The blogosphere has been on fire with disapproving dissections of President Obama's commencement speech at Morehouse College. Sade Muhammad writes on her Tumblr, the Glossy Diaries, that maybe the president was just speaking from personal experience when he told the young black men to give back and work hard for success.
Why does President Obama always feel the need to share a message of helping your fellow man, [some blog commentators] wanted to know? What about manifesting a personal destiny? "There's no room in Obama's world for aspiring to be a Bill Gates, or a Steve Jobs, or a Warren Buffet," another commenter says.
But perhaps what they don't see is that Obama is coming from an experience of a black man in today's society. A man who saw less people who looked like him the more successful he became. Every black person — male or female — in this country has had the same experience. So from that experience, it is painfully clear how pertinent it is to reach back and help the next one. And it's not something that you should be patted on the back for. It's something that should be required. Because while, to you, It may feel weird to be the only one in the room — to everyone else, a few is just what they're used to …
It's especially important to reach back in a community void of fathers. We are presented with a generation lacking the reason, confidence, respect for self and for women, that fathers provide. Forget community — at the most basic level we are lacking a sense of responsibility to our own families. No one, no matter the color or experience, should have a problem seeing the issue in that.
Read Sade Muhammad's entire piece at the Glossy Diaries.
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