Three brilliant black leaders are tuning out Obama and the black community needs to tune into these leaders.
I’m surfing between the major news networks on a recent evening and I catch FOX News Channel’s Sean Hannity in the middle of an amazing interview with a guest named Harry Alford, the CEO and co-founder of the Black Chamber of Commerce.
My jaw drops as Alford essentially calls Obama an anti-business tyrant who is hurting the African American community; he says he voted for Obama in 2008 but now has buyer’s remorse.
I get to thinking: Given the choice between Alford and Obama, why do many blacks still choose Obama? Why does Obama have an 88 percent approval rating among African Americans while his overall approval sits at 47 percent? After all, what has Obama done to help African Americans?
I am concerned and puzzled because the black community seems to be ignoring the wisdom of successful black leaders in business, medicine and journalism. Let me introduce you to three black leaders who are challenging the president’s policies:
1.) Niger Innis – Challenging Gun Control
Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder recently told Congress he wants to help “young black men” improve their lives with gun control legislation. But black journalists like Niger Innis are not buying it.
Innis is the National Spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an MSNBC commentator and a political consultant. According to Innis, the vast majority of gun-control legislation is a way for the federal government to control—not protect—the weakest members of society, such as minority groups. He made the following remarks on The Jason Lewis Show on March 4:
“The Second Amendment…very much like the first ten amendments of the Constitution which are the Bill of Rights… are an insurance policy for the individual and the individual sovereign states against [a] potentially too centralized, too powerful, potentially tyrannical federal government.”
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Innis explained how most murders (with guns) happen in cities like New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles “…[which] incidentally have the strictest gun control laws. …If you are an inner city resident… then, you are doubly victimized; you are victimized by the criminals who do not pay attention to the gun control laws and by [the government] effectively disarming you by making it virtually impossible for decent, law-abiding citizens to acquire guns legally.”
I think the black community should listen to Innis, who says Obama and Holder are effectively protecting criminals, not young black men, with their silly gun control plans.
2.) Dr. Ben Carson – Challenging Obamacare
Dr. Ben Carson is the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Carson was the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins. He led a 70-member surgical team for 22 hours to operate on twins bonded at the back of the head.
At the 2013 Presidential Prayer Breakfast, Carson offered a simple solution to give you control over your own healthcare—and provide quality healthcare for all members of society, including the poor. Whereas the President needed over 900 pages to write a death sentence for private healthcare, Carson articulated a solution to reform healthcare in 43 seconds (I encourage you to watch his full speech). Carson said:
“We need to have good healthcare for everybody… We spend a lot of money on healthcare. Twice as much per capita as anybody else in the in the world. And yet not very efficient. What can we do?
Here’s my solution: When a person is born, give them a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account, to which money can be contributed pre-tax from the time you are born ‘til the time you die. When you die, you pass it along to your family members so that when you’re 85 years old and you’ve got six diseases you’re not trying to spend up everything; you’re happy to pass it on and there’s nobody talking about death panels. That’s number one.
And also, for the people who are indigent, who don’t have any money, we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money; instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let’s put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own healthcare.”
Carson’s plan gives you and your provider control over your healthcare instead of ceding control to the government. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh explains: “…what Dr. Carson's plan says is just take that money that's already in the health care system that's coming out of your pocket in the form of taxes—Medicare tax, Medicaid tax, income tax, all that—and you keep it instead of sending it to Washington.”
And despite what pessimists may say, it is still possible to convince a future Congress to overturn Obamacare. For example, Chicago entrepreneur Michael Kalthoff worked with healthcare professionals to develop a bill that you can mail to your elected officials asking them to privatize healthcare in his new book, “Saving Private Healthcare.”
3.) Harry Alford – Challenging Socialism
The best way for African Americans (and all Americans) to achieve prosperity is through capitalism. As a successful businessman, Alford understands this. Hence, he founded the Black Chamber of Commerce to help blacks achieve success “through entrepreneurship and capitalistic activity.”
Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report indicating that 26 percent of African Americans live in poverty. This is far above both the national poverty rate (just over 14 percent) and the poverty rate for whites and Asians (under 12 percent).
Alford told The Daily Caller that Obama’s philosophy and policies are hurting African American business owners: “An executive order cannot trump the Constitution… He doesn't have a clue. He's never had a business. He's never had a real job. He doesn't understand how it all works. …I don't really support him too well and he knows it and that's a badge of honor. …He's bad. And I supported him, I voted for him [the] first time around. I had hopes because he was black, shame on me. …And then when he started doing all [these] executive orders, banning the ‘right to work’ and other things—hurting my members, my constituents, I had to back off, I had to represent my people! …If you read the Communist Manifesto, that’s [redistribution of wealth] that philosophy. He is not Adam Smith. He does not believe in capitalism the way America, our Founding Fathers, did. He is very social and it's getting borderline communist.”
President Obama may have had “dreams from his father.” But he certainly is not helping his fellow African Americans achieve the American dream. I hope the black community starts listening to brilliant black leaders who can and will help them succeed such as Innis, Carson and Alford.
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