The Chris Moeller Archives

The scold of "black America"

You don’t have to possess black skin to find yourself wincing as you hear Barack and Michelle Obama, at separate locations on the same day, scold young African-Americans for what they perceive as their lack of, or misguided, ambition. In a speech to graduates of Bowie State University last weekend, the First Lady declared that “too many of your young people can’t be bothered” with getting an education. That “instead of walking miles every day to school," (Huh?) "they’re sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming to be a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they’re fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper.”

In the same paragraph of her prepared text, Michelle proclaimed that “separate but equal” education has been dead for more than 50 years, but here she’s presumably referring only to the law. In reality, America’s public schools are as racially- and economically-segregated today as they’ve been in a generation. She may not be aware of this fact as her children are enrolled in a private school in Maryland that carries an annual tuition tag of $30,000 per child. When Obama tells predominately-poor African-American parents that the solution to their inadequate local school is to become active in the school and “fix it,” she’s presuming that nobody is expecting her to pull her kids out of the Sidwell Friends Academy and take her own advice. Sadly, she’s probably right.

Having this President as our first African-American President has driven home the long-standing point that the story of race in this country is really just another story about economic inequality. Achieving equality in the legal code was one struggle. It was overcome with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Equality in practice, particularly economic equality, has proven to be much more allusive. It was one thing to give an African-American man or woman a vote, it’s something else entirely to be willing to share with him or her the avenues of wealth-building and the spoils of our "winner-take-almost-all" economy.

Michelle Obama’s tired speech is one of a sort that we’ve heard before from Bill Cosby and others. When it's delivered by an African-American, it's usually be one that has piles of money. As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out at The Atlantic, a double-standard still exists for accepting the aspirations of black kids and white kids:

“At the most basic level, there's nothing any more wrong with aspiring to be a rapper than there is with aspiring to be a painter, or an actor, or a sculptor. Hip-hop has produced some of the most penetrating art of our time, and inspired much more. My path to this space began with me aspiring to be rapper. Hip-hop taught me to love literature. I am not alone. Perhaps you should not aspire to be a rapper because it generally does not provide a stable income. By that standard you should not aspire to be a writer, either. 

“At a higher level, there is the time-honored pattern of looking at the rather normal behaviors of black children and pathologizing them. My son wants to play for Bayern Munich. Failing that, he has assured me he will be Kendrick Lamar. When I was kid I wanted to be Tony Dorsett -- or Rakim, whichever came first. Perhaps there is some corner of the world where white kids desire to be Timothy Geithner instead of Tom Brady. But I doubt it. What is specific to black kids is that their dreams often don't extend past entertainment and athletics. That is a direct result of the kind of limited cultural exposure you find in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are the direst result of American policy.” 

Under the Obama administration, this “tough love” for his own people has been as tough as it’s been under any recent president. The unemployment rate, while at roughly 6% currently for whites, has reached 14% for blacks and its highest level since 1984. Obama continues to promote a national drug policy that has proven devastating for African-American families and communities. He has done so despite admitting that he, himself, used marijuana and even cocaine as a young man. Goose, meet gander. I don't think you've met.

In his own commencement speech over the weekend at Martin Luther King Jr.'s alma mater, Morehouse College, the President said that “there’s no longer room for any excuses” for young African-Americans. Coates sees this targeted critique as another area of double-standard:

“This clearly is a message that only a particular president can offer. Perhaps not the ‘president of black America,’ but certainly a president who sees holding African Americans to a standard of individual responsibility as part of his job. This is not a role Barack Obama undertakes with other communities. 

"Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people-- and particularly black youth-- and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard (College) that ‘there's no longer room for any excuses’-- as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of ‘all America,’ but he also is singularly the scold of ‘black America.’”

The question that begs to be asked are these: When is President Obama going to finally take responsibility for his individual actions? When will we stop hearing excuses for his lack of progressivism-- and progress-- in the White House, excuses such as an uncooperative opposition party, the inheritance of a floundering economy and a violent, sinister (and phantom) “global war”?

Capitalist societies are not inherently segregated by race. They’re segregated between economic winners and economic losers. What we have in President Obama is a powerful man, of very humble beginnings, who became one of the economic winners through much hard work and also much luck. As with other economic winners, the lure of sermonizing to the economic losers later proves all too seductive.

The fact of Obama's life as a biracial man provides his message with much weight, particularly to an audience of enthusiastic participants in the establishment educational system that provides admission tickets to the ruling class. What else is the man going to say? Power always seeks to justify itself. If he doesn’t vouch for the system, if he doesn’t try to convince others-- and maybe even himself-- that simple hard work and ambition is enough to overcome even the longest odds, he would have to admit that the system is rigged. And worse than that: as the President, he’d have to do something about it.

posted by CM @ 8:17 PM