Let’s assess this outrageous, vain comment.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii (nothing like the urban ghettoes of Detroit or Chicago, his corrupt political home) Barack Hussein Obama (earlier known to his friends as “Barry†) was born to a mixed couple with strong academic bonefides.
His father, a rabid Kenyan anti-colonialist, likely bred into his son a hatred for white America, or the West. His mother was an academic writing a PhD, gaining knowledge (or what passes for learning in universities these days). [Editor’s note; what counts as learning nowadays is moot as Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s midwestern bred mother, went to university several decades ago. My thoughts on his father who was not a big part of his life also disagree with Mr. Schaper’s]
While Sanford, Florida is no ghetto, the suburb of the Southeastern United States are nothing like the perennial wealth and splendor of the Hawaiian islands. Aside from the elite attorneys motivated by race and money, Trayvon’s parents have nothing like the background of Obama’s elite ancestry, immediate and distant. [Editor’s note: academics that I know now, and those with whom I went to school in the 1980’s, never were amongst the socio-economic elite.]
Raised in private schools (including when he lived in Indonesia), Barry excelled in elite universities like Harvard, where he edited the school’s Law Review. Like many black students, Trayvon almost certainly had to suffer in an impoverished, incompetent, and dilapidated public school. President Obama resists school choice for black students, yet he insists that his two daughters attend the most elite private schools available in Washington D.C.
In Chicago, where Barack Obama first taught constitutional law, colleagues remarked that he rarely spent time with other professors to discuss key issues, so convinced was he that his views were right, and everyone else had to learn from him. [Editor’s note; I have not read this about Obama although his reserved persona is renowned — ironic for a politician, isn’t it?] In this respect, Barry has a lot in common with Trayvon, since the insolence of adolescence often leads youths to think that they have the world figured out, until they step into the real world, with its real problems.
In the same sordid public schools, most students like Trayvon never learn about their rights or the reasons for exercising them. Much of the time, they receive a watered-down, race-based narrative which teaches students, especially minority students, to feel sorry for themselves and view anyone with power or authority either with suspicion or derision. Usually they cannot discuss anything of merit, so busy are they prepping for standardized tests which do nothing for them, but promote their schools to statewide bureaucrats. [Editor’s note; While I mourn the level of race relations and discussions about them, I disagree strongly with Schaper on this point.]
As a community organizer, petitioning for poor and run down communities (even though he was living the high life), Barry religiously adhered to the teaching of Saul Alinsky, whose work Rules for Radicals was dedicated to the first radical, Lucifer, the archangel with two offices, the messenger of Light who forsook all to challenge God, and as a consequence was kicked out of heaven, taking in his falling wake one third of the heavenly hosts.
Trayvon got suspended from school for ten days because school officials found traces of controlled substances in his backpack. He was walking suspiciously in a neighborhood by himself at night wearing a hoodie. The only community organization Travyon ran into was George Zimmerman, who was protecting his community as part of the local “Neighborhood Watch†program. [Editor’s note; Barry Obama, myself, and many other ‘successful’ people smoked pot in our youth.]
So much for “community organizing.â€
Barack Obama had a middling career as a state senator in Springfield, Illinois. His most frequent vote, like the most popular college major, was “present†or “undeclared.â€
He ran for the US Senate in 2004. The incumbent Republican, Patrick Fitzgerald, weighed his chances, and new that since he was not running against another corrupt politician (the first African-American female US Senator Karen Mosley Braun), he would not be able to catch the winning vote a second time. The Republican who stepped in to take Fitzgerald’s place, Jack Ryan, polled behind by double-digits, and bowed out soon after.
From growing up to raising a fuss in the streets to running for office, Mr. Obama never really worked a day in his life. [Editors note: I disagree with Schaper’s definition of work; being cordial to people all day while on the campaign trail would be brutal work to me.] Trayvon did not live long enough to enjoy much, let alone work. Yet even if he survived his adolescence, Trayvon likely would not have gotten a job, since half of black youth cannot find work in these difficult, economic times.
President Obama has fulfilled the dream which many African-Americans did not think possible: A black man in the White House (Funk rockstar George Clinton once rapped about painting the White House black, but nothing else). This first black President, who has followed the example black statesmen like US Senator Edward Brooke (R-Massachusetts), Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, along with Cabinet Leaders Condoleeza Rice, has declared that there is still a deep, latent race problem in our society. [Editor’s note; Schaper and I agree; the ideal that the American Dream is a dream for all Americans of every hue to strive toward.]
What retired General Colin Powell called a “dark vein of intolerance†has become an ingrained vanity born of ignorance among minority elites, a dangerous trend which has transformed the tragic death of a young child in a Florida suburb into an overplayed drama. President Barack “Barry†Obama has injected himself (and racism) into the Zimmerman Aftermath, claiming that who he is today would not happen if he had been walking around in a hoodie on a dark February night in Florida.
Indeed.
[Final editor’s note: Disagreement is one of the blessings of being an American that I know that both Schaper and I agree on. God bless the debate — and keep it respectful in the comment section, people, please.]
