The Obama Girls Will Be Fine, But What About Other Children?

By: Tonyaa Weathersbee

For the Obama girls, moving from the fish pond that was the Windy City into the fishbowl of the White House won’t be easy.

But I’m not worried.

Why? Because Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, already have enough anchors to keep them moored in waters that are bound to be stirred up by the glare of publicity or the growing pains of childhood and adolescence.

It’s also probably a safe bet that their mother, Michelle, and their father, President-elect Barack Obama, have probably talked to them about what it means to be the nation’s first black First Daughters.

They probably know that like their father, they’ll be role models for millions of children. Their parents probably know they’ll also be targets for tasteless, Don Imus-types who’ll be salivating for them to validate stereotypes rather than defy them.

Michelle and Barack have probably prepared their girls for all this. So I’m not too worried about Malia and Sasha.

They’ll be fine.

I do, however, continue to worry about the scores of black children in America today who aren’t as lucky as the Obama girls.

These are the children who don’t have to survive being in the media spotlight, but have to struggle with the social isolation that hobbles their progress early in life.

Social isolation is what happens to children who live in concentrated poverty. It’s the thing that causes black children to do things like fight over one cookie instead of asking the teacher for more; because that’s the way they’ve learned to assert themselves in a world where survival is about aggression, not compromise.

Social isolation afflicts many poor, black teenagers as well.

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