Let’s talk about Obama’s legacy. Every former president, when they leave office, leaves behind a legacy, something impactful from which Americans benefit. Many times, it’s something with a long-term impact on the American people. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR for short, started our modern Social Security program, where older people get some kind of a regular payment from the state after paying into it for most of their working life. Social Security could be said to be one of FDR’s long-term legacies. So, now that Obama is out of office, and no longer the president of the United States, we can ask some questions. What is his legacy? What should his legacy be?
For example, during his presidency, the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, was passed. Many people look at this piece of legislation as part of Obama’s legacy. They hold it in high esteem, seek to protect it, and don’t want it to go away because they think that by doing so that we’re getting rid of Obama’s legacy. But this presents a problem.
Obamacare didn’t make health care more affordable, but precisely the opposite – it’s caused premiums and deductibles to go through the roof. Ironically, it seemed to hurt the black community the worst. Republicans think it’s a terrible piece of legislation. Democrats recognize that it’s flawed. Both sides want to replace it with something different, something better. And, of course, this all begs the question: why would you want Obama’s legacy to be a terrible and flawed piece of legislation that both the Republicans and the Democrats want to replace with something else?
This is just one thing, but seriously, whether you like him or not, don’t you want his legacy to be something good, something symbolic, something that benefits the well-being of all Americans, but especially the African Americans?
Why does his legacy have to be something that gets deleted and erased, replaced with something else, and eventually forgotten? It doesn’t! His legacy should be something profound, something that future generations of Americans, but in particular African Americans, look at as something deep and profound, motivates you to get back on track if you’ve lost sight of your path, and has a strong positive motivational quality to it. Now with all this being said, what should Obama’s legacy be?
Below, I give four things that I think Obama’s legacy should be. If you agree, and take these things to heart, it can be of great benefit to your psyche. Especially if you’re black. If you disagree, you should still ponder these things in your heart. So, let’s begin.
1. He’s a family man. He’s always been a great role model in that he’s been a good husband to his wife and a good father to his daughters.
Why do I bring this important point up? Because this role, of being a stable male figure, or father figure, inside the home is altogether lacking in the black community. Only about one in four black homes has this. This model, to me, is a great legacy for the African American community, and a legacy that could work to turn the black community, and the black home, around.
What do I mean? Let me explain.
Political leaders, especially those on the political left, like to bring up all the disparities from which the black community suffers. Things like higher crime and homicide rates, higher rates of imprisonment, higher poverty rates, higher rates of high school dropouts, etc. All of these disparities are repackaged and relabeled by the political left under the names “systemic racism” or “structural racism.” To the left, all of these disparities are proof that racism is alive and well in our country, and at the systemic or structural level.
Now I’m not saying that these disparities don’t exist, because they in fact do exist. In fact, I do look at these disparities as an injustice that is being perpetrated on the black community that need to be addressed, which means that we should work to get rid of these disparities, thus improving the well-being of members of the black community. What I am saying is that by looking at these disparities from the perspective of race doesn’t actually work to solve the real underlying problem in the black community that leads to these disparities, but only serves to hide the real problem, covering it up, and thus making many of us blind to the real issue that truly needs to be dealt with. It works to make these disparities even worse. So, if we shouldn’t look at these disparities in the black community, truly an injustice, from the perspective of race, how should we look at these disparities? What perspective should we use to truly solve these injustices?
Now, I’m going to make a claim that many of you, particularly on the political left, won’t like, but if you bear with me, you’ll find out that I’m correct, and that I’m dead on. So, what is this claim? Here it is: all of the disparities that are being pushed by the left as proof of racism can be far more accurately explained when looked at from the perspective of type of household environment and type of family structure.
In order to try to prove my point, let me give you some statistics that are given from the perspective I just suggested to you, or more accurately, the type of household defined as fatherless, single-mother homes.
•60% of all child abuse is caused by mothers with sole custody of their children. This, of course, includes the mother’s boyfriend or lover.
•85% of all behavioral disorders are found in children who lived in fatherless homes; they are 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders. And much of the time, these behavioral disorders, if not dealt with properly, lead to criminal activity and violent crimes.
•90% of all runaway children came from fatherless homes; they are 32 times more likely to run away.
•80% of all rapists, who acted out of displaced anger, came from fatherless homes.
•70% of juveniles in juvenile detention centers came from fatherless homes.
•85% of the youths sitting in prison came from fatherless homes.
•Fatherless children are 5 times more likely to commit suicide, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 9 times more likely to end up in a mental institution, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.
