Schooling ethnicity

Was it just me or was President George W. Bush's speech at the Black Expo rather quick, unemotional and impersonal? The African Americans at the event a couple weeks ago deserved much better.\nNo president has ever spoken at the Black Expo and this was only a modest upgrade. The president basically gave an outline of his current issues. He talked about education, economic issues, his social security plan (oh, how I'm getting tired of hearing about that) and of course Iraq. The only topic that seemed to arouse the crowd somewhat was talk about the rising numbers of black home ownership. \nBasically the address to the Black Expo was a fill-in-the-blank speech. He stated everything that was important to him regarding the nation and related it to African Americans. Speeches, at least good ones, usually address the audience's concerns and then relates them to what they are doing about it. His speech was just the opposite. The address can be summed up in one statement from his speech: "See, what I want is more and more people from all walks of life, including African Americans..."\nPresident Bush failed to sufficiently address issues that are closest to African Americans' hearts. More and more young African Americans are going to war and risking their lives. Not only did Bush mention nothing about the status of the war, he didn't even give praise to those young African Americans fighting and dying for a war that no one knows how and when it will end. Also, like most conservatives, he failed to adequately address the fact that one in three African American males in the United States are on the way to jail. He tries to address the issue by blaming wrongful convictions. Indeed, black males do commit a lot of crimes, but it has a lot to do with the communities they live in. The best way to help solve these problems is more public programs to keep them off the street, but Bush certainly can't give more money to people who don't vote for him. \nReally we all know what this address was all about: politics. This was a strategic move by the Bush administration. Instead of going to the NAACP national convention, he came to a safer Republican state and talked to more moderate and less hostile African Americans. He did a political favor for Gov. Mitch Daniels as well as established precedent of talking with the African American constituency. He arrived early, the speech was straight and to the point, and took less than 30 minutes. Except for him standing up awkwardly with one hand in his pocket smiling while Daniels spoke, it was mistake free. And besides that familiar smirk, there was no real emotion involved.\nAlthough Bush's appearance at the Black Expo was appreciated because of the national attention it gave to the event, the speech wasn't. His address didn't tell African Americans anything new besides that he cared enough about African Americans to make an appearance here and there. President Bush, you will have to do a lot more to change African American attitudes about you and the Republican Party.