Biden Sent the Wrong Message at Morehouse

with John McWhorter

Last month, President Biden delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College’s graduation. The year is 2024, but hearing the president talk, you would swear it was 1964. Amidst the speech’s self-promoting pablum, he felt it necessary to tell these young men they would have to work ten times as hard (presumably ten times as hard as their white peers) to get a fair shot in the United States, and that while they may love their country, their country “doesn’t always love [them] back in equal measure.”

Nowhere in the speech was there any mention of the tremendous opportunity available to Morehouse’s Class of 2024. If you derived all you knew of America only from that speech, you would think it was a racist hellscape where black men are daily gunned down in the street by cops, and those who survive are barred from employment due to the color of their skin. Aside from lip service paid to Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Coulter, a former slave and one of Morehouse’s founders, barely any mention is made of the work that black people in this country have done to better their own lives, to elevate themselves and their families, and to contribute to the nation. We’re led to believe that only Joe Biden and his promises can save us from the country that he has helped govern for the last fifty-odd years.

Morehouse is one of the most prestigious HBCUs in the nation. The young men in that audience worked hard to earn their seats, and their commencement speaker ought to have honored their achievement. Regardless of who wins this November, these graduates will have a smorgasbord of options available to them as they go out into the world. Yet President Biden suggests that their future success and even their mortal being is contingent on his reelection. That is an insult to those graduates and to the very mission of Morehouse, it is an insult to the ideal of black self-determination that HBCUs embody, and it is an insult to those of us who believe—because we have eyes in our heads—that these young black men’s futures will be determined by their own efforts rather than the politically convenient boogeyman of omnipresent racism.

The president honored the achievement of Morehouse’s Class of 2024 with his presence. It is a shame he could not do so with his words.

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GLENN LOURY: Did you hear the president's speech at Morehouse College, the commencement address that he gave?

JOHN MCWHORTER: Yes, I did.

What did you make of that?

You know, Biden is old in many ways, and he had some appeasement to do. He has to trot out that line about how you have to try twice as hard. But for goodness sake, can we please admit that time passes? I remember my mother saying that in the '70s when it still made some sense. But the idea that in the realms that you and I work in, we have to work twice as hard as whites? That's simply not true anymore, and we should celebrate. And I think you and I both know that you and I, in many cases, don't have to work as hard at all because of the racial preference culture that has emerged since the days when that mantra made sense.

How angry can you get at Biden? That's the sort of thing he's been saying to black people probably for 60 years. But it is one more sign of his antiquity that anybody would be pulling out that line again now. It doesn't work now. Or if it does, it works about class but not about race.

Now, I was just going to report my disappointment with the speech that I thought was from another era. I thought it was the kind of speech that you'd have given in 1974, maybe 1984, but not in 2024. You're standing in front of the graduating class of Morehouse College. These are African American men. This is the creme de la creme. Morehouse is a serious place. It's a serious place that has a mission of training African American leaders, men for the next generation.

The year's 2024 and the world is their oyster. They can do anything. They are among the most privileged, powerful, blessed people of African descent walking around on planet earth. They can be billionaires! They can be president! They can do anything! So the president of the United States stands in front of them and reminds them that they're black, exhorts them to be on guard, tells them that they may love America but America doesn't love them back, invites them to contemplate the long Sisyphean uphill struggle that they confront as they try to get ahead in life.

Which is completely a mischaracterization of their actual opportunities. Panders, waves a bloody shirt of, “I'm gonna save you. I'll protect you from the racists who otherwise would come and ruin your future.” And it's all about politics. It's not what I would have hoped those young men would have been exhorted to do, to think and ponder as they go forward into their lives. So I was disappointed.

I thought he was talking down to those kids, actually, by reminding them of their blackness and of the limitations attendant thereto and assuring them that he stands on the right side of history and is going to fight the good fight. Ghosts of Jim Crow and American racism, et cetera, et cetera. That's exactly the wrong message, in my opinion, to deliver, but one that I have come to expect from, “You ain't really black if can't tell whether to vote for me or the other guy.” It's one I would have come to expect from him.

It's sad in a way, because the pushback on this will be, let's say that a Morehouse grad or a Spellman grad gets a job at a top-ranked law firm. Law school, and then they're at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. I happen to know the name of that law firm. And so they're in DC.

Now, the pushback is going to be it can be difficult to find a mentor. It's harder to make partner because you're not sought after as readily as the people who are more like the older people there already. That's a story that one hears a lot. Is that person going to have to work harder at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom? Are they going to have to burn the midnight oil? Are they going to have to do more work in order to be partner?

I'll bet that was true in 1981. Is that true today? I've never heard it. I seriously doubt it. You're not going to have to work as hard. In Biden's case, he needs that card. I can put myself in his head. But I really do hope that nobody of a younger age is walking around thinking that adage still works. Maybe with class, but it's no longer just about being black. And there is nothing proactive or useful in exaggerating the degree of your victimhood or that of your group. It serves no purpose other than to create passing feelings of cultural fellowship. But that's not enough to justify lying to ourselves and pretending things are worse than they are. That is a mantra both of us would agree to.

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