Op-ed: Breaking the Silence.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Op-ed: Breaking the Silence.
102
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.

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:03am
What's the big deal about people making verbal attacks towards the President or his policies anyway?

This is America, where short of OBSCENITY we are encouraged to speak our minds and speak them loudly!

I could care less if someone calls Kerry a Liberal Weiner, or if someone calls Bush a Right-wing-Nutjob.

If people want to portray themselves in that manner, or come across as abrasive, so what. So long as the Ivillage TOS is adhered to, what does it matter?

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:08am
"What's the big deal about people making verbal attacks towards the President or his policies anyway? "

Oh its ok it just makes that persons viewpoint look weaker. I don't have to call Kerry a liberal wacko to show he is one. I just find it a cheap way out of a debate by calling Bush "stupid".

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-02-2004
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:10am
>>>seems to be that there are plenty of people around here who at least want to hear what Bush has to say. And we've always been a primarily dem. state. <<<

I made no reference to what people do or don't want to hear, I simply stated that what obama said was relevent.

By the way I lived long enough in texas to know that what *seems* and what *is* are two separate issues :)

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:17am

per·son·al:


relating to, or affecting a person: as

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-01-2004
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:18am
"I made no reference to what people do or don't want to hear, I simply stated that what obama said was relevent."

Ok...pull off the rabid debate dogs....'twas just a comment. :)

"By the way I lived long enough in texas to know that what *seems* and what *is* are two separate issues :)"

Hence the reason why I stressed the word "seems". And in all reality, what we see of our presidents, ALL of our presidents is what the media mill is allowed to churn out. Truth in journalism only goes as far as people are willing to talk.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:20am
*****or***** based on the *****existence****** or presence of a person

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:45am
Comparing Clinton to Bush isn't entirely wierd. Clinton damaged the reputation of the person who sits in the office of President. Bush damaged the integrity of the US as a strong and moral force.

I won't make the claim that Clinton was a model of rectitude. When Monica was coyly talking about whether or not to send her black dress to the dry cleaners, I wrote to a friend that a man who didn't have the self discipline to keep his fly zipped was NOT fit to be the leader of a nation where a few words could mobilize the resources of the last remaining super power. His lack of scruples was self evident.

But in Clinton's defense, there were no deaths directly linked to the Monica episode. Bush could, and did, send troops into harm's way. He and his administration are emphasizing the great good that came out of getting rid of Saddam. That's not the rationale that was used to take the nation to war. WMD, Al Qaeda links (the much hyped "war on terror") and the need of Iraqis for peace, freedom, and democracy were some of the justifications of the time. We may be rebuilding schools and hospitals but some of them were destroyed by us in the first place and I seriously doubt their construction/reconstruction would have been considered adequate as a casus belli.

And it has cost us dearly. You know the numbers. But you may, or may not know the little details that make the war a very personal experience. There was an emotional toll paid by my family--multiply that by hundreds of thousands. Over 900 military families will never see their loved ones alive. Add the lives of Iraqis who lost loved ones, homes, and businesses. Consider the men and women who will never have whole bodies again. Throw in the billions of dollars spent so far. And here's the kicker. It's not over. There are still lives being lost, Iraqi civilian, US, and coalition. And no one seems to know when it will be over.

And the results? No WMD, no links between 9/11 and Iraq, very tenuous links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, and a country in near anarchy. That's the status of Iraq. Have we captured Osama bin Ladin? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? A significant majority of Al Qaeda's leadership? No. Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf is not cooperating fully but trying to walk a fine line between the devil (US and Western influence) and the deep blue sea (both moderate and radical Muslims who are not thrilled about his heavy handed tactics against the leaders of their religion). Musharraf is a military junta man and we're entering into a similar situation with him as the one we entered by backing the Shah of Iran (remember him?). If justice is rain water, we're talking about a desert. I get a grim laugh from the types who claim that all this activity is evidence that "fill in the blank" is desperate, on the run, badly fragmented. Dear sweet heaven, what would it look like if they were winning?!

There is a very real chance that we have radicalized many Muslims by our actions. If I were trying to get public opinion on the side of Al Qaeda and their ilk, I could hardly have done better than Bush has done.

I don't blame you for feeling concerned about the prevention of further terrorist attacks against the US, particularly if you have small children and live near a population or economic center like New York. But if attacking Iraq was to neutralize the terror threat, please explain to me why the alert level was the subject of so much attention this week. I consider that threat to be the fatal flaw in Bush's claim of success in either Iraq or the war on terror.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:46am

Within the framework of the the board a personal attack is, if I call you or you call me a name. It does not apply to

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:51am
Insightful, eloquent

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 10:56am
I'll concede simply because I don't wish to debate semantics...but...

"It does not apply to public figures. If we could not criticize public figures many of the debates/discussions would be non-existent."

My statement about personal attacks was in the broader sense, not limited to this board's definition. Regardless, name calling of the president is petty and unnecessary, it isn't productive critism.

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