President gives a shout out to Leland Shelton during his commencement address.
Leland and Morehouse President Dr. John Silvanus Wilson Jr. share their joy and appreciation for President Obama’s message.
Sounds like Dr. Wilson, Morehouse President and the Morehouse graduates LOVED President Obama’s MESSAGE.
Here’s a great read by Leland from 2009
WJZ telephone interview with Leland
ALL BLACK, ALL MALE We SALUTE the MOREHOUSE Class of 2013! And thank you President Obama for your love and service to our MEN and our COUNTRY.
Harvard Law!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s what’s up!
Howdy! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be ok. I’m absolutely enjoying your blog
and look forward to new updates.
wonderful comment by zizin response to Coates being negative about the President’s speech:
zizi2
Ah you missed the entire point of the President’s speech and narrow your focus only to the United States of America.
The key passage is this:
We’ve got no time for excuses — not because the bitter legacies of
slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven’t. Not
because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that’s still out
there. It’s just that in today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive
world, with a billion young people from China and India and Brazil
entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you
anything you haven’t earned.
The President was asking the audience to look at the GLOBAL COMPETITION. In our present global labor market, African Americans HAVE to COMPETE, regardless of the specific cruel history they have endured and continue to endure through structural inequities. Young people from many of these emerging societies have faced similar or worse deprivations and are flooding the market place and hungry for success no matter what obstacles face them. That is who these Morehouse young men are going to have to out-hussle.
I know what I am talking about. I teach African American literature/culture. I am myself an immigrant from the so-called 3rd world. Competition among my recent immigrant students is fierce. Many are survivors of war, genocide. Some are from privileged backgrounds. But all battling to make it here. So the President is right to emphasis the imperative of our borderless times to get the students to think beyond current horizons.
So the speech, if you had bothered to quote or feature the video in its entirety would show your readers here that Pres. Obama’s speech was NOT devoid of policy. He talked about healthcare, and economic prospects. He said getting the policy right is NOT enough. He was not being a scold. He was being a realist!!!
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/how-the-obama-administration-talks-to-black-america/276015/#comment-903236776
SPOT ON, Zizi! Aint’ nobdoy got time for THAT!
Here’s what my daddy told me and my 7 sisters every Sunday night before we were
allowed to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Walt Disney, and Bonanza. he would line up the 8 of his daughters in the living room in front of the tv and start from the youngest to the oldest until we left home.
He’d point at each one of us and say:
IF I EVER HEAR YOU SAY YOU COULDN’T BE WHO YOU WANT TOBE
DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO OR GO WHERE YOU WANT TO GO, BECAUSE YOU’RE BLACK AND FEMALE, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND BEAT YOUR BLACK BEHIND MYSELF.
With 8th grade education, my dad was the smartest man I knew. He knew we couldn’t
He was being a REALIST too. He was telling us there were NO limitations except for the limitations we placed on ourselves.
Seriously, and somehow you believe that these graduates aren’t aware of that or the induced globalization we’ve been borderless through.. the cause and effect of which has lead us thinking, living competing in it for quite some time. That’s why the confusion in the POTUS? It’s not projection, being negative or questioning his affirmation as one result of life-long lessons of possibilities drilled in their heads its “why” on this one we disagree?
FROM POU:
jziglar
I wanted to make a comment about the emo blacks who attacked the president and first lady. The reason why they do what they do is because they feel that since they have some spotlight they are the authority on the black community. They like the status quo and prefer white men in positions of power. The fact that none of these clowns could break breath when all those other presidents, especially Clinton were in office shows us how phony these people are. If the president said exactly what they wanted they would still criticize him.
jziglar speaks truth. Yep, the white man’s ice is colder. These negroes are the ones who are trying to hold blacks down, because they don’t trust themselves or other BLACKS to hold or wield that kind of power, PRESIDENTIAL powers at that. It’s a ptiy, because they’re the actual slaves to that white superiority mind-set.
