One might not expect much from a USA Today editorial headlined “How to Turn Obama’s Success Into Gains for Black Boys,” but it’s hard to get past the first two graphs without feelingill:
You can see the message on brick wall murals in inner cities: Yes we can. You can hear it in the music of Black Eyed Peas’ frontman will.i.am: Yes we can.
You can imagine hearing it pass the lips of thousands of black mothers, perhaps after awakening their sons early to complete homework before they head off to school, just as President-elect Barack Obama’s mother did: Yes you can.
Huh. I guess if one triesREALLY, REALLY hard, youcanalmost imagine a black mother encouraging her son, just like Obama’s white mother did. Unsurprisingly, the paper manages to turn the piece into an endorsement of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law:
Most important, Obama has resisted calls from the teachers’ unions to dismantle President Bush’s No Child Left Behind school-reform law. Whatever the law’s shortcomings, No Child’s relentless emphasis on data forces school districts to come clean about the poor job they have done with black boys.
Yes we can …
encourage black kids to grow up to be guardians of empire … just like the distinguished senator from the great state of Illinois.
Yes we can …
lay the responsibility for their circumstances wholly at the feet of their parents and those in education who see NCLB as the vehicle for spitting out drones to tend the machinery of oppression that it is … rather than with a system that has crushed the souls of those parents, then moves inexorably on to the children.
Yes we can …
blame the victims, as we always do.
Is there righteous criticism to be made of these persons? I think so.
But only after acknowledging the existence of the political forces that create the context that leads them to make bad choices … and working to defeat those forces.
Yes we can …
take responsibility for our own lives.
When we have the means and the support we have to have so that we can.
We need the audacity of real hope, not slogans and symbolism … the putrid product of a “liberalism” incestuously wedded to the status quo.