How Obama Failed Black Americans

“I had a queasy feeling about Barack
Obama’s candidacy from the moment I heard his 2004 Democratic National
Convention speech that lifted him into national prominence, a speech
that Coates summarizes in the profile. Toward the end of the speech
Obama observed that black families in urban centers realized “that
government alone can’t teach our kids to learn … that children can’t
achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television
sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is
acting white.” “The acting white” libel—a myth that will not die—argues
that low school performance for black students is a product of a
culturally based black opposition to high academic achievement.

I
long have been baffled by the tenacious hold this argument has on the
American imagination. After all, black families have fought for
education for their children against insuperable odds from slavery
times. White students who label their high achievers “geeks” and “nerds”
have no less a degree of anti-intellectualism. In fact, they may have a
higher degree of anti-intellectualism, since black students from
families with a given level of parental income or education get more years of schooling and more
credentials than white students from families with comparable
socioeconomic status. In our research for the NASCC project we
discovered that black parents who provide some financial support for
their children’s higher education have one-third of the wealth of white
parents who provide no financial support for their children’s
higher education. Black culture, if anything, has been ferociously
supportive of education.”