He’s not only the first black president, but the good dad he wishes he’d had. She’s not just the first black first lady, but the good mom her good parents raised her to be. Just being themselves, the Obamas ”” a stable and mutually respectful couple, traditionally bourgeois in all the important ways ”” may inspire a more critical healing process than the ongoing one between American blacks and whites: namely, bridging the 45-year-old rift between black men and black women.
It is a great irony of American history that the passage of the longest-overdue social legislation ever written ”” the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act ”” coincided with the collapse in the general culture of the very institutions ”” religion and marriage ”” that sustained black dignity and self-respect throughout centuries of slavery and entrenched racism.
America’s resilient majority-white society was rocked, but not completely rolled, by the sexual revolution that erupted at the end of the civil rights era. But the social pillars of a psychologically fragile black community were toppled in that anti-establishment earthquake.
No mention of changes in welfare policy under LBJ in which the federal government basically subsidized (and thereby encouraged) single-parent families. (Not to say that is a good or bad thing. But… that is what happened.) In a perverse sense I appreciate Kay blaming white people but it does not explain the vast gulf between single-parenthood among whites and single-parenthood among African-Americans.
What was it that ticked off Jesse Jackson so much? Ah yes.
As an American who proudly voted for McCain, I find this article interesting for its, well, patronizing tone. It’s apparently not been an adequate suite of black models of couples and families in America that, e.g., Colin Powell (for whom I would have voted happily) attained the highest levels of government service, nor that Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court, nor that Bill Cosby’s and others’ TV sitcoms offered just such models – and on and on. There has been no lack of modeling of the stable family life for black Americans BUT due to misguided welfare and other policies (thanks Democrats!) and media star-power (thanks Oprah) as well, the respectable models of stability and service have largely been lost in the noise of public, often degenerate black lifestyles. Only by dominating the whole scenario, the claim seems to be, can the desired model get noticed. Sort of silly, in a nation that is barely 15% black-identifying. Now what model can the remaining 85% of the populace be expected to take notice of? What was America could from here on out become inexorably more like Brazil.
Speaking of Bill Cosby, hasn’t he been the loudest spokesperson for a stable black family setting for years? And for personal responsibility for the African-American community? And denigrated for his stand?
oops,
And denigrated for his stand by the supposed self-proclaimed spokes-persons for the African-American population (e.g., Al Sharpton)?
“He and she both pursued success through schooling. They married before having children. They stayed married and “stepped up to the plate†as equally responsible parents, transmitting integration, education and civic engagement as core values to their daughters.”
Wisdom there.
There was something crucial missing from the sentences quoted in #5, a crucial core value. The mother and father of a family need to transmit transcendent religious values because those underlie the other values, and Christian values [i]are what America was built on[/i] – education and civic engagement are necessary, but not sufficient. Then it would truly be wisdom.
I don’t wish to quibble about whether the Obamas have religious values since they seem to do so. But it is very interesting to contrast this National Post article from Canada with one in the NYT that raves on and on about the multi-racialness of the new President’s family. OK – which is it? Are they ‘black Americans’ or are they ‘multi-racial’ – or are they to be all things to most people? (except perhaps to objectionable ‘white’ families, the backbone of much of American society and business for over 300 years?)
One of the many fine things about the Bushes was that they never hid who they are, nor pretended to be anything they actually weren’t. Frankly, it seemed to me that the McCains with I-forget-how-many-total children in a blended family, their own offspring and adopted daughter represented an intentional multi-racial [b]American[/b] family firmly grounded in Christian religious values more successfully than do a gaggle of intermarried folks who call several different countries including Canada, Indonesia and Kenya their ‘homes’. Which will it be, now?
But that’s just me, I guess, because I’m just a Christian American, nothing more or less.