Now think about these statistics – they are roughly the same no matter what your racial background is. For example, if you take a young white man and a young black man, both of which are being raised in a household environment by a single mother, with no father present, both have similar likelihoods of ending up in prison, or being poor, or dropping out of high school. If you take a young white man and young black man, both of whom come from intact traditional family structures with a stable father figure present, they both have a distinct advantage and level of privilege over their counterparts that isn’t based on race, but on type of household environment, and that type of household’s effect on their well-being, level of advantage, and psychological health.
Or, to put this together using a slightly different perspective – take all the young black people who are being raised by single parents, usually single mothers, put them in one group, and then take all the young black people who come from intact traditional nuclear family structures, who have both parents present, and put them in a separate group. What we would see is disparities between those two groups that look favorable to those black youth that come from intact families, and disfavorable to those black youth being raised by single mothers. When you look at these problems from this perspective, all those disparities that exist between those two groups take place right within the black community itself, since white people aren’t part of this comparison. Now, if that’s the case, these disparities can’t be based on race at all, but must be based on something different. And I’ve already told you what that different thing is – type of household and family environment.
When we talk about black youth being disadvantaged and underprivileged, what we’re really doing is talking about the fact that most – that is 3 out of every 4 – black youth don’t come from intact families with a father figure present in their lives. Compare that to the fact that among whites, only 1 out of every 4 white youth don’t come from intact families with a father figure present in their lives. This, to me, explains all the disparities found in the black community when comparing to the white community, or to society in general.
Those black youth that do come from intact families, and do have a father present in their lives, end up having a level of advantage and privilege not found with the rest of black youth, but this advantage has become quite rare these days.
When we talk about systemic racism, what we’re really doing is taking the effects of not having intact family structures in the black community, and not having a father figure present in the home, and “racializing” those effects. If you don’t come from an intact family structure with a father present, you’re more likely to live in poverty, more likely to not finish high school, and more likely to go to prison.
Now, if what I’ve said is true, and we really do want to get rid of these disparities found in the black community, because they’re a form of injustice, then we need to work on improving the family structure in the black community. We need to work to make sure more black homes have fathers present, like Obama was present in the lives of his daughters. As we improve the black family structure, and replace single-parent households with intact, traditional, two-adult nuclear family structures, with fathers present in the homes, we’ll see those disparities found in the black community shrink, and eventually disappear. And when that eventually happens, we can truly celebrate as a nation.
Because I’m arguing that the well-being of the black community is directly related to the strength, health, and well-being of the black family structure, this is where the Obamas enter the picture. This is where we can talk about Obama’s legacy. If you’re working to have an intact nuclear family yourself, then you’re following Obama’s great example. I want this to be one of his legacies.
So, with that being said, if you’re a black man, and you’ve got children out there being raised by their mother, and you’re not present in their lives, or living in the same home, then you’re not following Obama’s example, and you are thus betraying his legacy.
If you’re a black woman, and you have children, and you’re raising them as a single mother because the father is not present in your children’s lives, then you also aren’t following Obama’s example of the kind of home that’s beneficial and advantageous to black youth, and are helping to create the very disparities that fall under the term structural racism. By going this route, you’re also betraying Obama’s legacy. (I understand that sometimes you aren’t in control of the situation in which you find yourself, but when it is under your control, and you still choose to go this single-mother-household direction, you are the ones I am talking to today.)
Strengthening the black family, thus modeling Obama’s family, should be one of his legacies. Replacing households run by single mothers with two-parent households with intact nuclear family structures should be a priority in the black community – that should be one of his legacies. What the black family needs is a strong male figure to help lead their homes – a role Obama modeled and epitomizes – that is part of his legacy.
What we have today is a large majority of the black community that is unable to take advantage of many of the civil rights gained in the 1950’s and 1960’s because the family structure, which the Obama’s represent, has been largely destroyed. We need to get back to rebuilding the intact black family, and we can use the Obama’s for that model. We can use our former president to model the strong male figure, that is a good husband and father, that is largely absent in the black household.
Okay, now let’s move on to the next point.
2. He held the most powerful and prominent job position in the entire country for eight years. If a black man can hold that kind of position, then there isn’t any door that can’t be opened by black people these days.
There’s a lot of complaining happening in the black community these days that they can’t get the same kinds of jobs as white people, can’t run businesses like other people, and that there are a lot of doors, economic, social, vocational, etc. that can’t be opened by black people. And who is giving this narrative? The Democratic party – the same political party which Obama officially represented.
There’s one big problem in thinking that there’s a lot of doors that can’t be opened by you because you’re black. Think about it. If doors are as closed as you think they are, and as much as the Democratic party tells you they are, then how was it possible for Obama, a black man, to be president? How was a black man able to secure the most powerful and prominent job position in the entire country if that kind of door was closed to him?
