The President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, whom, upon election to that office, was lauded as the “First Post-Racial President”, yesterday, while speaking to black American College Students, once again, intentionally, spoke about Racial Division, instead of American Cohesiveness.

Yahoo News reports that

Barack Obama visited a predominantly black college Saturday, making the case that the last decades and his presidency had brought substantial improvements for African-Americans.

Acknowledging that more needs to be done to reduce inequality, Obama took head-on the issue of race relations that have sometimes appeared to fester under his administration.

Since Obama came to office in 2009 as the first African American president, a strain of opposition to him has emerged that often appears racially driven.

Meanwhile, cities from Ferguson, Missouri to Baltimore, Maryland have exploded amid the killing of young black men at the hands of white police officers.

African-American men are still far more likely to have served time in jail and to earn less than their white peers.

But Obama insisted progress had been made. “America is by almost every measure better than it was when I graduated from college,” he said, looking back to 1983.

“Race relations are better since I graduated. That’s the truth. No, my election did not create a post-racial society, but the election itself and the subsequent one — because the first one, folks might have made a mistake… was just one indicator of how attitudes have changed.”

“Racism persists. Inequality persists,” he told graduating students at Washington’s Howard University, while offering a litany of examples of how things had changed for the better.

“When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T,” the burly, Mohawk-wearing former professional wrestler. “Rap and hip-hop were counter-culture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyonce runs the world.”

“We’re no longer entertainers, we’re producers, studio executives. No longer small-business owners, we’re CEOs, we’re mayors, representatives, presidents of the United States.”

In a nod to the lingering problems that have spurred the Black Lives Matter movement, Obama insisted that anger at injustice was not enough.

“You have to go through life with more than just passion for change. You need a strategy.

“I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion [but] you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness but action. Not just hashtags but votes. You see, change requires more than righteous anger.”

There was also a call for young black graduates to put themselves in the minds of others, police officers who may have bias or “the middle-aged white guy” who “you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change and feels powerless to stop it.”

“You got to get in his head, too,” he said.

Amid an election that has seen millions of white Republican voters embrace Donald Trump’s populist message, Obama tried to offer a strategy.

“There’s been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that. No matter how ridiculous or offensive.”

“My grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance.

“Let them talk.”

Now, over one-third of the way into his seventh and last (Thank God) year in office, it is quite apparent that, Barack Hussein Obama, the man who was billed as our first “Post-Racial President”, has done nothing but divide America even further, along Racial Lines.

According to gallup.com,

More than a third (35%) of Americans now say they are worried “a great deal” about race relations in the U.S. — which is higher than at any time since Gallup first asked the question in 2001. The percentage who are worried a great deal rose seven percentage points in the past year and has more than doubled in the past two years.

Concern about race relations in the U.S. has risen during an 18-month period marked by a series of deaths of unarmed blacks at the hands of police officers. These deaths sparked major, sometimes violent, protests and fueled the nationwide rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

Democrats, Liberals More Worried Than Republicans, Conservatives

Concern about race relations over the past two years has increased among Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, and blacks and whites. But the gap between the groups who were already most worried before 2015 — Democrats, liberals and blacks — and those less worried has not shrunk, and in some cases has widened. Of particular note is the 53% to 27% “worried” gap between blacks and whites, up from the 31% to 14% gap between blacks and whites in the 2012-2014 combined polls.

Race Relations Low on the List of Major Concerns

Prior to 2015, race relations was much less of a concern to Americans, relative to other national issues. In almost every one of 13 polls from 2001 to 2014, Americans were significantly less likely to be worried about race relations than about any of the other dozen or so issues tested. Even this year, though the percentage concerned is up, race relations still ranks near the bottom of the list of concerns, along with energy, climate change and illegal immigration. None of the four elicited a great deal of concern from more than 37% (illegal immigration) of the public, compared with more than 50% for healthcare, the economy, and crime and violence.

Bottom Line

Race relations may not worry as many Americans as do issues such as the economy, affordable healthcare or crime, but Gallup’s polling clearly shows that racial tensions over the past few years have significantly affected public opinion.

Not only are far more Americans — no matter their race or political beliefs — worried about race relations, Americans have also become less satisfied with the way blacks are treated and more likely to list race relations as the most important problem the nation faces.

The rising concern about race relations as the nation’s first black president completes his last year in office is a retreat from the optimism that swept the country in the immediate aftermath of President Barack Obama’s first election win in 2008. A Gallup poll one night after Obama won found that seven in 10 Americans believed race relations would improve because of his victory.

In fact, a mid-2015 Gallup poll indicated that treatment of blacks had not worsened during Obama’s time in office, even while concerns about race relations and treatment of blacks were rising. However, the poll also did not show any significant lessening of perceived racial discrimination among blacks.

In the current presidential election cycle, both conservatives and liberals have attacked Republican front-runner Donald Trump for his campaign’s racist overtones, and conservative pundits are already claiming that history will conclude the Obama presidency worsened race relations. These factors, along with the ever-growing number of racial protests on college campuses and elsewhere, make it unlikely that Americans’ concerns about race relations will diminish in 2016.

