President Obama's View on Race in American History is quite simple: Both blacks and whites have faced different types of discrimination. For blacks, racism was often explicitly stated or codified, both during the period of slavery and Jim Crow laws. The examples of implicit racism are too numerous to consider here, although Obama makes note of them when he talks about banning blacks from working on local public payrolls, such as police and firefighters. Almost all of this was engineered by whites at various levels, from the local judge to the nation's highest office. As unfortunate as this is, it simply cannot be denied by anyone with the facts at their disposal. On the other hand, whites face endogenous discrimination across class strata that exist within the entire ethnic population; primarily, working and lower-middle class whites are treated as second-class citizens by the privileged white aristocracy, composed primarily of individuals working for large corporations and Washington lobbyists. When you take a step back to examine President Obama's overall message, it is crystal clear; both blacks and poor whites share a common enemy: rich whites. President Obama makes many references to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, best known for his incendiary racist remarks against whites that, once public, forced President Obama to denounce him. Considering the narrative perpetuated by President Obama that he himself transcends race and can look beyond such issues, it is curious to see him associate with someone so racially divisive and totally contrary to the values ​​and virtues that President Obama champions during his campaigns. To say it raises a value... middle of paper... must necessarily produce a result: racial division. Harmony cannot be an output of this function because it was never an input to begin with, in the same way that two wrongs don't make a right. It's important to understand what brought us to this point, but until we shift our focus from that to what we need to do to escape this grim reality, we won't get anywhere. Of the three choices, President Obama's policies align most closely with FDR. Both are scholars of Keynesian economic theory. FDR had his WPA, PWA and SSI, while President Obama has money for malfunctions, the stimulus bill and Obamacare. Both believe in a strong central government that actively works in the lives of ordinary citizens. Fundamentally, they both believe in the redistribution of wealth, even if neither has ever explicitly stated this. Time will tell how similar their results will be.