Media entrepreneur and talk show host Tavis Smiley continues to exemplify bitterness that he has been the subject of widespread backlash for publicizing frequent criticism of President Barack Obama.
And Smiley continued to pile on criticism of Obama in a speech at Atlanta Technical College’s Institute for Males. At an event that was ostensibly about a “Call to Action” to encourage young black men, he appropriated a large segment of his speech to criticizing Obama’s willingness to sign a law that lowered the crack and powder cocaine disparity from 100-1 down to 18-1.
“Y’all weren’t out in the streets of Atlanta. We weren’t in the streets of my hometown in Los Angeles. There was no uprising. Tom [Joyner] wasn’t talking about it. Michael Baisden wasn’t talking about it. Steve Harvey wasn’t talking about it. I’m criticizing them all. We cannot jokey-joke home. They voted 18-1 and it’s still racist,” he said passionately and angrily. “Now, help me understand that we voted to put this man in the White House and we’re going to let him sign a law, 18-1, disparity on crack and powder cocaine.”
Smiley’s popularity and standing in the black community tumbled significantly since Obama was a junior senator out of Illinois and leading Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. His criticism of Obama’s reluctance to focus on a black-only agenda seemed to take a sharp, almost personal tone, especially when Obama declined to visit Smiley’s now-defunct “State of the Black Union.”
He’s a part of that loud cadre of black intellectuals who accuse the first black commander in chief of abandoning the base that voted overwhelmingly for him.
“I know that’s not what y’all came to hear. All I’m saying is, we have work to do. And it didn’t matter before, and truth be told, it don’t matter now who’s in the White House … because it ain’t about him; it’s about us,” he said.
But this is where Smiley is wrong. Unlike previous administrations, including the so-called black-friendly Clinton administration, Obama campaigned on changing the outrageously unjust and racist disparities in prison sentencing. And soon after getting into office, Obama dispatched the first black attorney general of the United States down to the Capitol building to work on this very issue. No other president had the intestinal fortitude to touch it.
Furthermore, there are other examples that support the notion that the president is working on the behalf of blacks, but he cannot come out and say it publicly — lest he loses his presidency.
Smiley also loses points out with this comment, which I’ve heard him say often: “We don’t want to offend the powers that be, so we’re supposed to shut up and say nothing for four years because we don’t want to make folks uncomfortable. Negroes are dying every day, but we ain’t supposed to say nothing. Somebody’s got to tell the truth.”
Wrong again, Smiley. It’s not that you have an urge to criticize him or that Obama does not occasionally deserve it, which he does. More so, it’s the spirit in which you launch your attacks on him that caused people to look askance at your motives and maturity.
Smiley is a charismatic speaker and an example of a self-made man that needs to be illuminated more in the black community; however, he detracts from his position because it’s pretty clear that his actions stem from anger about Obama’s “State of the Black Union” snub, the fact that he hasn’t invited him to the White House, and because he wants to turn Obama into what he wants him to be — not what Obama was elected to do. Furthermore, his constant and direct criticism has isolated him from large segments of the black population and has permanently eroded a fan base that cannot digest the pettiness that rose to the surface since Obama became a national figure. –terry shropshire
