Black Activists Critical of President Likening Adoption of His Agenda to Ending Slavery

Washington, D.C. – In trying to pacify supporters angry because he has not imposed his liberal policies fast enough, President Barack Obama began equating his agenda of increasing government and reducing individual liberty to overcoming slavery. Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are condemning Obama’s apparent belief that our nation’s free market economic system is as immoral, cruel and oppressive as the past practice of one human owning another.

“Once again, we see the depth of Obama’s absence of integrity when it comes to facts and history,” said Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie. “But, more importantly, what goes unaddressed is how quickly he injects race when under pressure. It is a shamelessly contemptible display of commonality when a sitting president feels he has no remedy for potential repudiation than by race-baiting.”

Massie added: “Obama has no one to blame but himself for the collective national outcries of outrage and the teaming caldron of angst confronting him. People are upset with his arrogance and his failed policies, and this race-baiting does nothing to assuage his guilt in those areas. It appears that the lower his poll numbers go, the lower he is will sink in this futile attempt to salvage his presidency.”

“Clearly, the magic is gone,” said Project 21 member Horace Cooper. “It’s the fall of 2010, not the fall of 2008. Barack Obama seems to have lost his way. How he can compare his program of bigger government — the most intrusive, controlling and expensive in the history of our nation — with ending slavery is beyond me.”

“Seeing how almost everything presidents say nowadays is scripted, and seeing how the NAACP and others are due to march on Washington, D.C. this coming Saturday, I can’t possibly see any correlation by interjecting the visual of slaves into a discussion of public reaction to his failed economic policy — especially since any criticism of those policies or this President is called racist by his supporters,” noted a sarcastic Bob Parks, also a Project 21 member. “Nah, nothing there.”

Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli added: “It’s ironic that Obama is using slavery analogies when it’s his policies that will enslave Americans. ObamaCare may force companies such as McDonald’s to eliminate health care plans for its hourly workers which will drive them to be dependent on the government plan. With energy policy Obama still wants to advance his climate change agenda. Instead of ramming a comprehensive cap-and-trade bill through Congress, Obama wants to achieve the same goal in ‘chunks.’ Whatever the means, Obama’s war on fossil fuels will lead to higher energy prices, higher unemployment and a lower standard of living.

In a speech to Democratic National Committee activists in Washington, D.C. on September 30, Obama said: “People are frustrated, they’re anxious, they’re scared about the future. And they have a right to be impatient about the pace of change… It took time to free the slaves.” In a speech that same day in Madison, Wisconsin, Obama similarly said: “In every instance, progress took time… You know, the slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs, they weren’t sure when slavery would end, but they understood it was gonna end.”

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (https://nationalcenter.org).



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.