Tavis Smiley, known for his unrelenting criticism of Barack Obama, recently told the Huffington Post that his commentary is rooted in holding the president accountable as the nation’s leader.
Suggested Reading
“As Cornel West and I said many years ago; I respect the president; I will protect the president against white supremacist attacks or anything else he’s unfairly targeted for,” he told HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill. “So you’re respecting, you’re protecting, but you’re correcting when he’s wrong. Not because he’s Barack Obama, but because he’s the president.”
Smiley went on to express concern about the current state of African Americans under Obama’s leadership.
“But the data is going to indicate—I said this before, and I’m not happy about this, I don’t celebrate this,” Smiley told Hill. “I don’t say it as a way of demonizing the president or casting an aspersion on him—but the data is going to indicate that black people lost ground in every single leading economic category during the Obama years.”
Read more at the Huffington Post.
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.