Obama slams rap music, promotes chivalry

Barack Obama says things that would get a Republican branded as a racist or sexist. These are some of his finest moments.

“A lot of the violence and pain that we suffer in our communities arises out of young men who nobody’s said to them what it means to be respected,” the former two-term president said last week. “So, they’re looking around [and thinking] I guess being respected means ‘I might shoot you. Or I can make you back down.’ ”

Obama, speaking at a My Brother’s Keeper town hall, said, “That is a self-defeating model for being a man. We have to constantly lift up examples of successful men who don’t take that approach. That’s hard to do in this society. You were talking about music.

“Let’s face it. A lot of hip-hop and rap music is built around me showing how I got more money than you. I can disrespect you, and you can’t do nothing about it.”

When Republicans criticized someone for writing explicit lyrics in rap songs, The New York Times editorial board accused them of “race baiting.” A Huffington Post reporter wrote that they ran a “racist” campaign.

The media’s hypocrisy doesn’t mean Obama is wrong. He’s right. That message is something young men desperately need to hear. He also had an important message for young women.

“Sometimes our young women allow young men to get away with stuff that they probably should not,” the Democrat said at the town hall. He told young women to set expectations about “how you should be treated by a guy you’re going out with and making sure guys understand ‘No, that’s not how I expect to be treated.’ I think that is also important. We tend to raise to the expectations that are set for us.”

Conservatives agree with this. Men do rise or fall in line with expectations. That’s the whole point of chivalry — setting a high societal standard for how men are to treat women. What a shame chivalry is now attacked as “benevolent sexism” by modern feminists.

One of the roots of these problems is something Obama touched on several times throughout his political career: fatherlessness.

Too many fathers “have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men,” Obama said in 2008. “And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

“You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”

To his credit, Obama recognized that fatherlessness and the problems it leads to can’t be solved solely by government action. In 2014, he rolled out an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. It’s an effort to connect young men of color with mentoring and job opportunities. At last week’s town hall, NBA superstar Steph Curry said the program had led to 50,000 new mentors signing up to participate over the last four years. That’s a great and important achievement.

Traditional values like chivalry and fatherhood have a taken a cultural beating over the past several decades. Obama’s blunt assessment about the problems that abandoning those values has created could help change that.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Listen to him discuss his columns each Monday at 9 a.m. with Kevin Wall on 790 Talk Now. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.