Obama is only the vessel. What are the higher implications for electing him.

Great Debates
1

This past month I have been decidedly abscent from the boards. Due in no small part for a 2 week jaunt to the Rockies for some R&R. In that time I had the chance to read several books, while relaxing with the beautiful stellar’s jays in the wavy aspen trees and with no TV or computer access. Wow - to be unplugged is indeed a wonder.

I tried to make a reasonable return to mindfulness, accessing that part of me that is rational and present. I began to think about this election not interms of past elections [I tried not to compare] but in terms of what it truly means to have an African American running for the highest position in our land, and arguably the most powerful position on the planet.

My thoughts drifted to the millions of children watching this election. The millions of highschool kids in the inner city schools who understand one thing: That history would say many of them will not graduate, many will get involved with drugs (doing and selling), some will have children by the age of 18, some will have a general attitude of uncaring nonresolve.

I had the chance to read a paper on Hard Times of inner city school teachers, it was an essay into what it means to find that spark in a child’s eye, to watch it grow and then to watch it dim in the inner city. It was heartbreaking, but at the same time sobering in that it offered a viewpoint that is so often over looked. That of a parent of an inner city child. Millions of Americans choose to passivley or actively ignore what is happening in our cities to our children. Many choose to ignore the fact that there are kids who do not eat breakfast, lunch or dinner provided to them by a parent. That in a school of 1500 students one HS Junior may pass the state algebra exam. (1).

Many of these kids grow up accepting violence as a norm, accepting it as something that just happens. Many of them if they were in middle school when 9/11 happened are in highschool now and have quite literally grown up with an America at War.

I have come to believe that violence breeds violence and that we must as individuals work with the violence within *us * as a way of bringing peace to the world.

This presidential election has been brought to our schools like it has in every school for every election in our past. However, in this election we have as one of our choices a bi-racial candidate. Someone who perhaps can inspire many out of simply making it to where he already has made it. If he wins - some of these people in inner city schools may look upon this as a dream that they too can make it anywhere they wish if they put the right amount of effort into it.

However, if he loses - that which does not kill us makes us stronger - may be the motto in these inner city schools. I don’t know.

Either way one of the byproducts I hope to come out of this election is something Ghandi spoke to: Be the change we wish to see in others…

Debate: A win by Obama will inspire millions of inner city kids to strive a little harder, to make something of themselves.

2

Unless we radically change how we fund our schools and get the federal government heavily involved, I don’t see how what happens in Wash DC makes any difference. Maybe in a few cases, but how many HS kids in poor schools follow politics much anyway? And if they see “one of their own” in a position of power, and yet nothing fundamentally different happens in their lives, then what are they supposed to think?

It’s not so much the kids’ fault, but the fault of their parents and the society around them. Unless you change that you can’t expect the kids to change.

3

If the success of individuals who actually came out of the inner city is not enough to inspire these children, I do not see why the success of someone who is not from the inner city would be.

If parents want to give their inner city child the best chance at success, they should leave the inner city. Raising your child in failing schools and a failing community is borderline child abuse when the only reason you are there is because of your irresponsible choices.

4

On the one hand, there is in certain segments of the urban Black poor, a certain hopelessness that the American dream really applies to them. Other immigrant populations have many visible and public examples of their own rising to the top in business and intellectual pursuits. The visible successes in those venues among Blacks are fewer with more of the successes coming from entertainment including sports - which only feeds a sort of stereotype. Mind you, those successes exist, but they are not so visible to Black urban poor youth. The successful Black businesssperson, scientist, engineer, or academic isn’t so often in the news and isn’t in the neighborhood anymore either. They’ve all done as Two and a half suggests and moved on out. As role models they are not around so much. In those neighborhoods the most successful Black businessmen around sell drugs. That’s what those kids actually get to see.

A highly visible example of the highest success cannot help but partially offset some negative self-stereotyping by youth in those communities.

OTOH Charles Barkley once said it well: “I am not a role model” - parents are the role models that count most. A highly visible highly successful public figure can perhaps offset some of the drug dealers and gangbangers that count as success in those neighborhoods, but it can only go so far and it isn’t a substitute for seeing real examples of pathways to success in your family and among those you can go and talk to. Obama won’t be there to mentor them and make sure the homework is done and make sure they are home before curfew. He’s just one example and he didn’t emerge from the urban ghetto.

I wouldn’t expect too much. I’ll be happy enough if he wins and becomes the effective President that I expect him to be. Hoping for his election to cure all our social ills is a bit too much.

5

Yes, unfortunately perhaps a teensy drop in a humongous bucket at best.

6

I do not have a cite, but from what I understand anecdotally from teacher friends and aquaintences, this election is taking center stage in many inner city schools.

Hope is not an abandoned desire.

HS students do not need to know policy to see we are in the midst of an important era for the US. We here on the boards reflect something that is biased and skewed. I try and put my mind in that of a HS senior in Brooklyn and see what she sees. Then maybe the glass get’s a little clearer.

7

I hope you’re right.

8

In that case, it may be worse than I expected. I think that for most kids, HS is too late to start. Unless Obama is somehow going to convince inner city fathers to get their shit together and help raise the families they created, then I can’t see how things are going to change. The Baby-Mamas* just can’t do it on their own-- especially when many of them are still basically children themselves.

So, like I said earlier, these HS kids see a Black man in the WH, but nothing in their own personal life changes-- what are they supposed to think? Expecting a president to make a dent in the problems of inner city youth is just out of proportion with what a president can do.