What PBO speaks of is LIMITLESS POSSIBILITES that go beyond RACE, CREED, COLOR, NATIONALITY… It’s a CONSCIOUSNESS that one carries while cloaked in all the labels. And yes even being black and only IDENTIFYING with one’s BLACKNESS is very self-limiting.
reponses to jziglar:
Daltex82
So many of them suffer from delusions of grandeur. These same folks sit at these Universities and write/speak about the plight of black people but how many of them actually do the hard work, the dirty work to get laws passed or people elected that will effect change? Are they mentoring children? sponsoring Job Fairs? They bitch and moan to convince themselves and their white counterparts that they aren’t “Obots” that they can be and are unbiased, insightful truth tellers when they too are guilty of twisting facts. It is probably lost on these emos that they sometimes come off just as small, petty and jealous as a Dowd or Todd. I wish someone would tell these folks you don’t have to like POTUS and FLOTUS (although I can’t for the life of me understand why they wouldn’t) but dammit you don’t have to co-sign and condone all the bullshit thrown their way just to get blog hits or a spot on a meaningless political show.
I hope they enjoy the exposure because once President and Mrs. Obama ride off into the sunset no one and I mean no one will be checking for their asses.
TresL
Amen!
I happened to catch an interview with the president of Morehouse after PBO’s speech and he was beaming. He said the president did his homework and delivered in his speech everything that Morehouse tries to instill in its students. His smile was so bright it could have powered all of Atlanta.
Also, for the black critics, if you didn’t like the speech it wasn’t for you and if you think PBO lectures black people in his speeches why do you watch? Use your remote, turn off your computer and STFU and let the rest of us enjoy what our president has to say and remember it isn’t necessary to say out loud everything that pops into your head.
LOL RIGHT ON! I love Twitter, and these negro emos weren’t banking on other negroes to call them out on their BULLSHIT.
davidfrum @davidfrum27m
Imagine if Ben Carson had delivered exactly that same Morehouse speech, conservative media would go incandescent w joy.
davidfrum @davidfrum 45m
Very struck by how Drudge Report home page plays O’s Morehouse speech as statement of racial grievance, rather than call for responsibility
LOL Surely David also knows that IF Ben Carson gave that SAME speech as PRESIDENT, the conservative media would react the same way. That negro can stay his ass at Fox and shuck & jive for that crowd
YT and teh slave-catchers are the only one who can call for the negroes to be self-responsible, don’tcha know!
IF Carson had given the EXACT same speech, with all the historical references, linking the Black past with those Black students at Morehouse…
THAT HISTORY would have been ignored by the Conservatives…
just like it’s ignored by folks now that want to criticize the President.
LOL SPOT ON! Seems Planz didn’t fall off that turnip truck yesterday either.
found this in the comments at BooMan:
Re: Obama at Morehouse
I think it is more the generational responsibility to give “the speech” to those who are coming after you. The President is telling them that he knows he is standing on the shoulders of generations of people who struggled. He is telling them that they are now inheriting the legacy AND the responsibility to carry on for the next generations.
It is a privilege to be able to deliver this particular message and it is an incredible privilege to hear this particular message from this President.
It seems to me like the people who think the President is being condescending are projecting their own assumption of the Morehouse graduates as being worthy of condescension. The President and the graduates know that they are the elites. There is zero condescension in the speech. The movement for full equality still has a long way to go. This is also the leader of the movement addressing the people who will be some of the most influential in terms of the future of this movement. If they fall into the trap of self interest ahead of the community they will fail previous generations, themselves, the next generations. Generational responsibility is heavy stuff and it is apparently going right over the heads of many people on this thread.
So if many of the listeners have heard “the speech” a million times–they have never heard it from the President who broke through the glass ceiling. It is an affirmation if you have heard it before. And if you haven’t heard “the speech”
Tim Wise is very good but he has only ever lived being a white man. He is not completely evolved by any means.
by MomSense on Mon May 20th, 2013 at 01:18:48 PM EST
Well-said
Congrats, Leland! Congrats Morehouse men!
WAY TO GO!
Congratulations to Leland and all the Morehouse Men.
Leland could have become a statistic – but didn’t.
And he was able to thrive in an institution that wanted him to thrive-Morehouse.