Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Do as I say, Not as I do
dallasvoice.com“Pull your pants up.” How many times have we heard this admonishment directed at young Black men? Even Barack Obama, in a 2008 interview with MTV, said, “Brothers should pull up their pants.” Mind you, he did preface that saying “creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq” were the real issues, and that laws against sagging pants were “a waste of time.” But what he did not say was that laws criminalizing sagging pants were fully intended to give the police more reasons to stop Black men in a country that has, shall we say, a long history of criminalizing Black skin.
The laws were more than a waste of time: they were fully intended to increase the criminal justice system’s ability to waste Black men’s
