired cold feet and noted that the media has a responsibility to “tone issues down.”
Schultz was once only taking a sentiment expressed by using MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to an in poor health-urged but logical excessive. On August sixteen, Scarborough mentioned that the opposition of some conservatives to legalizing gay marriage and Congressional Republicans’ objections to the Senate’s immigration reform idea are antagonizing minorities. Additional, conservative talkers on speak radio and cable news are, in his opinion, sending out “alerts.” “When you’re not white, you’re truly now not welcome on this birthday celebration,” Scarborough insisted.
Schultz’s attempt to create the affect that every problem the black group faces (which can be steadily problems faced via American citizens usually) is racial used to be echoed by means of MSNBC host Touré on August 26. “Guns, the welfare state, vote casting rights, immigration,” amongst many others, signify areas of public coverage by which subtle racism performs a job. Of course, the racially ignorant or discriminatory position on each and every of those considerations is the Republican position.
Advocates of 2nd Modification rights are ceaselessly considered to be nursing a latent pressure of racism via the cable information network’s hosts and contributors. MSNBC’s go-to guest host, Joy-Ann Reid, insisted that a “neo-confederate thread” permeates the thinking of gun rights supporters. By no means thoughts that gun control was once a favored way of legitimate Confederates to keep firearms out of the hands of African-American citizens, or that deference to the Constitution’s supremacy used to be infrequently a Confederate value.
The verdict in the trail of Trayvon Martin continues to function a racial criticism which MSNBC’s hosts and company rally around. Amid a detestable phase on August 23 linking the killing of Martin — a killing without any empirical evidence to strengthen the claim that his killer was moved by means of racial animus — to the torture and homicide of Emmett Until, one MSNBC guest asserted that the GOP has develop into a ‘white nationalist, Afrikaner, Boer birthday party.” What does one must do with the opposite? Most effective the fevered minds at 30 Rock may resolution that.
Of course, Invoice O’Reilly daring to note the disproportionate price of violent crimes dedicated by means of younger African-American men represents “puerile racism.” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s finger wag on the president in 2010 was once “racist.” A rodeo clown who wore an Obama masks was an exceptionally racist act of brand new “minstrelsy.”
And these are only some examples of MSNBC’s editorial take on race from August on my own.
The 2012 presidential campaign was an particularly educational romp in the course of the lively imaginations of skilled racial victims. Some distance too many examples of egregious exaggeration and inference happened on that community over the route of that election cycle to cite here, however suffice it to say that Chris Matthews’ insistence that Mitt Romney’s very choice to problem Obama for the place of job of the presidency carried racial implications is all you want to comprehend.
Past this month, Matthews insisted that President Barack Obama’s decision to offer MSNBC a large berth was proof for him that his network was no longer as biased as its reputation suggests. However Obama’s speech as of late suggests that the president does now not need the rest to do with the agitation practiced on that network.
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