While addressing a group of young men of color at the White House last week, President Barack Obama spoke to the importance of personal responsibility. But MSNBC host Touré couldn’t disagree more, saying such a notion made him “cringe.”
Following the announcement of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative Thursday, the MSNBC host laid into Obama on Friday for emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility.
“Part of my message, part of our message in this initiative is: No excuses. We all have a responsibility to help provide you the tools you need. We’ve got to help you knock down some of the barriers you experience. That’s what we’re here for. But you’ve got responsibilities too,” the president said Thursday during a ceremony kicking off the initiative.
Touré, however, disagreed.
“But when the president speaks to the black community, there’s often a dive into the politics of personal responsibility,” he said on “The Cycle.” “I cringe at that, as if effort and excuses have been the problem. No, it’s been structural racism.”
The MSNBC host, instead, pointed to incarceration and unemployment rates, and a culture of “white privilege” as barriers for young African-American men.
“The accumulated impact of historic discrimination and the advantages of white privilege and the systems that perpetuate all that,” Touré said. “Going into personal responsibility suggests you can make it if you try, and he knows it’s more complex than that.”
He continued, calling on Obama, or the “Big Brother-in-Chief,” to “tell Americans to tear down the American Berlin Wall that keeps black men separated from opportunity.”
“That sort of Big Brother-in-Chief,” Touré said, “would get us closer to the mountaintop.”
Watch Touré slam the president for encouraging personal responsibility below.
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