Obama on 'Acting White'

Barack ObamaA good piece in today's Washington Post discusses a few issues that Barack Obama has been highlighting on the campaign trail:
Sen. Barack Obama is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are "disenfranchising" themselves because they don't vote, taking rappers to task for their language, and decrying "anti-intellectualism" in the black community, including black children telling peers who get good grades that they are "acting white."
The achievement gap between races is a major, major issue for our country, and one that isn't being adequately addressed by any other current candidate. Of course, race itself is one reason why. Can you imagine the outcry if Rudy Giuliani or Bill Richardson approached this matter as directly as Obama while standing at the pulpit of a black church? Not everybody in the African American community, however, is thrilled to hear Obama's thesis.
The gap is "not because black 7-year-olds are holding back other black 7-year-olds," said Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University. "This black pathology argument is appealing, but I think he's wrong empirically."
But Obama's call for self-examination is, by and large, being very well received as he travels the country. It's no wonder, really, given the disparity of incarceration and infant mortality rates between blacks and whites, that people want change and have grown weary of waiting for others to give it to them. In fact, more than a century after slavery, nearly every economic, educational, and physical health indicator puts African Americans at a marked disadvantage. As Obama puts it, "There's an old saying that if America has a cold, we have pneumonia." What I like about Obama is that when he speaks he doesn't seem much like an actor at all.

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