The other day at B&N, I noticed a few black families in the children's section with their kids picking out books and reading. This was two days after the president's NAACP speech, which emphasized active parenting, among other things, to solve serious problems in the black community:
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. (Applause.) 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 -- (applause) -- putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. (Applause.) It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework. (Applause.)Perhaps it's just racist of me to assume that there aren't already a lot of black families going to B&N on a Sunday afternoon, but I've been in a lot of bookstores and it definitely made an impression on me as something I don't see often (anecdotal, I know). I guess I'm prone to overestimating the effect that Obama will have on black culture. The fact that so many children are born out-of-wedlock to black women is tied directly to perpetuating the cycle of poverty and crime.
And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor's sons and daughters. (Applause.) We need to go back to the time, back to the day when we parents saw somebody, saw some kid fooling around and -- it wasn't your child, but they'll whup you anyway. (Laughter and applause.) Or at least they'll tell your parents -- the parents will. You know. (Laughter.) That's the meaning of community. That's how we can reclaim the strength and the determination and the hopefulness that helped us come so far; helped us make a way out of no way.
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. (Applause.) I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers -- (applause) -- doctors and teachers -- (applause) -- not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. (Applause.) I want them aspiring to be the President of the United States of America. (Applause.)
While 28 percent of white women gave birth out of wedlock in 2007, nearly 72 percent of black women and more than 51 percent of Latinas did.That is just unbelievable. Part of it may be that white women are more likely to be on birth control, part of it may be that white women are more likely to have the financial resources to get an abortion. Adding to this problem comes the higher religiosity of black women, which will guilt them into thinking they shouldn't have an abortion and instead drop out of college.
Some part of me just thinks that having a black president really has and really will continue to make a serious difference in the cultural attitude of black America. Maybe I'm overly naive.
I also wonder if there's any evidence of this in the serious drop in violent crime rates:
The District, New York and Los Angeles are on track for fewer killings this year than in any other year in at least four decades. Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other cities are also seeing notable reductions in homicides.Time will tell, I guess...
"Experts did not see this coming at all," said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist and professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
