This president is thinking about the long haul, no question.
A sampling from "REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE NAACP CENTENNIAL CONVENTION," New York City (7/16/2009):
It's not enough just to have a babysitter. We need our young people stimulated and engaged and involved. . . We need our -- our folks involved in child development to understand the latest science. Today, some early learning programs are excellent. Some are mediocre. And some are wasting what studies show are by far a child's most formative years. . .
We need a new mind set, a new set of attitudes -- because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we've internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves.
We've got to say to our children, yes, if you're African American, the odds of growing up amid
crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that's not a reason to get bad grades . . . that's not a reason to cut class . . . that's not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. . . No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands -- you cannot forget that. That's what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. . . No excuses.
You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes we can.
To parents -- to parents, we can't tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home. . . You can't just contract out parenting. For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox . . . putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. . . It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework...
It also means pushing our children to set their sights a little bit higher. They might think they've got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can't all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne.. . I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers . . . doctors and teachers . . . not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice... I want them aspiring to be the President of the United States of America . . .
[Complete transcript: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-NAACP-Centennial-Convention-07/16/2009/]
Today's Rune: Partnership.
4 comments:
the man knows how to give a speech...... problem is it is open season on him right now
I guess he meant my next door neighbor shouldn't have told her 12 year old to quit acting white when she threw the books I gave the kid back over the fence at me huh?
A few age appropriate girl as heroine novels, the Chronicles of Narnia, and a book of bible stories she wanted.
*shrug* The African American culture will hold onto their slave mentality as long as they can, Professor Gates included, because the wrongly think as a collective that it is the only card they have in the deck.
I know of the accomplishments of Black inventors and icons from Truth to X but I wonder how much they celebrate the best of their own slice of American culture, or do they just want to continue to bait for a future they will never have if they do not educate.
President Obama can make all the well timed and spoken speeches he wants, but until there is a major cultural shift in Black American perception and ideation, no improvement in the racial debates of this nation is possible.
I don't agree that "the African American culture" (what ever that is) holds onto to a "slave mentality" anymore than I believe that the white-American culture (whatever that is) holds onto a slave-master mentality. There are SOME in each group that choose to lay all their problems at the door of the other but this country and world have left them behind. Obama is saying this, I think. The US is a mutli-ethinic, multi-racial country. The bi-polar thinking of white vs, black is dated and increasingly irrelevant.
Katerina happened. It was not a figment of Al Sharpton's (limited) imagination. Black people were stranded by poverty and a hurricane, showing that they were living in conditions invisible to a majority of Americans -- both balck and white. There is more to do -- but Obama is saying that much of it must come from inside the black community because there is a limit to what government can do. When a parent throws books over the fence of a generous neighbor -- that is a disaster for their child for many reasons. Government cannot fix that. I think we all should continue to try to help despite the ignorance of some parents. Self-hatred often comes out as bigotry. How dare a child do better than a parent -- who do they think they are? This is a twisted notion but I think not as rare as we'd like to think.
Professor Gates and Officer Crowley are both good people. Good people lose it on occasion. Gates was wrong to treat Crowley like a racist cop, in effect profiling him. Crowley should not have arrested Gates just because he was offended by him. The idea that an older man with a cane, shouting on his own porch is causing a public disturbance is kind of a stretch. Gates had just arrived in the US after a very long flight from China (jet-lagged). He gets to his home and is locked out (tired and pissed off). Then he gets hassled by a cop (outraged). Cowley expected gratitude for prtecting his property and got anger and accusation in return (pissed off, surprised). Indiginity vs. Ingratitude. Throw in male egos and you've got a mountain where a molehill should be.
Obama shoud have stayed clear of the whole thing.
They should have that beer in the White House.
"The US is a mutli-ethnic, multi-racial country. The bi-polar thinking of white vs, black is dated and increasingly irrelevant."
Very true. And the more multicultural multiracial multiethnic the better. Some if it just requires a change in public sphere perception, given that we've always been multi-cultural in reality.
And amen on the beer . . .
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