The Westside Gazette

Will 2015 be a good year with President Obama and Black folks?

Roger Caldwell

Will 2015 be a good year with President Obama and Black folks?

By Roger Caldwell

      President Obama has two more years left in office, and no one will predict what he will do. It would be very easy if Obama was a lame duck president, and he did not care about his legacy. But President Obama has a humongous ego, and he wants to go down in history as one of the greatest presidents to hold office.

In the upcoming congressional session, the Republicans will have the majority in both houses, and everyone is putting on their boxing gloves. The Republicans and the Tea Party Republicans don’t like each other, the Democrats don’t like the Republicans as a group, and the president is caught in the middle. Everyone knows for the last six years the Republicans have worked to suppress and destroy every policy and nomination the president tried to initiate.

But now the shoe is on the other foot and the Democrats can oppose every policy that the Republicans try to implement. It has been extremely ugly in Washington, and it looks like everyone is getting ready to ride on a rollercoaster in 2015, that no one in the legislature can get off.

After the 2014 election and the Democrats took a shellacking, the president started throwing punches before the year was over. The president initiated an executive order on immigration that could impact 5 million immigrants, and the Republicans are trying to figure out their next move. While the Republicans were trying to decide what to do, the president throws a haymaker, and opened diplomatic relations with Cuba.

As the Republicans make no official unified statement on the president’s executive orders, Black young men around the country are murdered by police, and in every major city there are mass protests and demonstrations. The president tries to stay in a neutral corner, but the president and his wife begins to talk to the media about what it feels like being Black in America.

“There is no excuse for police to use excessive force during peaceful protest,” says President Obama during the Ferguson protest. Many Blacks approved of the president’s statement, and it appeared that he was acknowledging that in certain situations with police, Black life does not matter. By making this statement many police felt that the president was throwing them under the bus.

But, Blacks feel that President Obama is telling the truth about police brutality and using excessive force when it comes to dealing with young Black men, and our community. With President Obama and his attorney general setting up a commission to determine if there is an abuse of power with police in certain cities across the country, the conservatives and Republicans feel the president is dividing the nation.

Blacks have always felt there were two nations, one for Whites and one for Blacks. During the six years that President Obama has held office, he has tried to ignore or downplay the reality of being a Black man in America. But with the killing of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the president has been forced to admit there is injustice in the country, and he can no longer behave that it does not exist.

In 2015, the demonstrations and protest will not stop from Black young people, and the president will be forced to take action on his commission on police brutality and abuse in the Black Community. If other cultures in America receive special attention, funding, and laws, Blacks must expect and demand the same from the president.

2015 is a year of action for Blacks, and the president must focus on the critical needs in our community. The Black community is suffering in 2015, and it is time for the president, and Black leaders to show that Black lives matter with a legislative plan, and more funding.

 

 

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