For release: 05/23/24
President Biden’s disappointing Morehouse speech
By Cal Thomas
Tribune Content Agency
The academic year is coming to an end, thankfully. It has been characterized by some of the worst antisemitism since the Nazi regime and demonstrations by campus (and non-campus) radicals, many of whom appear to have been indoctrinated by professors whose anti-American, anti-capitalism and anti-Jewish ideas were formed in the corrupt philosophies of the ’60s.
President Biden’s commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, a historic school for Black men, was an imperfect end to an imperfect academic year.
The president played the race card, the white supremacy card and the guilt card. In a poker game it would be called three of a kind.
The Wall Street Journal headlined its editorial on the speech “Biden to Morehouse Graduates: America Hates You.”
Biden’s past remarks on race are the opposite of what he preaches today. The Heritage Foundation has compiled a few of them: In 2010, he warmly eulogized Sen. Robert Byrd, a former Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan, saying he was “one of my mentors” and that “the Senate is a lesser place for his going.” In 2007, he referred to Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.” In 2006, he said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” Way back in 1977, he said that forced busing to desegregate schools would cause his children to “grow up in a racial jungle.”
There are many similar comments which can be found in a Google search.
Biden seems to get away with these remarks because the media and his fellow Democrats never hold him accountable.
Half of Biden’s Morehouse speech was about himself. He also kept referring to America as a democracy. It is a constitutional republic.
Losing ground among Black, Hispanic and young voters, Biden then said things that are unlikely to boost his poll numbers among members of these groups: “What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street?” “What is democracy if a trail of broken promises leaves Black communities behind?”
In perhaps the unkindest cut of all about his country, Biden said, “What does it mean … to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?” He ignored the trillions of dollars spent on anti-poverty programs and the numerous civil rights laws (which most Southern Democrats opposed) to help redress the stain of slavery.
Biden also torched his home state of Delaware, claiming it was racist until he arrived on the political scene.
All of this from a man who ran for president in 2020 on “hope and change.” Biden’s commencement address conveyed no hope and no change.
A recent Washington Post headline summarizes Biden’s problem with a new generation of African Americans: “Frustrated by Biden, Black men ponder their options.”
While colleges and universities like to compete for high-profile commencement speakers, Morehouse should have invited a successful Black man who has overcome adversity, racism and poverty by embracing the values that have historically benefited individuals and families of all races.
Some of those values were articulated to a middle school assembly of minority students in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s. The speaker was Rev. Jesse Jackson. I was there and heard him tell young girls to avoid sex and pregnancy before marriage and the boys to stay away from gangs, crime and drugs.
Jackson’s talk was far better than the disappointing address delivered by President Biden at Morehouse College, whose graduates deserved better.
Readers may email Cal Thomas at [email protected]. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
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