Obama reopens rift with black critics-MostlyJust Maxine Waters
It was a speech intended to be a rousing call to arms for his 2012 reelection campaign and his jobs bill.
But when President Barack Obama told a gala dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus over the weekend that it was time to ‘stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying’ and get to work, he instead gave new ammunition to some prominent African American critics who say the nation’s first black president gets tough only when he’s talking to other black people.
Three of the most prominent of them — Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Princeton professor Cornel West and talk show host Tavis Smiley — all criticized the speech, with Smiley setting the tone with his question: ‘How does he get away with saying this to black folk?’
But Obama pushed back hard. In a rare, one-on-one interview with Black Entertainment Television, he disputed the idea that such criticism was widespread, insisting there have been “only a handful of African-Americans who have been critical. They were critical when I was running for president. There’s always going to be somebody who is critical of the president of the United States.
