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.

COMMENTARY....

God Don't Like Ugly, It's not just the campaign that's getting nasty. It's you…okay, and me, too.

By Veronica Miller

I can't wait for Nov. 4.

It's not just because I'll finally be casting a ballot in my first presidential election (though, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty friggin' stoked about it). But really, I'm in tip-toe anticipation of that first Tuesday in November, because I'm hoping, hoping hard, that on Election Day, all the ugliness we've seen this past year and a half will finally begin to fade.

Who's being ugly? Everybody. The presidential campaigns, of course. Then there are the pundits. I suppose that's no surprise. The group I'm most worried about is the regular people around me.

My black male friend poking fun at Hillary Clinton. My older black relatives already conceding defeat on Barack Obama's behalf. My white feminist associates remaining uncomfortably quiet while racist and sexist remarks are hurled at Michelle Obama. My best female friend calling Sarah Palin a "bitch." Even me, likening John McCain's oft-repeated POW story to Chris Rock's rift on 50 Cent—"He got shot nine times!"

This campaign is bringing the ugly out of everybody. Me and you … your mama and your cousin, too.

Politics is always nasty. But perhaps the group of choices this time—a black man, a white Vietnam veteran, a powerful liberal woman and an energizing conservative one—has amounted to too much change to accept with civility.

God Don't Like Ugly....

Michelle Obama Bends Over Backwards

By: Brad Listi

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the need for Barack and Michelle Obama to properly introduce themselves to the wide swath of America that doesn't yet feel that it knows who they are. There has been much talk about the need for the Obamas to present themselves in a way that America's many undecided voters can relate to.

And let's be honest: There has been plenty of discussion---much of it private---about the Obamas' (desperate?) need to connect on a visceral, human level with America's (white) older voters and (white) working class voters who still feel a bit leery about casting their vote for an African-American man in November. This is the subtext. This is the plain truth.

I'm sitting here in the Pepsi Center just moments after the evening's closing benediction, and I can't help but wonder whether tonight's marquee sequence was successful. Did Michelle Obama's speech help or hinder the cause? Did it alleviate or exacerbate the concerns of working class white Democrats in, say, Pennsylvania steel country? Or in the wilds of northern Georgia?

The speech was utterly inoffensive, of course. Autobiographical. Absent of all hot-button issues. And stuffed to the hilt with applause lines and gracious dispersals of unity-building praise. Aside from that, it was generally well-delivered. I can't imagine that it would have a negative impact.

But I suppose time will tell.

COMMENTARY....