It’s worth considering how the president addresses both of these spheres. When talking morality in the black community, Obama has always been very clear. Obama has argued that black kids, specifically, have a mentality which reflects shame in educational achievement. (“I don't know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was something white.”) He believes that black men, specifically, tend to be more apt to abandon “their responsibilities” and act “like boys instead of men.” He believes that black parents need to learn to “put away the X-Box” and get kids to bed at a reasonable hour.

Obama’s policy message to African Americans does not enjoy this level of targeted specificity. Instead he endorses the sort of broad policies which most progressives support—criminal-justice reform, “investment in infrastructure,” improved healthcare coverage, “jobs in low-income communities.” In 2014, when Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper, he billed it as “not a new federal program,” and stressed that it was aimed not at young black men, specifically, but at “young men of color.”

I endorse all of these initiatives and ideas—but not because they are targeted policy. They are not. And you will hear no policy targeted toward black people coming out of the Obama White House, or probably any White House in the near future. That is because the standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy. It is not hard to see why that might be the case. Asserting the moral faults of black people tend to gain votes. Asserting the moral faults of their government, not so much. I am sure Obama sincerely believes in the moral invective he offers. But I suspect he believes a lot more about his country which he chooses not to share.

This affliction is not solely Obama’s. Consider that in a conversation about poverty, featuring America’s first black president, one of its most accomplished progressive political scientists, and one of its most important liberal columnists, the word “racism” does not appear in the transcript once. That is because the progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple—talk about class and hope no one notices.

This is not a “both/and.” It is a bait and switch. The moral failings of black people are directly addressed. The centuries-old failings of their local, state, and federal government, less so. One need not imagine what a “both/and” approach might sound like, to understand why a president of the United States can’t actually offer one. At best, one can hope for reference to “past injustice.” But in a country where Walter Scott was shot in the back, where Eric Garner was choked to death, where whole municipalities are—at this very hour—funding themselves through racist plunder, fleeting references to “past injustice” will not do.