President Barack Hussein Obama came to Howard University and delivered what many Black people will regard as the best speech of his presidency. (Click here for one absolutely hilarious reaction.) As with Larry Wilmore's White House Correspondents' Dinner Speech, we expect most white people to disagree. Here's why they are wrong on both.
In content, reference and tone, both the President and Wilmore were not speaking to white people. They were speaking directly to Black people.
Mr. Obama started by name checking the resident student dormitories at Howard. In doing so, he speaks to the people who either lived in, partied at, heard about or wanted to party at one (or more) of the dorms. This may number 900,000 Black people, give or take...I'm not even kidding.
He also name checked the pantheon of Black activists and achievers: Thurgood Marshall, David Dinkins, Zora Neale Hurston, King, of course, but also Fanny Lou Hamer, and James Baldwin, just for starters. This was a profane and profound way to acknowledge the giants who came before him, contrary to those, black and white, who say he is unmindful of the debt he owes.
He moved on to reference and name check Wilmore, currently experiencing some negative feedback: many white people simply did not get Wilmore's brilliant WHCA Dinner speech. Obama thus provided support (yo, Larry, my nig....) and cover .
In the end, Mr. Obama remains a traditionalist and a conservative (this is why he did not mention Stokely Carmichael, BTW, another Howard graduate who passed on a full ride at Harvard...). Some of his key points are as follows:
1. Vote like you life depends on it. It does. As he noted, "In 2012, 2 out of 3 turned out to vote. In 2014, 2 out of 5 did. And you don't think this made a difference in who I had to deal with?" It matters, Mr. President. It matters.
He predicted voting will matter even more in the coming years, given efforts to deny the right to vote to a significant section of the population (read: Black people). As Mr. Obama noted, the US is the "only advanced democracy on earth that goes out of its way to make it difficult for people (read: Black people) to vote"
2. Let the bigots talk, then rebuke them...hard. His subtext was that this might come in the form of exceptional and competent performance:
In this way, he syncs with Wilmore's WHCD talk. White people simply didn't get Wilmore's repeated references linking Ted Cruz to the Zodiac Killer, but Black people knew what he meant: you can look exactly like a serial killer and run for President of the US. As Cruz (and Trump) prove, you don't even have to be competent, as long as you (and your serial killer doppelganger) are white.
This also explained Mr. Obama's operating philosophy for the last eight years: to get things done, you have to effectively deal with people with whom you disagree. It's tough, but it's just the way things work. Quoting Zora Neale Hurston, he reminded us that "nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person." The key takeaway here is that you must stay woke. As the President said, passion is no substitute for strategy. You MUST RESPOND. Mr. Obama suggests doing so in a polite way, which is, in general, good advice. (Of course, we still think Black Lives Matter has it mostly right....)
3. Keep fighting. Racism is not going away. As he noted, "I don't know who came up with that Post-racial thing. It wasn't me." No, Mr. President. It was the same people who will now become your post Presidential BFFs (Best Friends Forever): the bigoted conservatives who did everything they could to make you a one term President (unsuccessfully, I might add) and are currently working to limit voting rights (successfully, I might add). These people will use your Presidency as proof that racism doesn't exist. As with global warming, immigration, Wall Street and the chances of Donald Trump becoming their nominee, they will be wrong. Very wrong.
Not so for Mr. Obama, who ended where he began, with hope, with Yes We Can. To paraphrase Mr. Wilmore, Yes, you did, Barry....er....Mr. President. Yes, you did...