Op-ed: Breaking the Silence.
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| Sun, 08-01-2004 - 11:52am |
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/opinion/01gates.html?hp
"Go into any inner-city neighborhood," Barack Obama said in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, "and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." In a speech filled with rousing applause lines, it was a line that many black Democratic delegates found especially galvanizing. Not just because they agreed, but because it was a home truth they'd seldom heard a politician say out loud.
Why has it been so difficult for black leaders to say such things in public, without being pilloried for "blaming the victim"? Why the huge flap over Bill Cosby's insistence that black teenagers do their homework, stay in school, master standard English and stop having babies? Any black person who frequents a barbershop or beauty parlor in the inner city knows that Mr. Cosby was only echoing sentiments widely shared in the black community.
"If our people studied calculus like we studied basketball," my father, age 91, once remarked as we drove past a packed inner-city basketball court at midnight, "we'd be running M.I.T." When my brother and I were growing up in the 50's, our parents convinced us that the "blackest" thing that we could be was a doctor or a lawyer. We admired Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, but our real heroes were people like Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Mary McLeod Bethune.
Yet in too many black neighborhoods today, academic achievement has actually come to be stigmatized. "We are just not the same people anymore," says the mayor of Memphis, Dr. Willie W. Herenton. "We are worse off than we were before Brown v. Board," says Dr. James Comer, a child psychiatrist at Yale. "And a large part of the reason for this is that we have abandoned our own black traditional core values, values that sustained us through slavery and Jim Crow segregation."
Making it, as Mr. Obama told me, "requires diligent effort and deferred gratification. Everybody sitting around their kitchen table knows that."
"Americans suffer from anti-intellectualism, starting in the White House," Mr. Obama went on. "Our people can least afford to be anti-intellectual." Too many of our children have come to believe that it's easier to become a black professional athlete than a doctor or lawyer. Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players. "We talk about leaving no child behind," says Dena Wallerson, a sociologist at Connecticut College. "The reality is that we are allowing our own children to be left behind." Nearly a third of black children are born into poverty. The question is: why?
Scholars such as my Harvard colleague William Julius Wilson say that the causes of black poverty are both structural and behavioral. Think of structural causes as "the devil made me do it," and behavioral causes as "the devil is in me." Structural causes are faceless systemic forces, like the disappearance of jobs. Behavioral causes are self-destructive life choices and personal habits. To break the conspiracy of silence, we have to address both of these factors.
"A lot of us," Mr. Obama argues, "hesitate to discuss these things in public because we think that if we do so it lets the larger society off the hook. We're stuck in an either/or mentality - that the problem is either societal or it's cultural."
It's important to talk about life chances - about the constricted set of opportunities that poverty brings. But to treat black people as if they're helpless rag dolls swept up and buffeted by vast social trends - as if they had no say in the shaping of their lives - is a supreme act of condescension. Only 50 percent of all black children graduate from high school; an estimated 64 percent of black teenage girls will become pregnant. (Black children raised by female "householders" are five times as likely to live in poverty as those raised by married couples.) Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school or to have babies?
Mr. Cosby got a lot of flak for complaining about children who couldn't speak standard English. Yet it isn't a derogation of the black vernacular - a marvelously rich and inventive tongue - to point out that there's a language of the marketplace, too, and learning to speak that language has generally been a precondition for economic success, whoever you are. When we let black youth become monolingual, we've limited their imaginative and economic possibilities.
These issues can be ticklish, no question, but they're badly served by silence or squeamishness. Mr. Obama showed how to get the balance right. We've got to create as many opportunities as we can for the worst-off - and "make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life." But values matter, too. We can't talk about the choices people have without talking about the choices people make.


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Could have done without the Anti-intellectual comment about the white house.
My personal favorite of the moment--"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator". Or how about this gem "Reading is the basics for all learning." (Bush announcing his "Reading First" initiative)?
Yeez, the man is NOT a good role model for the proper use of English! Maybe he needs to take that "Verbal Advantage" course that's always being pushed on radio. At the very least he needs to avoid off-the-cuff comments!
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
These attacks about Bush being stupid are just nonsense. Then again I guess SOME people feel the need to do that.
I'd love to hear the reaction from all the people who weigned in on the NAACP topic a few weeks back. The author debunks so many of their other (Democrats) comments.
I didn't post about NAACP attitudes towards Bush but tended to agreee with Bill Cosby's assessment of the sorry state of language in African American communities. Still think Bill is a bit hypocritical since he fathered and left a daughter to be raised by a single mother out of wedlock. Also am aware that lumping a large number of people into a category and making blanket statements about them is going to result in errors.
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
It's hard to keep the truth secret (Bush's stupidity) when every time he opens his mouth he announces it to the world.
I wonder why so many of those on the left on this board feel free to call Bush stupid. Do you all hate Bush so much that you feel free to personally attack the man. So much for your fake compassion and love for your fellow man. I'm not going to respond to attacks about Bush's intelligence. Ya'll may wish something to be true but that doesn't make it so. The fact is he is an intelligent man, you may not like him, you may disagree with him but he is intelligent I didn't like Clinton as a president. I thought he lacked morals, direction and was wrong with his policy beliefs. I never resorted to calling him names, he had so many problems I didn't need to. What is even more pitiful is that Bush is called unscrupulous yet the man he replaced defined it.
These attacks make the left look petty and small.
I expect it from a playground with children, doesn't the left have better ammunition?
fox news stated:"The problem for Kerry may be who he is. An Ivy League millionaire, who has rubbed elbows with the world's wealthiest sophisticates, while most of rural America is considered Bush country."
Of course they make no mention of Bush's wealthy upbringing as grandson of a Senator, son of a President, schooling at Phillips Andover, Yale and Harvard, or tens of millions in personal assets.
so yes, I think the statement is relevent, since the white house has made kerrys intellect and education a mark of disdain rather than something to aspire to.
My animosity towards the man is personal. He sent my son and hundreds of thousands of other young people into a war in Iraq of dubious cause, questionable strategy, and unforeseeable end. Hundreds have died, thousands have been maimed, thousands more will carry memories that will burden them until the day they die. HE made that decision. As far as I'm concerned, there is ample reason to attack him. My compassion and love extend to those who are in need of comfort. Bush does not need comfort, he needs a therapeutic dope smack! Of course the smack would still leave him a dope, in all probability, but it would make some of us feel, in the words of Dick Cheney, "much better"!
I AM the person who said Bush might be either stupid or unscrupulous. Your logic seems to be that if one calls Bush unscrupulous, one must call Clinton scrupulous. Doesn't follow! Clinton as a paragon of virtue and upright behavior!? ROTFLMAO!
Can't speak for others, but I'm not left, right, Republican, Democrat, conservative, or liberal. Each issue deserves to be considered on its own--I prefer to do so.
Last, but not least, I finally got jib-jab downloaded--it took forever with a dial up connection, but was a good way to start the day. Thanks for providing the link a while back!
Edited 8/3/2004 11:20 am ET ET by gettingahandle
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
Could have done without the Anti-intellectual comment about the white house.
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This is what inspires the base. If you think the Republicans aren't going to SAY MUCH WORSE about their opponents, I have some WMD stockpiles to show you in Iraq.
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