President Obama's commencement address at Morehouse College in 2013 couldn't have been more different from the one President Biden gave on Sunday. Not just in terms of style or delivery—no one expects Mr. Biden to match Mr. Obama's oratory skills—but, more important, in its tone and emphasis....When Mr. Biden took the stage on Sunday, he didn't see an audience of black men with limitless opportunities awaiting them. Instead, he saw an audience of black victims who should question their prospects. "You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race," Mr. Biden said. "It's natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy if black men are being killed in the street?"
Biden's Demoralizing Speech to Morehouse Grads
My comment: Joe Biden sent me a clip on X of the speech with the bit about Black men being killed randomly by cops (it's not true) and the country not loving them (! Remarkable, that he said this, but also not true). I was startled at what a downer the speech was. Went back to it, and he's deleted it! So even he — i.e. his staff — realised it was a bummer.
Jason Riley is himself a Black man and Morehouse grad. Author of "Liberals: please stop helping us" a critique of (presumably) well-meant civil rights policies of the sixties under LBJ. Policies that have had the (presumably) unintended consequences of surging single-motherhood, absent fathers, breakdown of the Black family and all the associated crime.
