AT2W

President Obama Tells Black CBC Caucus: “Take Off Your Bedroom Slippers and Stop Complaining”

Wow. It was pretty interesting to read the transcript of the speech President Obama gave at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner at the Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C. on September 24, 2011.

We could mention many things about the speech we have an opinion on, but we will focus on one statement he made that is spreading around the internet as insulting and derogatory.

In the speech, the President explains the current economic status, the unemployment rate for African Americans and how everyone is just having a hard time. Well, while we can agree with at least that, he has apparently offended some people with his last and closing statements of the speech.

Read the excerpt below provided by The Grio:

So I don’t know about you, CBC, but the future rewards those who press on. With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children.  I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off.  Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC. 

Now, some may not see much in those last statements but plenty of people are not happy about it. People are angry because they feel he doesn’t understand them and is calling them lazy. When the President said ‘take off your bedroom slippers’, its as if unemployed black folk are just laying in the bed waiting for a job to fall out of the sky. We do think that black folk know just how hard things are. Many African Americans have always been hit much harder economically than any other race in times of recession. Let’s give black folks some credit here. There are many who are going out trying to find work everyday and attending every job fair available. We do think black folk know just how hard it is when more people have lost their homes to foreclosure; living in their cars and how many have lost their children to the system.

Since the year 2007 until present, some people are still severely struggling to make it. We do not think black folks are not taking this economy seriously when even upper class whites have lost everything.

Let’s get real, Mr President. If there are black people ‘complaining, grumbling and crying’ its not because they are sitting at home at the foot of their bed in pajamas 3 pm in the afternoon. They have been hit very hard like many others. The people complaining aren’t the ones who have been on welfare for years either. We are talking about individuals who worked for years,  can’t feed their families and do not see you making any differences in their community with an impact.

Let’s remember, Mr. President blacks voted you in because you appeared to be the better candidate as well as being of the same hue. They would think you’d understand their pleas for help.

Maybe if the President would stop supporting gays and every other interest group, let go of his dominate white culture, he might see the BLACK side of things.