Obamas – MIA

Barack & Michelle Obama – MIA

Former President Barack Obama, and his wife, Michelle, cut their chops championing civil rights and community organizing in Chicago. President Obama spent eight years in the Oval Office advocating for racial minorities, migrants, the disadvantaged, the LGBT community, and others. He and his wife were outspoken opponents of racism and other forms of discrimination. In fact, Michelle Obama, as First Lady, led a campaign to free Nigerian school girls who were taken hostage, spearheading the #bringbackourgirls hashtag movement. President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement while he was in office.

As champions of civil rights, one would expect that they would be outspoken critics of any form of racial or religious bias. Why, then, are they silent in the face of the onslaught of antisemitism running rampant on college campuses and elsewhere in our society? The matter of condemning antisemitism should be a simple position for the Obamas. Unlike weighing in on the Israel-Gaza conflict, where individuals may have different viewpoints, no right-thinking person can have any compunction to condemn Jew hatred.

The Obamas’ selectivity on the racial biases to condemn while leaving out others – antisemitism – calls into question their bona fides as civil rights activists. Either ALL racial/religious biases are condemnable, or you are just pandering to a select cohort of the voting public by espousing righteous positions that are easy.