The answer is that there aren’t any doors that can’t be opened by black people these days. Many of you, who are black, stand in front of closed doors, and complain about how those doors weren’t opened for you, and make the claim that the closed doors are based on racism. But, the truth of the matter is, there are closed doors for everyone, and it doesn’t matter what their race is. Here’s a little secret for you: you don’t have to wait for others to open doors for you – you’re supposed to work to open those metaphorical doors yourself. You can take charge and responsibility over your own life.
Playing the victim is oppressive – it basically puts other people in control of your life; taking responsibility over your own life is liberating – it allows you to be the determining factor in how your life turns out.
There are many, many black people that built a life for themselves, built a successful business, and made things possible for themselves. They didn’t wait for someone else to do it for them; they didn’t play the victim and then complain that they didn’t get anywhere. They didn’t “play the black card” to absolve themselves of any stupid mistakes they may have made, but took responsibility for their own mistakes and learned from them.
Now let’s enter Obama – he didn’t say, “I want to be president; I’ll just stand here and wait for someone to open the door for me.” He didn’t do that. He worked hard to open that door himself, a door that was available to open because some of his predecessors provided that door for him, and once that door became available, he asserted himself. He took charge over his own life.
So, stop playing the victim. Recognize how far we’ve come as a nation. There are no avenues you can’t travel down if you’re black. There are no doors these days that can’t be opened. Obama followed his dream of being president, and you can follow your dreams, too. Let one of Obama’s legacies in your life be the fact that what he did means you’ve got no doors you can’t open.
Go get ’em, tiger!
3. He gives a great example of what hard work and persistence can lead to.
This is similar to number 2 above, but from a slightly different perspective.
Now that I’ve made it clear that there are no doors you can’t open and go down these days, there is one other element that you need to know. I touched on it a little bit above, but will go into more detail now.
You see, it’s not enough to just open that metaphorical door; once you do, you’ll have to work your butt off in order to make something of yourself, and make having opened that door worthwhile. You’ll have to learn from your own mistakes and make course corrections. There’s no blaming others. There’s just forging ahead, no holds barred.
I was listening to a story the other day by a young black woman who was talking about her grandfather. He started out working in North Carolina on a sharecropper’s farm, worked hard at other jobs, including cleaning homes and businesses, and eventually opened up his own cleaning businesses, working hard at it so that it became successful, and eventually bought his own piece of land – the same land he sharecropped when he was younger – and built his own house on that piece of land. According to his granddaughter, although he was surrounded by racism, the KKK, segregation, and Jim Crow laws, he never played the victim. He didn’t blame others for any problems he might have had, but fixed them himself. He focused on the things that were under his control.
We have many examples before us of what can happen with hard work. You get your own doors opened, and prosper, despite all the possible setbacks. But you don’t give up, you don’t make excuses, you don’t “play the victim,” but just keep plugging ahead.
And Obama is one of these examples. He kept forging ahead until he landed that most coveted of positions as leader of the free world.
Alright, now let’s move on to my last, and most controversial point.
4. He represents the legacy, not of the Democrats, but of the Republicans. He represents the Black Cause that the Republicans have been fighting for from the beginning. He represents the victory of that Black Cause against all of the sinister schemes of the Democratic party to suppress, subjugate, and keep down the black people. Although Obama was a Democrat, his winning the presidency was in spite of what the Democrats have done throughout the entirety of their history and continue to do to this day. It was not because of them. From this standpoint, Obama’s legacy would be the Republican party, not the Democratic party.
I know what I just said sounds ironic, and is controversial, but let me explain myself.
Throughout the entirety of their history, the Democratic party has been anti-black. In fact, and this is my humble opinion now, they continue to be anti-black to this day.
Before our Civil War, they were the pro-slavery party. When an anti-slavery Republican was elected as president, they saw that the end of slavery was near, so, in an act of defiance to try to preserve it, they seceded from the Union, leading to our Civil War. But they lost, and slavery was banned. When the period of Reconstruction ended in the late 1870’s, and they regained power in the south, they created a system of segregation, created Jim Crow laws and the infamous Black Codes, and formed what became the domestic terrorism arm of the Democratic party, known as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), that worked to keep black people and white Republicans from voting, gave whites a position of superiority, and blacks a position of inferiority. And they lynched black people.
Many decades later, when the Civil Rights bills of the 1950’s and 1960’s were being passed, the Democrats voted in favor of those bills in lower percentages than the Republicans because there was still deep-seated racism well into the 1960’s inside the Democratic party. In fact, the only real opposition to those bills came from the Democrats.
