"But there were more sinister undertones to Obama’s rhetoric, more flaws in his outlook, than Baker acknowledges. Obama often enough lashed black folk in public — belittling Morehouse College graduates in a commencement speech, blaming black people for using poverty as an excuse to commit crime in his address at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, needling black members of Congress with the condescending exhortation to stop complaining, take off their bedroom slippers and put on their marching boots. Obama could identify what he thought of as black pathology in remorselessly granular detail. Yet he could hardly utter a discouraging word to white America, wouldn’t dare take the same liberties with them as he did with his own."