Barack Obama has responded to the criticism that he didn’t do enough for the black community while he was president of the United States of America.
Speaking on The Breakfast Club, Obama pointed out that the presidency is not run like a monarchy system which can allow a president to do the things he wants.
He said:
“You know what, I understand it. When I got elected there was so much excitement and hope. And I also think that we genuinely viewed the presidency as almost like a monarchy in a sense of ‘well, once the president’s there he can just do whatever needs to get done and if he’s not doing it then it must be because he didn’t want to do it.’”
He added:
“I think that anybody who goes into public life, they need to understand that, yea, you’re going to get criticized because that’s just the nature of it. If you don’t want that then you shouldn’t be in that business. The good news for me is that I was very confident in what I had done for black folks because I had the statistics to prove it.”
He then went on to list some of the things he achieved for blacks before he left office:
“By the time I left office you had seen 3 million African Americans have health care that didn’t have it before. You had seen the incarceration rate, the number of black folks in prison, drop for the first time in years. You had seen the juvenile corrections system- 30% fewer people in there. You had seen black poverty drop to its lowest level since 1968. You had seen black businesses rise. You had seen black income go up.”
He continued:
“So I could just look at the data and I could say millions of black folks were better off at the time I left office than when I came in. And What I have to accept, and I think any president has to accept, is the fact that okay so I got 20 million people health care but there’s still 10 million out there who don’t have health care. Because republicans blocked me from what I wanted to do with Obama Care. I can understand why they would be upset.”
He added:
“At the end of the day, there is no way in 8 years to make up for 200 years.”
