Coates on Obama Commencement Addresses

Ta-Nehisi Coates made the following argument on his blog yesterday.  Coates is one of the best and I learn a lot from his analysis.  Here, I hope respectfully, I find some areas of disagreement to explore.  What follows is his blog, in it's entirety, with my comments added in [brackets].  It is possible that I am misunderstanding the arguments below, and if so I hope to learn to think through these more productively.  [Coates begins here] The first lady went to Bowie State and addressed the graduating class. Her speech was a mix of black history and a salute to the graduates. There was also this: But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of "separate but equal," when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can't be bothered. Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they're sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they're fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper. And then this: If the school in your neighborhood isn't any good, don't just accept it. Get in there, fix it. Talk to the parents. Talk to the teachers. Get business and community leaders involved as well, because we all have a stake in building schools worthy of our children's promise. ... And as my husband has said often, please stand up and reject the slander that says a black child with a book is trying to act white. Reject that. There's a lot wrong here. At the most basic level, there's nothing any more wrong with aspiring to be a rapper than there is with aspiring to be a painter, or an actor, or a sculptor. Hip-hop has produced some of the most penetrating art of our time, and inspired much more. My path to this space began with me aspiring to be rapper. Hip-hop taught me to love literature. I am not alone. Perhaps you should not aspire to be a rapper because it generally does not provide a stable income. By that standard you should not aspire to be a writer, either. [The First Lady’s point seems to be that too many of our children aspire to a too narrow range of glamorous-seeming, but usually not attainable, careers.  Her point is to expand our imaginations and dreams…and link these to focusing on education, so concluding that her standard would exclude aspiring to be a writer seems an unfair read.] At a higher level, there is the time-honored pattern of looking at the rather normal behaviors of black children and pathologizing them. My son wants to play Bayern Munich. Failing that, he has assured me he will be Kendrick Lamar. When I was kid I wanted to be Tony Dorsett -- or Rakim, whichever came first. Perhaps there is some corner of the world where white kids desire to be Timothy Geithner instead of Tom Brady. But I doubt it. What is specific to black kids is that our dreams often don't extend past athletics. That is a direct result of the limited cultural exposure you find in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are the direst result of American policy. [‘Pathologizing’ seems overly dramatic, as a read of the quotes provided here. You are correct, at least based on my own experience as one white kid, that it would never have occurred to me to aspire to be a cabinet member, but I did want to be lots of things, at different times, ranging from a baseball star (from birth to the present) to baseball commissioner (would still not turn it down), a supreme court justice, or an FBI agent, among other things.  I ended up becoming a teacher.  You then add: ‘What is specific to black kids is that our dreams often don't extend past athletics. That is a direct result of the limited cultural exposure you find in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are the direst result of American policy.’  And this seems entirely consistent with the First Lady’s point:  our children, perhaps even more so our black children (if I had to guess what she might be thinking in the quoted text), have artificially truncated expectations for themselves, they would be better prepared to succeed if they dreamt more broadly.  Given how you describe it, your quarrel seems to be that she is speaking to individuals, about individual behavior and expectations. While you want to focus on structures and policy that make the desired behaviors and expectations more difficult to achieve for some.  This is a good and important question.  But that does not erase the value of other questions.  Why is it that speaking to individuals about individual behavior (while admittedly as partial as only focusing on structural factors in the quoted First Lady comments, though not in the quote comments from the president below) ‘pathologizing’ rather than an effort to mentor and guide these individuals in their efforts to find ways to succeed in their one short life, with structures changing much more slowly overtime?] Enacting and enforcing policy is the job of the Obama White House. When asked about policy for African Americans, the president has said, "I'm not the president of black America. I'm the president of all America." An examination of the Obama administration's policy record toward black people clearly bears this out. An examination of the Obama administration's rhetoric, as directed at black people, tells us something different. [This strikes me as a misplaced disagreement about policy.  You wish that the president had successfully passed policies that addressed some of the structural and policy-related factors that account for what you call ‘the limited cultural exposure you find in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods.’  I agree.  But the president might respond that his policy agenda will help black kids more.  I would not agree with the president entirely, but I would also not, on the basis of this policy disagreement, conclude that the best read of the First Lady’s comments is that she is pathologizing.  Unless you are suggesting that merely mentioning behavior is to pathologize.  Your reframing to focus ONLY on structure has the same weakness: it is a partial view and alone is insufficient to address the challenge that these graduates will face today.] Yesterday, the president addressed Morehouse College's graduating class, and said this:  We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made a few myself. And I have to confess, sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. But one of the things you've learned over the last four years is that there's no longer any room for excuses. I understand that there's a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: "excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness." We've got no time for excuses -- not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven't. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that's still out there. It's just that in today's hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with a billion young people from China and India and Brazil entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven't earned. And whatever hardships you may experience because of your race, they pale in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured -- and overcame. This clearly is a message that only a particular president can offer. Perhaps not the "president of black America," but certainly a president who sees holding African Americans to a standard of individual responsibility as part of his job. This is not a role Barack Obama undertakes with other communities. [True.  He is reaching out to one particular community.  And yes, this message will no doubt find welcome listeners among racist whites who have been pounding the ‘individual responsibility without attention to structure’ story for generations.  But the president does not overlook structure in the text you quote here.  