African American President, Higher Standards

This week I decided to attend a Lecture given by a Southwestern College professor named Stanley James. The lecture concentrated around the comparison of Jim Crow and President Obama. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Jim Crow laws, they were a set of laws that were enacted between 1876 and 1965 and mainly they surrounded the issue of racial segregation and the notion of “equal but separate.” Professor James was mainly trying to point out the fact that President Obama has undergone harsh scrutiny and has gotten a bad wrap for things he had no say or influence towards from the beginning.  Apart from that, the achievements he has made, for example healthcare for American citizens, was scrutinized and considered as “not good enough.”

An example the professor used to support his idea was the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the Gulf Coast oil spill that occurred not too long ago in 2010. When the Exxon Valdez began dumping oil off the coast of Alaska in 1989 killing its entire ecosystem, blame was never put on President Bush for the handling and cleaning up of the mess, the blame was put on those who were actually responsible. Now the situation in the Gulf Coast in 2010, a group of dummies decided they were going to begin drilling for oil at the bottom of the ocean, and went ahead with it, without a plan B! No emergency plans, nothing! President Obama was not yet in office when this brilliant idea was conceived, yet he gets blamed and is expected to come up with their plan B?

Given the details the professor provided me with and the examples he used, it seems to me like once an African American occupied the presidential seat, the bar was raised, and the magnifying glasses came out. I don’t agree with all of the decisions president Obama has made during his presidency, but I do think many people need to take the facts into consideration and not place blame where it isn’t earned.

2010 Oil spill, Look at "Finding of Fault"