Obama to Black America: 'No Excuses, No Excuses'

President of the United States Barack Obama or POTUS (an acrononym we will be using on this blog from now on) delivered perhaps the most impassioned public speech he's ever given, a speech that touched on the subject of personal responsibility in the black community, at the NAACP's annual meeting last night.

"No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands, and don't you forget that. That's what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. No excuses," he said. "We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes - because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves."

POTUS also urged African-American parents to raise their children's expectations by looking beyond dreams of becoming basketball players or rappers.

"They might think they've got a pretty jump shot or a pretty good flow but our kids can't all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a supreme court justice. I want them aspiring to be president of the United States of America," he said.

He didn't shy away from addressing some of the modern ills that have contributed to keeping many African-Americans in poverty and making life a struggle for others, such as unemployment and the housing crisis. The president said that he was not attempting to suggest that racism and discrimination, and its consequences, no longer matter.

"I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there's probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today. But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America," he said. "By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights."

But, POTUS said, change in the past had come from people taking the initiative and standing up to injustice.

"We have to say to our children, yes, if you're African-American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that's not a reason to get bad grades, that's not a reason to cut class, that's not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school."