Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:
Tavis Smiley And Cornel West Want To See Peel And Stick “Black Agenda” Labels On Obama Policies
To Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, and all other African American pundits who want to own the conversation about the black community - President Barack Obama is not Captain Save-A-Negro. He is the president of the entire United States. The way Smiley and West have been carrying on lately, though, you would think President Obama is supposed to wink his eye at the TV camera at least once a week and whisper, "I'll get that hook up for y'all when I get done with this announcement." What do these two commentators expect the president to do? Open up special branches of the U.S. Treasury in black communities that sell dollar bills for fifty cents?
Which is why I was pleasantly surprised the other day, while cruising through the Ta-Nehisi Coates blog at The Atlantic, to come across a video recording of professor Randall Kennedy's appearance on Tavis Smiley's PBS show. Kennedy, the author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, provides an analysis of the dilemma Barack Obama faces as America's first African American president that is so rational and thoughtful that I took the time to transcribe some of his more illuminating comments.
READ MORE AT BIG THINK
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