"White House Is The People's House"

Just when you thought you had the “O-Man” figured out, he did it again – he went back to his bottomless rhetorical well to come up with another gem of a speech while on the campaign trail. Obama has been under a little pressure these last few days from parts of the black community who feel that he hasn’t been forthright about recognizing “black” issues. His whirlwind campaign made a quick pitstop in Orlando Florida today. Addressing the Urban League Conference, Obama dropped several kernels of knowledge:

"You know that civil rights and equal treatment under the law are necessary, but not sufficient, to seize America’s promise – as Dr. King once said, 'the inseparable twin of racial justice is economic justice.'

You know that you can’t take that seat at the front of the bus if you can’t afford the bus fare. You can’t live in an integrated neighborhood if you can’t afford the house. And it doesn’t mean a whole lot to sit down at that lunch counter if you can’t afford the lunch."

Remarkably, given the Urban League’s much noted commitment to African American progress, I counted only three sessions out the nineteen offered whose titles suggested that they were going to be centered solely around black issues. The vast majority of the workshops were concerned with education, getting ahead in corporate America, investments, the subprime mortgage crisis, and globalization, which are the same issues ALL Americans face in their daily lives.

"The problems of our cities aren’t just "urban" problems any more.
When rising foreclosures mean vacant homes, abandoned streets and rising crime that spills over city limits – that’s a suburban problem and an ex-urban problem too.

When tens of millions of people in our cities are uninsured, and our urban emergency rooms are overflowing – that’s a suburban and ex-urban problem too.

When urban roads, bridges and transit systems are crumbling; when urban schools aren’t giving young people the skills to compete, so companies decide to take their business and their jobs elsewhere – that’s a suburban and ex-urban problem too."

Tying the fate of our urban poor to the continued prosperity of America’s suburbanites is a pretty bold stance for a modern politician. Hopefully those of us who have been feeling neglected will realize that this elevation of our urban problems to the same level of importance as our mainstream ones can be enforced by the bully pulpit of the White House if Obama gets elected.

"It’s time for policies that reflect the fundamental truth that we rise or fall as one nation. That’s the truth at the heart of your Opportunity Compact – that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street and a struggling Main Street.

That when wages are flat, prices are rising, and more and more Americans are mired in debt, our economy as a whole suffers. Our competitiveness as a nation suffers. Our children’s future suffers.

So we all have a stake here. That’s why your opportunity agenda is a compact – not a guarantee, not a promise – but a call to responsibility.

Because we know that government can’t solve all our problems, and government can’t and shouldn’t do for us what we should be doing for ourselves: raising our kids the right way, being good neighbors and good citizens, becoming leaders in our industries and communities."

This new kind of bondage Obama is pushing us towards is the good kind. To expect him to strike a fiery, unapologetic pose the way some members of the Congressional Black Caucus can is unrealistic – Obama’s district includes both the postur-ers and the posture-ees. At the end of the day, the “O-Man” shows us that he is “keeping it real”, presidential candidate style.