Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 5-13-16 Online Edition

White House News
Atty. General Lynch Gives N.C. Gov. An Ultimatum
Black Journalists Critique President Obama’s Commencement Speech At Howard University
U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch Monday said North Carolina's controversial bathroom law for transgender people amounts to "state- sponsored discrimination" and is focused on "a problem that doesn't exist."
"What this law does is inflict further indignity on a popula- tion that has already suffered far more than its fair share," she said, speaking directly to residents of her native state. "This law provides no benefit to society, and all it does is harm innocent Americans."
The U. S. Justice Depart- ment last week said the law amounts to illegal sex discrim- ination and gave North Car- olina Gov. Pat McCrory until Monday to say he would refuse to enforce it.
Instead, McCrory, a Re- publican who is up for re-elec- tion in November, doubled down, saying the law is needed
U. S. ATTY. GENERAL LORETTA LYNCH
to protect people from being molested in bathrooms.
McCrory accused the Obama administration of unilaterally rewriting federal civil rights law to protect transgender people's access to bathrooms, locker rooms and showers across the country.
President Barack Obama
kicked off his last round of commencement speeches as a sitting president at Howard in Washington, D.C. last week- end.
During what some would call an unapologetically Black ad- dress, Pres. Obama told graduates:
... be confident in your her- itage. Be confident in your Blackness. One of the great changes that’s occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there’s no one way to be Black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of debate about whether I’m black enough. In the past couple months, I’ve had lunch with the Queen of England and hosted Kendrick Lamar in the Oval Office.”
Pres. Obama told the grad- uating class of 2016 the coun- try is in a better place than when he graduated from Co- lumbia University in 1983 and highlighted some of the changes he equated to progress for African-Americans:
“When I was graduating, the main Black hero on TV was Mr. T. Rap and hip hop was counterculture, underground.
Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. We’re no longer only entertainers, we’re producers, studio executives. No longer small business own- ers — we’re CEOs, we’re may- ors, representatives, Presidents of the United States.”
During the 45-minute speech, Pres. Obama also touched on race inequality, voting rights, and encouraged graduates to keep pushing the country forward.
“We’ve still got a big racial gap in economic opportu- nity ... Harriet Tubman may be going on the twenty, but we’ve still got a gender gap when a black woman working full-time still earns just 66 per- cent of what a white man gets paid.”
[...]
... remember the tie that does bind us as African Americans — and that is our particular awareness of injustice and un- fairness and struggle. That means we cannot sleepwalk through life.
[...]
... thanks in large part to the
activism of young people like
PRESIDENT OBAMA
many of you, from Black Twit- ter to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened — white, black, Demo- crat, Republican — to the real problems, for example, in our criminal justice system.
On Monday, Roland Mar- tin and his panel of guests dis- cussed President Obama’s commencement speech at Howard University and felt it was his Blackest address to date.
Panelist Barbara Arnwine, said Pres. Obama’s speech was “excellent in many regards that it had humor ... it was very intellectual.”
Republican strategist Gi- anno Caldwell called the President’s address a “keep- ing it real” moment. He added, “I appreciated a num- ber of tones that he hit on this particular speech and I thought that he brought up some very good points, with re- gard to some of the accom- plishments that African-Americans have made over the years and the ones we continue to make.”
Panelist Carmen Berk- ley of the AFL-CIO told Mar- tin she is “so happy that President Obama is lit in his last couple of months before he leaves — maybe it is his Black- est speech ever because he is talking about income inequal- ity, he’s talking about educa- tion.”
“I think the underlying message that he said is that we have to be activists ... it’s not just about us going to college and making a bunch of money, it’s about us making sure that when Black people run for of- fice and when we’re trying to achieve more, that we’re sup- porting each other,” said Berkley.
She continued, Pres. Obama addressing Black Lives Matter and talking about activism in the Black commu- nity is “what’s going to move our country forward.”
President Obama Will Be First Sitting President To Visit Hiroshima Since Bombing In 1945
President Barack Obama is to visit Hiroshima this month - the first serving U.S. president to travel to the Japanese city since it was hit by a U.S. nuclear bomb in 1945. This is a photo of the Atomic Bomb Dome.
The visit will be part of an Asian trip from 21-28 May that will also take in Vietnam.
The Hiroshima bombing on August 6, 1945 killed 140,000 people. Along with a second bombing on Nagasaki - it is credited with ending World War II.
The White House said there would be no apology for the bombings.
A statement from President Obama's press secretary read: "The President will make an historic visit to Hi- roshima with Prime Minis- ter [Shinzo] Abe to highlight his continued com- mitment to pursuing peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons."
In ruling out any apology, the President's communications adviser, Ben Rhodes, said on his Twitter page that the U. S.
would be "eternally proud of our civilian leaders and the men and women of our armed forces who served in World War II".
He said that President Obama would "not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a for- ward-looking vision focused on our shared future".
He said the visit would "offer an opportunity to honor the memory of all innocents who were lost during the war".
Before that the President will meet Vietnam's leadership and deliver a speech in the capital, Hanoi, on U. S. -Viet- nam relations.
Jimmy Carter has visited Hiroshima, but after the end of his presidency.
A U. S. ambassador attended the annual commemoration for the first time in 2010.
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