On Father’s Day, Barack Obama delivered a sermon in a Chicago church chiding black men for their failures as parents. “Any fool can have a child,” he preached. “That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

Those powerful words elicited some telling reactions. Under the headline “Obama’s Father’s Day Grand Slam,” David Brody of CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by evangelist Pat Robertson) called it an “important ... and a defining speech” that “spoke directly to the concerns of millions of concerned parents across the country.”

By contrast, black commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson said Obama “clearly is fixated on the ever popular media notion of the absentee black father,” a notion he calls a “stereotypical and plainly false assertion.”

Actually, Obama was doing exactly the opposite of what Hutchinson alleges. He was breaking stereotypes, not reinforcing them. And that’s why he has a real chance of becoming the first African-American president.

An earlier generation of black leaders portrayed their people as victims of racial injustice -- an undeniably true statement. Their answer was more rights, more programs and more money, all bestowed by government. And in his Chicago sermon, Obama did talk about the need in the black community for “more money for our schools,” more cops on the street, more jobs and training classes.