Then they created their social welfare programs that, although pushed on all Americans, were pushed on black people the most as a form of “racial justice,” but all these programs did was make sure higher percentages of blacks stayed poor, all while destroying the black family structure that had already been battered by generations of slavery, segregation, white supremacy, Jim Crow laws and Black Codes. And by doing that, the Democrats made sure that many in the black community were not in a place where they could take advantage of the rights they had acquired by the passage of all of the Civil Rights bills, all while exacerbating the very disparities that the political left labels as “systemic racism.”
Compare that to the Republicans. In the 1850’s, there were many groups working to end slavery, but none of them were getting anywhere, so it seemed. They decided they needed to work together, under the same banner, in order to more effectively and quickly bring an end to slavery, and try to prevent that institution from being spread to new western states. And what was that banner? The Republican party. It was originally created as a coalition of anti-slavery groups that wanted to work together to end slavery.
When the Republicans got someone elected as president under their anti-slavery banner, the southern states, controlled by the pro-slavery Democrats, tried to secede in order to protect their “peculiar institution,” leading to our Civil War, where more than 300,000 white people shed their blood and died for that Republican cause. The Republicans won that war, and continued onward by passing, and working to ratify, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to our nation’s constitution, which abolished slavery, made blacks American citizens, gave blacks equal protection under the law, and gave blacks the right to vote. It wasn’t the Democrats that passed these amendments, but the Republicans.
Later on, in the mid-20th century, when the landmark Civil Right bills were being passed by our Congress, like I just said, the Republicans voted for them in much higher percentages than the Democrats.
And why didn’t the Republicans support social welfare programs like the Democrats did? Because they knew they weren’t designed to actually help people, but only served to hurt people while making them more dependent on the government – it did nothing to help people become prosperous or achieve a higher level of economic freedom. Republicans inherently knew these programs would only hurt the black community.
Besides, the Republicans were only following the advice of Frederick Douglass, who said, “What must be done for the former slaves? Do nothing with us – your doing with us has already played the mischief with is. If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fail. Let him alone. If you will only untie his hands and give him a chance, I think he will live.” In other words, “Just back off and let us be, create the kind of environment that allows us to thrive, and we’ll work towards our own betterment under those conditions.” I don’t think following Douglass’ advice makes the Republicans racist. I mean, are you saying that Douglass, a black ex-slave, was being anti-black? I really don’t think so. What he was insinuating is that white people had “already done enough” to hurt, enslave, and destroy the black people, and we needed to stop interfering in their business, in their lives, in their community, in the negative ways that we have, and back off, clear the way for them, and they would forge ahead through their own strength, fortitude, and volition.
The Republican strategy of passing amendments to secure rights to the black people, and creating the type of environment where businesses, white or black, big or small, can thrive and prosper, was about clearing that path for them. Our social welfare programs, pushed by the Democrats, were basically another attempt by elitist white people to interfere in the affairs of the black community, and that interference has been totally catastrophic to them.
In other words, we should just back off, clear the way, and let them be.
Obama inherently knew all of this history behind the Democratic and Republican parties. That’s why, in his inauguration, he mirrored many of the things Lincoln, a Republican, did, thus paying homage to him and his legacy. For example, just before his inauguration, he reenacted part of Lincoln’s “whistle stop train tour” as he made his way from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. During speeches on that tour, he used phrases associated with Lincoln such as “better angels” and “a new declaration of independence.” He didn’t model a Democrat. Why would he have? There was honestly no one within his own political party to model and mirror.
He is the legacy of the Republican party, and all that they’ve done throughout American history to pave the way for Obama to become president. He couldn’t have done it without everything the Republicans did to clear the path for him. His being the first black president happened, not because of the Democratic party, but in spite of it.
The inverse is also true when it comes to Obama’s legacy – when you look at what Obama accomplished by becoming president, you should thank the Republicans for all they’ve done to pave the way for Obama to get to that chief position, not the Democrats. You should honor Obama’s legacy by thanking the Republicans, including thanking them with your vote. They’ve always had the Black Cause, and still do. In my opinion, the Democrats are still working to keep black people down, and they’re using their social welfare programs, the false narrative that racism is rampant even though it’s not, and the divisiveness they’re bringing to politics, to continue their anti-black legacy. A vote for the Democrats, as ironic as this sounds at first glance, is really a betrayal of Obama’s legacy.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. These are four legacies that we can attribute to Obama, which, in truth, are so much better than Obamacare. Let that legislation sink into the abyss of oblivion, and let these four points I just gave you rise to the place of importance and prominence where they truly belong. If you’re African American, there’s a bright future ahead for you. Don’t listen to all the negativity from the false narratives being pushed on you by today’s Democrats, and the left-leaning media. Obama’s real legacy will help guide you as you forge ahead on that road before you.