*a term I only learned about due to recent events

9

**John]/b], one way it may help is that Obama’s election would take away at least one excuse. It’s a little hard to claim that “The Man” is out to get African Americans when the president is an African American. And while Obama didn’t originally come out of the inner cities, he sure as heck didn’t grow up rich, and he’s spent a lot of time in inner cities since. I think he’ll be an inspirational figure to those kids capable of looking beyond their immediate neighborhoods. It won’t make a big difference, but it might make a little.

10

Oh, by the way, I looked up Stellar’s Jays on wiki, and they are incredibly beautiful! And I don’t even usually care much for birds.

11

Oy!: Maybe I’ve been unclear, but I agree 100% with what you say-- it may help a little. Keep in mind, however, that the president is hardly “the Man” for most inner city kids. The president is a far distant figure who has little to no effect on their daily lives. “The Man” is more likely to be a school official, a cop, or someone the kids have direct contact with.

12

Also, they should be “parents,” not “some shithead who impregnates a woman and then disappears.” This “baby daddy” culture is perpetuating a cycle of despair because boys have no male role model in their life so they turn to older gang members. A whole culture of young boys looking for their fathers and finding him only in teenage warlords and thugs. It can’t go on if that culture is going to rise out of the slums, and don’t even think about blaming it on slavery or anything else - that’s just making excuses.

Every successful minority in America that has risen from poverty in large numbers has done so through family cohesiveness. Asians, Jews, and now more frequently, Hispanics and Middle Easterners. They’re “making it” because the family is a solid unit and fiercely loyal to each other. The fact that urban black culture actually has a specific word for “father of my child but a man who I have no relationship with” is not a good sign.

13

Hmm, I think of “The Man” as institutional, shorthand for “those in power.”

14

Phlosphr, I love you, but you’re not the first to suggest that inner city kids will strive for more with Obama in the White House. I doubt you’re even the 100th person to suggest it.

It’s obvious that inner city will try to do better after a man who looks like them rises to the highest position in the world. How things will change is the question and I don’t think we’ll know the answer to that until after Obama wins.

15

Hell, I’ve had lots of ideas I came up with myself that turned out to be ideas that had been floating around for a long time. Doesn’t mean I didn’t come up with them on my own nonetheless.

16

Why on earth is that obvious?

First of all, being black is about more than looking black. I’ve read and heard many, many stories about young black kids being shunned by their peers for getting good grades, dressing conservatively and staying out of trouble - they get stigmatized as “too white.” I think the exact same thing is going to happen to Obama if he wins.

The president is NOT a role model for most boys. When I was a kid, neither myself, nor anyone I knew, gave a shit about the president. Kids get their role models from the pop culture that surrounds them, and their immediate company. They get it from their music and from their movies and entertainment. Right now, their pop culture offers up nothing but black rappers who glamorize violence and drugs, and bad-boy sports stars who are constantly in and out of trouble with the law. Predictably, this pop culture is commercially packaged and sold by fat white men in suits, but I don’t think they realize that, or else they’d be rejecting it.

17

My point is that this idea has been out in the ether for so long than it’s not even a question anymore. Obama will change things for inner city youth, it’s only a matter of what will change.

EDIT:

But that’s not true for all people and groups. My grandmother still has a picture of JFK hanging in her house because being “The President” and “Catholic” was a big deal. The first African-American president will be a big deal for a long time and have a much wider effect than JFK’s religious beliefs.

18

Did your grandmother come from a demographic group at risk of being caught up in a generational cycle of crime and poverty?

19

For every progressive action, there is a reaction. For every advance, a resentment. How to gauge that? Dunno, no such clear metric exists. There are those amongst us who would like to declare that the struggle for equality is over, no further efforts can, or should, be made.

To put it facetiously - “Hey, you got a AfrAm President! You’re totally equal, so quitcher bellyaching!”

And so it goes.

20

Funny, the last person I heard that claimed a black person who got good grades and succeeded was acting “white” was, white , the point being is that society, reflected sometimes in peer behaviour that has decided that blacks, like woman, like Jews; whatever ‘other’ you wish to name, must behave in a certain way or be labeled. I fail to see why blacks are singled out as being anti-intellectual with these many, many stories we’ve heard; when we have a real live white person saying the same thing.

How many more stories are there of geeks and nerds? Or Blondes? or Jocks? We have created a caste system of sorts based on what society expects; yet i don’t see the same amount of criticism of the other society classes we created, I do of the African-American.

The thing that Obama represents, is not a blow against The Man (patent pending) or proof that man isn’t looking to keep a brother down. What it represents is the ability for blacks to be treated as individuals and not as group, just like white folk are.

It invalidates the ability of some people to claim that blacks as a group behave in certain ways. Obama, along with the other successful black people in the country, add another rung to the ladder of ‘sameness’, of making blackness, no different than having freckles…of understanding that within the group there are successful people and failures, that people can come from the lowest environment and still manage to rise to the top; that was something that many people consider achievable with hard work and a bit of luck.

For others, it never happened, despite their hard work; “The Man” (patent pending) kept them down. That’s a historical fact to them, and I think ignoring their reality with the suggestion that they’re whining is silly.

And this is where Obama and others come in. Their power isn’t to raise the black race up by their bootstraps, their power is to create an environment where the Harvard graduate and the junkie are treated as individuals of the group they share and not as representative of the group…the same as we do white folk.