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Obama: Africa’s lost son …a case of misplaced priorities

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PRESIDENT Barack Obama on Wednesday October 28 2009 signed the first major piece of federal gay rights legislation.
The legislation was considered a milestone by activists who compared it to the passage of 1960s civil-rights legislation empowering blacks.
The new law added acts of violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to the list of federal hate crimes.
Gay-rights activists voiced hope that the Obama administration would advance more issues, including legislation to bar workplace discrimination, allow military service and recognise same-sex marriages.
President Obama, speaking to supporters of the new legislation promised to push Congress to repeal the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that prohibited being openly gay while serving.
In a statement Obama said, “As of September 20, service members will no longer be forced to hide who they are in order to serve our country.”
On the Monday morning of July 21 2014, Obama signed an executive LGBT non-discrimination order, barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity among federal contractors.
The order also protects all federal employees from discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
The president’s action on job discrimination was viewed as probably his biggest single gay rights accomplishment since signing the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.
In December 2014, a 17-year-old transgender, Leelah Alcorn, stunned her friends and a vast internet audience when she threw herself in front of a tractor-trailer after writing in an online suicide note that religious therapists had tried to convert her back to being a boy.
Responding to the suicide, in a statement that was posted on Wednesday April 8 2015 on the White House website, President Obama called for an end to such therapies aimed at ‘repairing’ gay, lesbian and transgender youth.
Alongside the statement was a White House.gov petition to honour Alcorn.
His decision on the issue was seen as the latest example of his continued embracing of gay rights.
In what has been called a landmark opinion, a divided Supreme Court on Friday June 26 2015 ruled that same-sex couples can marry nationwide, establishing a new civil right and handing gay rights advocates a historic victory.
In the 5-4 ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority with the four liberal justices.
Each of the four conservative justices wrote their own dissent.
Kennedy has written the opinion in significant gay rights cases and when he uttered the key sentence that same-sex couples should be able to exercise the right to marry in all states, people in the Court’s public gallery broke into smiles and some wiped tears from their eyes.
In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia blasted the Court’s threat to American democracy saying that, “The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me, but what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.”
After the ruling, President Barack Obama called Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the case, while he and his supporters celebrated the ruling outside the court.
CNN broadcasted his warm to Obergefell over speakerphone.
“I just wanted to say congratulations. Your leadership on this has changed the country.”
While Obama is being celebrated as a pioneer President in championing the rights of gays, lesbians, and transgenders, the black community continues to suffer.
In the afterglow of Obama’s historic victory, most people in the United States believed that race relations would improve.
However, as Obama’s tenure comes to an end, his people are worse off than when he came into office.
Barely three months into his first term, Obama showed that he would not make any significant inroads into improving race relations in America.
In July 2009, black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates was arrested for yelling at a white police officer who questioned whether Gates had broken into his own home.
Asked to comment, Obama said he didn’t know all the facts, but Gates was a personal friend and the officer had acted ‘stupidly’.
Shortly before the 2008 election, 56 percent of Americans surveyed by the Gallup organisation said that race relations would improve if Obama were elected.
One day after his victory, 70 percent said race relations would improve and only 10 percent predicted they would get worse.
An October 2009 Gallup poll showed a large drop in racial optimism since that election, with 41 percent of respondents saying that race relations had improved under Obama.
Thirty-five percent said there was no change and 22 percent said race relations were worse.
An August 2011 Gallup poll showed a further decline in racial optimism: 35 percent said race relations had improved due to Obama’s election, 41 percent said no change, and 23 percent said things were worse.
According to a CNN/ORC International poll conducted in February this year, having an African-American President in office has not improved race relations in the United States.
The poll found that four in 10 Americans believe race relations have actually become worse since President Obama assumed office in 2009 — including 45 percent of whites and 26 percent of blacks.
So while the gays, lesbians and so forth can celebrate their latest victory, the African-American community is still struggling to be treated as regular folk, whose sons can go down the street and buy a carton of milk without being killed by law enforcement officers; whose children are given the same education opportunities as those of their white counterparts; whose men do not make up the majority of prison inmates and yet are a minority according to population statistics.

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