Obama call for end to violence lacks audience
July 16, 2007
MARY MITCHELL
[email protected]
The thing that struck me most about Sen. Barack Obama's call to end the violence gripping too many African-American communities was that there were too few grown black men sitting in the pews Sunday at Avalon Park's Vernon Park Church of God on the Far South Side.
There were fewer young black men. Obama was basically preaching to the choir.
That's unfortunate. His decision to take on this issue was monumental and opened him up to criticism from people who think any mention of race in a presidential campaign is race-mongering.
For instance, Obama's passionate message during the presidential forum at the NAACP, which followed a tepid appearance during a televised forum at Howard University, drew this recent e-mail from an outraged reader:
"Obama descends to the level of cheap racial demagoguery and victim/grievance mongering and you think it's progress. How sad," wrote John Treacy.
"Who killed those 34 kids in Chicago? Was it politicians? Or was it feral young people without direction, discipline, or a sense of right and wrong. Young people led to believe by 'leaders' that have no hope, in a society that people the world over -- including black Africans -- move heaven and earth to migrate to precisely because there is in fact limitless hope and opportunity."
Thankfully, Obama is more hopeful about race relations in this country than most of us.
The absence of black men didn't stop Obama from delivering a powerful message Sunday about the deadly violence and from offering solutions that push ending urban violence to the top of the domestic agenda, along with ending the war in Iraq.
The son of a white Kansan mother and a Kenyan father who returned to Kenya while Obama was still very young, Obama had a childhood a lot like the childhoods of many black boys growing up in America today.
Obama lambasted the Bush administration for spending $275 million a month to "police Iraq" in an effort to keep Iraqis from killing each other, and doling out tax cuts for the wealthy, instead of "siphoning" some of the money to police street wars like Chicago's.
'Have to break the cycle'
But while Obama pledged to support aggressive laws designed to close loopholes in gun laws and said he will fight to fund programs that would give young people alternatives to gangs and gang violence, these initiatives are only a part of the solution.
"Once the programs are in place and you've got more cops on the street, what do you do when the cycle of violence continues?" he asked the audience. "Who do you blame? An entire generation of young men have become products of violence, and we are going to have to break the cycle. That is going to require your help," he said.
"It doesn't matter how much more money comes in here, it doesn't matter how many politicians make speeches, it doesn't matter how much we pray -- it doesn't make any difference if we don't change how we raise our children. ... We're either raising those boys, or we're not raising those boys. But either way, we're responsible for each and every one of them."
Obama, the Harvard-educated lawyer and charismatic politician, drew from his own background to hammer home what most of us already know but have been too afraid to say because it sounds too much like what my e-mailer, Treacy, has to say when he condemns blacks as suffering "self-inflicted wounds of social dysfunction."
Obama pointed out that single mothers have been "heroic," but said they need help. His own mother needed help, and he was blessed to be raised in a household that included his grandparents.
"Men, we have to think about what we are doing," Obama said.
A simple truth
Deviating from his prepared remarks, Obama said, "I have a testimony about a father not being in the house. It's hard when your dad is not there. It's hard when you grow up as a young African-American male, and you don't have a role model and there's nobody there to say respect women and that violence isn't the answer. When there is not a man in the house to say there is nothing unmanly about being kind, generous and working hard, and being disciplined, and reading."
Unlike many who have tackled this issue, Obama didn't ignore the government's failure to make ending the cycle of violence a priority, nor did he give cover to the fathers who are ignoring their sons -- thus depriving them of the love they need to help navigate dangerous streets.
Obama bore witness to the simple truth. If black people don't begin to show each other love, if black men don't step up to make a difference in their own sons' lives and in the lives of boys who are fatherless, then it won't really matter who wins the White House in 2008.
Chicago SunTimes