Gallup is, of course, a Liberal Organization. However, it is usually the most accurate among the pollsters.

The reference in their article concerning Donald Trump, however, belies a SurveyUSA Poll last September, in which 25% of Black Americans polled, stated that they would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

But, I digress…

Ever since Obama got into office, all I have heard from him is the Rhetoric of Racial Division and Class Warfare.

It reminds me of all the historical conflicts which I used to read about, during the course in college which I took, titled “The Rhetoric of Social Protest“.

Karl Marx knew long ago that all you needed to do to touch the heart of the common man was to convince him of a shared struggle.

Vladimir Lenin took this a step further, by using the concept of a shared struggle to convince the Bolsheviks to help him overthrow the Czar of Russia and murder him and his family during the Russian Revolution.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but fiery rhetoric spoken by a national leader has consequences.

President Barack Hussein Obama is as responsible for what has happened to Race Relations in America, as any thug wannabe in any city.

However, he is not alone in his responsibility.

Every race-baiter, local & national, who have fanned the flames of racial hatred, has the blood of any innocent person, police and civilians alike, slain in the name of Racial Division.

Do you remember when one half of the “Justice Brothers”, the “Reverend” Al Sharpton, led a march in New York City, capitalizing on the deaths of two of Michael Brown and Earl Garner?

During the march, the protesters chanted

What do we want? Dead Cops!

Somehow, America’s Professional Race-Baiters, from the Community Organizer-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, on down, twisted the facts to make it America’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Fault that two thugs got themselves killed in altercations with police officers.

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

President Ronald Reagan once said,

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

Compare it to these words:

It’s not to make excuses for that fact — although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context. They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history. – President Barack Hussein Obama, 7/19/2014

President Obama, for his own political reasons, reinforces, at every opportunity, the self-fulfilling prophecy that the Black Community is still shackled and limited in their freedom.

Which is an ironic statement, considering, as a Black man, that he presently holds the position of President of the most powerful country on the face of the Earth.

On November 25th of 2014, The Daily Caller reported that

Retired neurosurgeon and potential GOP 2016 candidate Ben Carson believes race relations in America, as a whole, have “gotten worse” under President Barack Obama’s leadership, saying he should take a ”balanced, objective look at things” instead of invoking the race card.

Carson made the comments to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday night.

“I actually believe that things were better before this president was elected,” Carson told Hewitt, “and I think that things have gotten worse because of his unusual emphasis on race.”

“Can you explain more? What do you mean by that?” asked Hewitt. “How did they get worse, and how did he contribute to it?”

“Well, for instance, in the incident with Henry Louis Gates, Skip Gates and him calling out the police, and you know, how they always do this kind of thing, and the Trayvon Martin case, you know, if I had a son, this is what he would look like, rather than trying to take the balanced, objective look at things, and then, you know, what’s happened here,” responded Carson.

“And then the way, which really irritates me to some degree, the way he and a bunch of progressives manipulate, particularly minority communities, to make them feel that they are victims. And of course if you think you’re a victim, you are a victim,” Carson continued.

Back in High School, during the 1974-1975 school year, I was a Sophomore Commissioner on the Student Council with a fellow named James. James was one of those students who were bused to our school. He went on to play football and run track. More importantly, James went on to have a 4.5 GPA, graduate high school as Valedictorian, make a 32 on his ACT, and receive a full scholarship to Harvard, and later, went on to Johns Hopkins Medical School. James worked hard and he achieved.

Millions of other Black Americans have, as well.

The current race-baiting and racially-based pandering by the President, his Administration, and all those who profit from it, locally and nationally, dishonors those who have achieved and has constrained those who might otherwise achieve.

I remember, as a 9 year old in Memphis, Tennessee, watching my parents’ black and white television as the National Guard was called into action on the night that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

I remember after that Civil Defense Announcement that President Lyndon Johnson come on national television to make the announcement of Dr. King’s death. I remember a feeling of helplessness and of fear, as a nine-year-old, that I had not felt before.

It wasn’t just the fact that we were living in Midtown Memphis, that made me afraid.

It was the fact of the out-of-control violence itself, that caused my consternation.

And now, all these years later, I have the same feelings tugging at my gut. It’s not because I can’t take care of myself, trust me, I can.

It is because, those leaders, who have sworn to protect American Citizens, up in our nation’s capital and in cities across America, have skirted that responsibility, choosing to fan the flames of Racial Division, promising to “share the wealth” in the name of “Racial Equality”.

Meanwhile, ever since 2013, Black Youth Unemployment (16-19) remains at a rate 393% higher than everyone else’s in this stagnant economy.

…Even with George Soros hiring Black Lives Matter to protest at Donald Trump Rallies.

So, to summarize, in the last year of the Post-Racial Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, America’s concern about Racial Division remains at an all-time high.

And, summer hasn’t even started yet.

Until He Comes,

KJ