He is arguing that structure and behavior are inseparable, as he does in nearly all of his speeches, but since his audience are individual graduates, his message to them focuses on what they can do, what they can control, as individuals operating within (and seeking to change) structures.] Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people -- and particularly black youth -- and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that "there's no longer room for any excuses" -- as though they were in the business of making them. [But this was exactly the approach the president took when he spoke to Wall Street after the near economic collapse and to the NRA and when he talks about members of Congress he is negotiating with.  Your Barnard reference sounds unnecessarily contrived; there is no need to imagine him speaking to audiences other than young black men.  We can observe his frequent speeches to these audiences directly and see (mostly) the same presidential voice.  Is that the voice of a moderate?  Yes.  But it is inaccurate to argue he speaks like a moderate only to young black men, but you do raise many points worth thinking about.] It's worth revisiting the president's comments over the past year in reference to gun violence. Visting his grieving adopted hometown of Chicago, in the wake of the murder of Hadiya Pendleton, the president said this:  For a lot of young boys and young men in particular, they don't see an example of fathers or grandfathers, uncles, who are in a position to support families and be held up in respect. And so that means that this is not just a gun issue; it's also an issue of the kinds of communities that we're building. When a child opens fire on another child, there is a hole in that child's heart that government can't fill. Only community and parents and teachers and clergy can fill that hole. Two months earlier Obama visited Newtown. The killer, Adam Lanza, was estranged from his father and reportedly devastated by his parents divorce. But Obama did not speak to Newtown about the kind of community they were building, or speculate on the hole in Adam Lanza's heart. [You raise another interesting point here.  One the one hand, the president does frame the speech around praising Newtown for inspiring us, noting all the ways that teachers and students and others were heroic during the shooting.  But he also says this: “It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community and the help of a nation.  And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children.  This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.  And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we’re meeting our obligations?” And in saying this he is saying two things.  First, like no individual is an island, no community is an island…we as one nation, a national community, need to pay attention to the types of communities we are building.  And second, that the violence in this one community ought to be seen by all Americans as a violent cancer striking at all of our communities.  You are correct, however, that in the next section of the Newtown speech he does focus on ‘are we doing enough for our children?’ rather than on our behavioral expectations of these children.  But this can also be read as the president attempting to take up the policy positions we expect to address (some of) the structural limitations you focus on, concluding, with a return to behavior in the Newtown speech, that this means that ‘We must change.’] When Barack Obama says that he is "the president of all America," he is exactly right. When he visits black communities, he visits as the American president, bearing with him all our history, all our good works, and all our sins. Among recent sins, the creation of the ghettos of Chicago-- accomplished by 20th-century American social policy -- rank relatively high. Leaving aside the vague connection between fatherhood and the murder of Hadiya Pendleton. Certainly the South Side could use more responsible fathers. Why aren't there more? Do those communities simply lack men of ambition or will? Are the men there genetically inferior? No president has ever been better read on the intersection of racism and American history than our current one. I strongly suspect that he would point to policy. As the president of "all America," Barack Obama inherited that policy. I would not suggest that it is in his power to singlehandedly repair history. But I would say that, in his role as American president, it is wrong for him to handwave at history, to speak as though the government he represents is somehow only partly to blame. Moreover, I would say that to tout your ties to your community when it is convenient, and downplay them when it isn't, runs counter to any notion of individual responsibility. [The words of his that you quote do not strike me as a ‘handwave at history.’] I think the stature of the Obama family -- the most visible black family in American history -- is a great blow in the war against racism. I am filled with pride whenever I see them: there is simply no other way to say that. I think Barack Obama, specifically, is a remarkable human being -- wise, self-aware, genuinely curious and patient. It takes a man of particular vision to know, as Obama did, that the country really was ready to send an African American to the White House. But I also think that some day historians will pore over his many speeches to black audiences. They will see a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same. And then they will match that rhetoric of individual responsibility with the aggression the administration showed to bail out the banks, and the timidity they showed  in addressing a foreclosuer crisis which devastated black America (again.) And they will match the rhetoric with an administration whose efforts against housing segregation have been run of the mill.  And they will match the talk of the importance of black fathers with the paradox of a president who smoked marijuana in his youth but continued a drug-war which daily wrecks the lives of black men. I think those historians will see a discomfiting pattern of convenient race-talk. [In terms of my own disagreements with the president on the issues you raise here, my positions are closer to yours.  However, ‘a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same,’ seems to ignore the political realities that you mention earlier about ‘singlehandedly repairing history.’  I think history will judge this president far differently that you outline here.  I expect that he will be recognized in ways he is not today for his wisdom and patience, intelligence and desire to help all American families in times of great crisis.] I think the president owes black people more than this. In the 2012 election, the black community voted at a higher rate than any other ethnic community in the country. Their vote went almost entirely to Barack Obama. I think they deserve more than a sermon. Perhaps they cannot  practically receive targeted policy. But surely they have earned something more than targeted scorn. [On the one hand, I choose not to focus on our disagreement here because I am not black, so I will take your perspective here to heart and reflect on it over time to find a way for me to integrate it into my own thinking.  At the same time, I do not read the president or First Lady as directing scorn, but rather as speaking as parents for the nation to children they are particularly concerned about.  Their advice focuses only on what the child can control: his or her behavior.  It recognizes larger structural issues, but chooses to help the child find an individual pathway to safety and success while we all struggle to figure out how to address structure and policy.]