What Obama’s election means to black boys, Part II
Here’s retired WPost columnist William Raspberry writing in today’s Post. Obama’s unique background is invaluable in moving the discussion beyond the grievance-based dialogue of years past and toward the personal responsibility side. Researchers examining why black middle class students in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights lagged behind their white counterparts put their finger partly on factors under the control of parents, such as the amount of time spent watching TV or the exposure to family literacy.
Writes Raspberry:
Black communities are beset by crime and violence but, again, less because of racism than because of lack of discipline in those communities. One key reason for this failure of discipline is the dissolution of black families — not because of discrimination but because black Americans lead the nation in fatherlessness, having allowed marriage to fall to an all-time-low priority.
Obama tried to talk about some of this during his campaign, frequently pointing out that government can do little to improve education unless parents take control of the television, read to their children and check their homework.
Obama, says Raspberry, is in a unique position to shift the dialogue:
How has Obama come to see so clearly the need for black America’s active and confident participation in solving its problems?
First, he is supremely confident in his own ability to succeed at whatever he sets out to do, and his experience may lead him to see the power of self-confidence in general. Second, he grew up without the encumbrance of a personal link to American slavery. It is easy even for the descendants of slavery to forget how powerfully that not-so-distant experience guides our sense of destiny. We tend to see slavery as a palpable, almost genetic, experience; that is one reason so many black Americans initially had trouble accepting Obama, with his Kenyan father and white American mother, as authentic.
But while our handed-down “remembrance” of slavery makes us super-conscious of (and, we imagine, steels us against) white America’s racist possibilities, it does two other things as well. It leads us too easily to a racial explanation of all that goes wrong in our community, and it encumbers us with the burden of doubt as to what this country will let us do — and be.
Obama certainly did not escape American racism; his skin saw to that. But he did escape the encumbrance of “genetic” slavery; the people who raised him saw to that.
It’s worth noting where Raspberry is devoting his his retirement time: president of Baby Steps, a parent training and empowerment program based in Okolona, Miss.
Tags: black boys
November 14th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I feel many honest hearted persons like Obama tend to reflect their lives upon others in attempting to help curb the growing international Male Crisis. The problem is really more deeply sociological than many persons including Obama realizes.
I have been observing the Male Crisis since 1993 when I began noticing the decline of Males going to college in the 1993 U.S. Statistical Abstracts. My learning theory on site is about eight years old and still shows why the African American Male Crisis was really a full Male Crisis simply with African Americans in more deprived more aggressed against environments.
My learning theory shows how by redefining average stress as layers of mental frictions we can then see how differential treatment, neglect, and differential aggression or protection of one group or another greatly affects thinking, learning, motivation to learn (mental reward received for mental work expended), mental/emotional health, and acumulation of knowledge and skills over time.
The nineteenth century belief Males should be strong that allows more aggression toward Males from day one creates higher layers of mental frictions that impede learning and motivation to learn as opposed to treatment of Females where protection and support from an early age creates lower layers of mental frictions that make learning and motivation to learn easier and accumulates in growing strength over time.
Also the belief Males should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and denying them more good mental, emotional, social, and academic support (fear of coddling the Male) also denies much mental/emotional/social/academic growth for Males and adds to higher average stress.
Obama like many other persons are not able to see this difference as well. I have lived in a housing project and also in West Palm with the sons and daughters of more affluent persons. I see how our individual environments from socioeconomic to gender create large differences in mental/emotional growth over time. My complete learning theory with many applications will go to all on request.