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For the past 25 years, I have spent nearly every day on the South Side of Chicago instilling the values of hard work, responsibility and accountability into the minds of young Black men. That is why I have been stunned by the baldfaced efforts by the Democratic elites to undercut these American values with their patronizing efforts to win the Black male vote.
What makes this so egregious is that these Democrats know the truth. They know that their policies of dependency and racial engineering over the last 60 years have failed miserably. They know, in their hearts, the role they played in betraying Blacks by sinking them into permanent Black underclasses all around America. They know about the difficult work of uplift by American values that men and women like me are doing in these communities. Yet they’ll betray all that by appealing to our weakest nature for a vote.
How dare they call themselves our champions, say they’ve got our backs?
Former President Barack Obama recently told Black men to get out and vote for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, because “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time when we get in trouble.”
Get in trouble? Is the former president associating Black men with criminality? And is he saying that we’re misogynists and race traitors if we don’t vote for Harris? If Obama cannot see us as men, as individuals, as Americans with the same interests — inflation, jobs, infrastructure — as anyone else in this nation, then that’s a reflection upon what he truly thinks of us and nothing more.
A few days after the former president’s comments, Harris released her “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men.” Among the things she offers is “$1 million loans that are fully forgivable up to $20K.” A vow to “protect cryptocurrency investments so Black men…know their money is safe,” and a pledge to “legalize recreational marijuana.” Oh, and she also threw in mentoring services, perhaps to try to offer the vestige of respectability to what is otherwise another handout program, plain as day.
My vote, along with the rest of the voters in my neighborhood, is not cheap. We value our votes and, most of all, we value ourselves as upstanding citizens who want what is best for our nation.
Why can’t she treat us like the Americans we are? If you give any race up to $20K as a forgivable loan, there will always be corruption, people taking those funds with no intent of paying it back. And that corruption will be used against our race. Remember all that money given out after Hurricane Rita and how it backfired on Blacks despite many of them using it for housing and food?
If you want to make progress, then stop treating us as the exception to the rule. I tell the youth in my neighborhood that there are consequences for every bad decision made. And I enforce those consequences. That’s how they learn responsibility.
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Perhaps the most insulting thing is that Harris equates “opportunity” with legalizing recreational marijuana.” Think about that — opportunity and recreational in the same sentence. “Opportunity” is not recreational. Opportunity is woodshedding, burning the midnight oil, never giving up, and it is the pathway to a better life. It is not to be trivialized as Harris does with pairing it to weed. And why does she, like Obama, associate the criminal element of weed with Blacks? Is that what these Democratic elites think of us?
They don’t know us. If they did, they would see the work that we are doing on the South Side. We’re working with troubled young men and women, helping them turn into productive citizens who work in construction or as electricians, fork lift drivers, media artists, and entrepreneurs. We’re so much more.
Then last week, after Harris’ promises, I saw CNN political contributor and former Obama adviser Van Jones’ video on X calling Harris’ plan a “love letter to Black men.” He goes on to thank her for giving Black men “some respect..some concern and some care and consideration…we needed some mamala from Kamala.”
All I have to say to this is, where did our self-respect go? Have we forgotten the pride we had when we saw Black Americans rise from nothing to reach the stars? Michael Jordan. James Brown. Miles Davis. We changed the world; we made our influence felt world-wide. Go to another country and you’ll see our influence there. Yet, despite living in the freest nation in the world, we’re begging the government to help us. We’ve reached the new low of dressing up entitlements and dependency as a love letter.
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I refuse to be bamboozled any longer. My vote, along with the rest of the voters in my neighborhood, is not cheap. We value our votes and, most of all, we value ourselves as upstanding citizens who want what is best for our nation.
It is time for the Democrats admit their failures and start treating us like the America citizens that we are.
