Obama school speech provokes accusations of racism all around

As Obama gives his controversial back-to-school speech today, Colorado residents on both sides of the issue are crying racism.

Poring over the text of Obama’s speech, published by the White House on Monday, Rossputin pointed out that the only people Obama mentions by name in the speech are minorities:

A couple things of note: Although leftists will claim that I’m just a racist or xenophobe, I find it interesting that the three people he mentions by name are Jazmin, Aldoni, and Shantelle. When you have a president who surrounds himself with people like Van Jones and Jeremiah Wright, it’s not too far afield to suspect he seems himself President of Minority Groups but not truly President of the United States.

On the other side, 9News published this anonymous email it received from a Centennial eight-grade student who claimed his fellow students had called him “racist” after he refused to listen to the speech:

One eighth grader from Centennial, who didn’t want to be identified, told 9NEWS other students had called the student a racist after he or she said they weren’t going to watch the speech.

“My family and I are personally against Obama, and I will not be allowed to go to school on Tuesday. I don’t want to be called racist again, it hurts,” the student wrote in an e-mail to 9NEWS. “We don’t know what President Obama will say, and a lot of us just don’t want to hear.”

To date, most of the controversy surrounding the speech has revolved around socialism, namely whether or not the President would use the speech to proselytize to children about his alleged socialist agenda. On Monday, though, Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, one of those credited with initiating the socialism controversy, reversed his position after reading the text of the speech.

“My kids will be watching the president’s speech,” Greer told CNN, “as I hope all kids will.”

But Greer defended his initial concern, alleging that the text of the speech released Monday had been scrubbed of its socialist agenda.

“Is it the [speech] the President was originally going to give?” he asked.

Greer admitted he had no evidence for this accusation.

Here’s the video:

And here perhaps is a clue to the so-called socialist agenda that, according to Greer, may have characterized an early draft of the speech. It’s a section that remains on how smart American kids who study and work hard might help solve vexing social problems:

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

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