Barack: One Year Later
Today marks the day one year ago that Barack Obama was elected president and uttered the words, “Change has come to America”. Well my fellow nerds I have a question. Has change come to America? I won’t go into all the other things plaguing society, but we’ll just look at it from the black male perspective.
CNN is doing their normal explotive news coverage.
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/black.men/?iref=mptopics
And they bring up some very good examples of brothers doing there thing. But my big issue is most of these brothers were doing their thing before President Obama was elected president. Then I look at stories like the one about Derrion Albert and wonder if his election has meant anything to our young brothers.
Well my answer is yes and no. I don’t believe Barack Obama being elected has done anything to change how black men have acted or will act. I think there has to be an inherent nature to want to be better in order to do better. People say black boys can look to him now and believe they can do anything. I think all young brothers that feel that way after seeing Barack had a want to do great in the first place. Him being elected only confirmed their desires.
I feel like any change in our society must be grass roots. We have to show brothers one on one how to be better. And most of all they have to want to be better. I’m not taking anything away from his election. I think it was great that he was elected and thing it was a great win for the black community. But I don’t think we can look to his election as a defining moment that “change has come to [black] america”.
But anyway… How do you feel? Do you see this past year as a marked improvement for the black male in society in the age of Obama?
Twitter: coolnerds
I disagree to an extent.
Jay-Z isn’t the final say on all things regarding black males, but he’s a celeb and celeb’s have influence. I was watching an interview he gave over the weekend where someone asked him about the significance of Obama being president. He said that the gangsta became irrelevant the minute that Obama won… that for years, kids from poorer backgrounds had pimps, d-boys, etc, to look up to… that there were no doctors or lawyers around b/c they moved out… but this was something higher to look at. Now, when teachers mentioned that you could become anything, even president, it wasn’t just hot air. It was true.
I believe there has been a change. But the only way to fully gauge how much of a change is to get out here, look around, and find examples. The news/media will forever give us bad examples. We can’t fully go off of them.