Hey remember how Obama magically raised black kids' test scores in a yet to be peer reviewed study, and we weren't going to have to worry about figuring out better public policy for education, poverty, or criminal justice because Obama was going to heal the hood by his very presence?
Yeah it was bullshit. Interesting that, just as the previous news coincided with euphoria over Obama's inauguration, this comes just as we're developing a more realistic view of what kind of president Obama is going to be.
The title of Ta-Nehisi's post says almost everything that needs to be said. Thing is, mad people bought it at the time. This is what I wrote in my response at the time, which was basically that the test supported a pre-existing rhetorical framework for avoiding social responsibility toward black folks:
It may be unfair to refer to this as "white guilt" since white people aren't the only ones who manifest it. Take House Majority Whip James Clyburn, expressing a popular sentiment even among black pundits that “every child has lost every excuse.” I don't know what that means except that the difficult social circumstances facing someone born in Berry Farms or East New York are meaningless. It's not "white guilt" because Clyburn is not white, but it's something similar, a desire to be free of obligation and perhaps embarrassment. But it's not helpful, in fact what both Clyburn and Sullivan's statement do is provide a rhetorical framework for distancing oneself from social responsibility after the fact, after the magic improvements among blacks engendered by Obama's presidency have dissipated. "If those people can't succeed after Obama," the argument goes, "then what can we do?"
You can read the rest of my original reaction here.
-- A. Serwer
