{"id":45101,"date":"2016-01-15T21:48:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T21:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=45101"},"modified":"2016-01-16T03:17:41","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T03:17:41","slug":"the-other-obama-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=45101","title":{"rendered":"The Other Obama Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Other Obama Legacy<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2016-01-14<\/p>\n

Charles M. Blow<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, I spoke to a room full of beaming high school and middle school boys \u2014 about 150, a vast majority of whom were black \u2014 at the St. Petersburg College Allstate Center in St. Petersburg, Fla<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The talk was sponsored by the Cross and Anvil Human Services Center as part of the heritage lecture series that seeks to present historical, political and educational conversations that honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a> The group targets \u201cat-risk\u201d boys in the community.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t sugarcoat things for these boys. I gave them the unvarnished truth, the same way I would for my own boys. For me, it is very important to help children place themselves historically, even when that history is painful, because within that truth they can anchor themselves and from it they can aim themselves.<\/p>\n

When my speech was over, we had a question and answer period, and President Obama<\/a> came up…<\/p>\n

…I thought of some of the amazing pictures that the White House<\/a> has released of the president meeting with black folks in the Oval Office<\/a>, like 5-year-old Jacob Philadelphia touching the president\u2019s hair<\/a> because, as he put it, \u201cI want to know if my hair is just like yours.\u201d I thought of all the boys being reached by the president\u2019s \u201cMy Brother\u2019s Keeper<\/a>\u201d program.<\/p>\n

These things register in a way that should never be underestimated. As a child, I couldn\u2019t name many politicians, but I knew that P.B.S. Pinchback<\/a> had been the first and only black governor of Louisiana<\/a>, my home state; that Thurgood Marshall<\/a> was a sitting Supreme Court Justice; and that Ed Bradley<\/a> was one of the most respected journalists on television.<\/p>\n

Obama is the first black president \u2014 and may well be the last, who knows \u2014 and that alone has a historical weight and impact on this generation that will play out for generations to come…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Other Obama Legacy The New York Times 2016-01-14 Charles M. Blow On Tuesday, I spoke to a room full of beaming high school and middle school boys \u2014 about 150, a vast majority of whom were black \u2014 at the St. Petersburg College Allstate Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. The talk was sponsored by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[15263,15262,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-45101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-charles-blow","tag-charles-m-blow","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45104,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101\/revisions\/45104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}