Perhaps Black People Should Stop Expecting Equality

Dr. Boyce Watkins

06 Feb 2013

by Dr. Boyce Watkins

Dr. Watkins, an esteemed author, economist and social commentator, has seen the error of his ways. He has been wrong to argue that President Obama be made accountable to Black people, his most ardent supporters. Instead, Blacks should be accountable to the president. “Only whites, Jews, gays, women, labor groups and illegal immigrants are allowed to expect anything from the president.”

Perhaps Black People Should Stop Expecting Equality

by Dr. Boyce Watkins

This article previously appeared in Your Black World.

“Your job as an African American is to vote for him and shut up.”

If you’re black and heartily supported President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election, I have some news for you. Barack Obama is NOT your president and you are not meant to get much of anything for your vote. He’s not the president of black America, so the fact that you would expect your president to do anything to reciprocate his receiving more black votes than any president in history makes you clearly delusional.

From what I am gathering based on comments that defend the lack of action by the Obama Administration on the black unemployment and incarceration crises, the facts are plain: Black people are not supposed to ask President Obama for anything. Only whites, Jews, gays, women, labor groups and illegal immigrants are allowed to expect anything from the president. Your job as an African American is to vote for him and shut up.

The bottom line that you people need to understand is a term called “accountability.” If you were accountable for all of your babies’ mamas, lack of educational interest and wasting your money, you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in today. Accountability needs to applied to all of you people, but that term must NEVER be used toward the president. He’s not accountable to anyone and certainly not to you.

When you think about it, it all makes sense: Black people built this nation with slave labor so that other people could benefit from our work. We built homes in which we were not allowed to live, we built wealth that we were never allowed to possess, and we even allowed white men to use black women to give birth to their light-skinned babies. So, it only seems logical that, in a nation with a 400-year tradition of using black people for the benefits of others, we are convinced to use our votes to push forward the gay and immigrant agendas, while expecting no attention to be paid to our own.

“Accountability needs to applied to all of you people, but that term must NEVER be used toward the president.”

Some would say that President Obama could use the power of the pardon to help the tens of thousands of men and women who are incarcerated for petty drug possession, which he admitted was unfair years ago. But that would be helping criminals, which is entirely different from helping fight for the rights of illegal aliens. After all, being black and breaking arbitrary laws is not the same as being Hispanic and breaking arbitrary laws, we should all know that.

Oh yeah, whatever your pastor has been telling you about gay marriage for the last 20 years, you need to go ahead and erase all that. There is no such thing as freedom of religion or expression and even saying that you disagree with gay marriage automatically makes you into a homophobe, the Obama Administration told me so. In fact, gay is the new black and fighting for gay rights is far more interesting and beneficial than fighting for the rights of black people any day of the week. Being black is no longer fashionable, so you might want to try becoming something else.

So, for those who are hoping that the Obama Administration will put forth even a mild mention of the black unemployment epidemic, you should realize the truth: You people can’t get jobs because you’re lazy and don’t want to work. When a white man can’t get a job, it’s not his fault, since he is clearly harder working and more qualified than you are. That’s why the Obama Administration responds directly when whites complain about 7 percent unemployment, but ignores you lazy negroes when you complain about 14 percent unemployment. If you would learn to work as hard as white men, you wouldn’t have this problem.

“Being black is no longer fashionable, so you might want to try becoming something else.”

Here’s a final point and this one is important: When white kids in the suburbs get shot, this is different from black children being shot in urban neighborhoods. In the first case, the kids are truly innocent, have bright futures and don’t deserve to die. In the latter case, kids die because they were raised by single mothers who don’t love their children, and it’s not as if they are going to amount to much of anything anyway. If inner city mothers didn’t want their kids to be killed, they wouldn’t have chosen to live next door to gang bangers.

So, I’m finally getting the point. I was once naïve enough to believe that every American was worthy of respect from our politicians, without regard to race. I also thought that since Obama could never have been elected without unprecedented black support, the administration might put us on the priority list along with other groups (not at the front of the list, of course, since that would imply that black people are as important as everyone else. The good Lawud knows I would never ask for such a thing, I knows my place). I even had the audacity to believe that when our children are shot, or when our fathers/mothers are given 30 year prison sentences for petty crimes, a black politician might at least act like he gives a d@mn. But now I realize that I was wrong and I’ll probably gain a lot of friends because of it.

Perhaps it’s time to kill Dr. King’s dream of equality, he probably would have been a hater too.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a professor at Syracuse University and author of “The 8 Principles of Black Male Empowerment.”

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