What a wonderful realization for the nation’s first black President to acknowledge! And with the parents of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis behind him, no less!
Sadly, the message to minorities – and blacks in particular – is that we blacks can’t be expected to take individual responsibility for our lives like our white counterparts … so the government has to do it for us. Blacks should find Obama’s assumptions more than disturbing. Young black men wouldn’t be wrong to find My Brother’s Keeper downright offensive. And everyone should realize that the first black president is not holding blacks accountable to the same standards as whites when it comes to parenting.
And parenting is the real problem here – not the often repeated media narrative of The Troubled Black Teenager upon which society inflicts so many ills , but the long overlooked and systemic problem of the broken black family.
The president knows the grim facts. “If you’re African American, there’s about a one in two chance you grow up without a father in your house – one in two,” he said in his announcement. “We know that boys who grow up without a father are more likely to be poor, more likely to underperform in school.” He went on: