In No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom put the onus on individuals to close the academic achievement gap between black students and everyone else. Parents must have high expectations and instill in their children the value of education. The authors contend that the black subculture itself is part of the problem. No Excuses features several inner-city schools that have defied low expectations where black students have achieved academic success.
No child should be excused from doing the best he can. Will the election of America’s first biracial president emphasize the importance of that message?
An article in Diverse picks up on the “no excuses” theme and highlights a few ideas gleaned from those who voted for Obama and/or witnessed the inauguration.
Morehouse College president Robert Franklin said, “The most exciting message I’ve heard from students, having worked to help elect Obama, can be summarized in two words: no excuses. After this election, there will be no excuses for our academic underperformance, no excuses with disrespect to women, and no excuses for bad behavior. And so we hope to leverage the Obama factor to transform all Black boys and ultimately lead the renaissance of the entire Black community.”
Now that’s a promising statement. While Obama has pledged more money for education, money alone won’t close the academic achievement gap. As Franklin implies, conduct is a factor in educational failings. Perhaps Obama, who says he’s not sure if he’s ever benefited from race preferences, will serve as an example of someone who presumably allowed himself no excuses.
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The media continues to decry a host of disparities between blacks and whites: disparities in household incomes, high school and college graduation rates, out-of-wedlock births, number of prison inmates, etc. The question “why” these disparities exist is seldom asked because the answer is presumed to be beyond dispute: the root cause is institutionalized white racism. In fact, to question this conclusion is in itself proof of racism.
Whether President Obama will have the courage to point to other causes of these “inequalities” — such as the lack of individual responsibility resulting from four decades of group entitlements — remains to be seen. What IS certain is that being an example for “no excuses” to young American blacks would do much more to close the various social gaps than any additional money for education could possibly do.
In the end it will be character, not color of skin that will imbue Obama’s presidency with the much-touted historical significance.
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