Obama In 2007: Racist America Didn’t Help Katrina Victims
The Drudge Report has been teasing this all day, and the story is finally here via the Daily Caller. The story is a speech then-Senator Obama gave in the midst of a hotly contested presidential race lavishing praise on Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright (who Obama would disown just months later) and blaming racism for what he perceived as a paucity of assistance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism.
“The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason? Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government considers those victims “part of the American family.”
The racially charged and at times angry speech undermines Obama’s carefully-crafted image as a leader eager to build bridges between ethnic groups. For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he almost never adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America. The mostly black audience shouts in agreement. The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.
This, I think, is a glimpse at the real Barack Obama. The one Dinesh D’Souza profiles in his movie 2016: Obama’s America.
D’Souza believes that Obama, while playing the part of a unifying political figure, is in truth an angry anti-colonialist who believes that America is a fundamentally racist nation that must be taken down a notch or two so that is more on part with the rest of the world.
Watching the video above, it’s not hard to see a lot of truth in D’Souza’s analysis.
Tags: Barack Obama, dinesh d'souza
