President Obama is pulling out all stops to end segregation in the cities and towns of America, directing his administration to make rule changes. Federal law has prohibited discrimination in housing since passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, but the Obama administration says America’s cities are still too segregated. “The truth is for too long federal efforts have often fallen short,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said as the new rules were announced.
In a clear example of continuing to define the “fine print” long after passage of a law, the White House is focusing on one portion of the 1968 law. That portion requires cities that receive federal housing money to promote equal opportunity and access to housing regardless of race, origin, religion, sex, or disability. Now, 47 years later, President Obama is defining what that means. And par for the course, he is compiling data on Americans to enforce his definition of fairness. The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database is designed to provide data on race, income, health, debt, employment, and other metrics to show that whites and minorities are not being treated equally in the housing market — so the government can do something about it. As if what America needs is more data-mining.
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President Obama seems to have a hyper-sensitivity to race issues. He tends to see the world through the lens of racism. That lens is itself racist. He views whites as cruel, indifferent oppressors. That view of whites goes back to his high-school days, according to his book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. In 1995, he spoke about his then recently released book and read a lengthy excerpt from it to a group at the Cambridge public library. It was broadcast at the time on local cable television and the video has found its way to the Internet.
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In the video, he says he came to realize that a friend of his was right and blacks were “always playing on the white man’s court by the white man’s rules. If the principal or the coach or a teacher … wanted to spit in your face, he could because he had power and you did not.” He also references similar advice that he received from his mentor Frank Marshall Davis, though Davis, besides being an anti-white racist, was also a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). Obama also made it clear that Davis helped shaped his views of whites. It is obvious that Davis also shaped his views on government.
But since the book and video came long before he became president, is it fair to say that those are still Obama’s views? Given that the evidence continues to point in that direction even up to the present, it seems so.
When running for president in 2007, he gave a speech to a group of black ministers at Hampton University in Virginia. His long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright — from whom he would later attempt to distance himself after Reverend Wright’s most racist and anti-American statements were made public — was there, and Senator Obama addressed him as “my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country.” Strange that within months Obama acted like theirs was only a casual acquaintance.
In that campaign speech, he spoke of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and the damage done to New Orleans. The future president claimed that it was a racial issue. He said the federal government was not doing as much to help New Orleans after Katrina as it had done to help New York after 9/11 or Florida after Hurricane Andrew. The reason: because New Orleans is mostly black. Obama claimed that in both New York and Florida, the federal government waived the Stafford Act — which requires a 10-percent match from local governments on federal reconstruction — but did not do so for New Orleans:
When 9-11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, “This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.” And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, “Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with your own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.” What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!”
Senator Obama went on to say, “America will survive. Just like black folks will survive. We won’t forget where we came from. We won’t forget what happened 19 months ago, or 15 years ago, or 300 years ago.” Nineteen months before his speech, Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. Fifteen years before his speech, the Rodney King verdict caused Los Angeles to erupt into uncontrolled riots. Three hundred years before his speech, Africans were being bought and sold in slave markets. His point is clear. In his mind, the three events share the common element of racism: White people are still oppressing black people.
Remember, this is not a young, impressionable Barack Obama saying these things. This is Senator Obama, running for the White House.
The New American recently reported on the president’s plan to close the “digital divide” of high-speed Internet, which he says favors whites. The White House website promoting his new “Connect America” plan contains an infographic that shows the racial disparity in download speeds. Claiming that “there’s also a race divide when it comes to internet connections at home,” the infographic contains a sidebar that says “Hispanic, black, and Native American households all trail white households in internet adoption by more than ten percentage points.” Interestingly, the infographic shows that whites trail Asians by that same margin, but it doesn’t warrant a mention in the sidebar. Jewish Internet adoption rates aren’t even on the infographic. Again, the implication is clear. Internet adoption rates indicate white favoritism.
Now the President is focusing on housing which he says favors whites. Because there are nice communities that are predominately white, racism must be to blame. Never mind that there are nice communities that are predominately Jewish, Asian, Hispanic, or black. It’s those nice white neighborhoods that need to be addressed. And “desegregated.”
Setting aside the unconstitutionality of the Fair Housing Act, “equal opportunity” is not synonymous with a lack of segregation. Many people — of all ethnic backgrounds — choose to live around people similar in tastes, culture, and appearance to themselves. Besides a person’s preference, the most important factor that impacts where someone will live is income. To assert that because neighborhoods in America’s cities and towns are still often drawn along racial lines, that someone, somewhere is somehow being denied “equal opportunity” is mistaken. Equally mistaken is the notion that government can force the issue.
All of this rings a little hollow coming from a president who spent 20 years attending an almost exclusively black church, under the spiritual leadership of a pastor who regularly excoriates whites simply for being white.
Yes, President Obama’s earlier view of whites as oppressors is intact. Racism is still a problem in America, and it has found a home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
