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Message from the top has changed
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It is a huge irony that Washington, D.C., the nation's capital and the epicenter of power, has long been ringed by slum neighborhoods populated by primarily powerless minorities. When you drive there, you stoically pass through those blocks of dilapidated houses, wondering what foreign visitors and world leaders must be thinking on a similar drive, and you strain for sight of the government buildings' grand architecture and wide boulevards.
The powerful people, for the most part, seldom venture into those slums. But now, one of them quietly goes there regularly. Her name is Michelle Obama.
The first lady visits schools in order to impart a single message: Yes You Can. And as the messenger, Michelle Obama is uniquely qualified. Besides being the first African-American first lady, she also grew up in an urban working class environment. When she speaks to the kids, she knows what she is talking about. What's even more important, they know she knows. They can allow themselves to believe her, at least for as long as she is in their classrooms.
Michelle Obama's life is incontrovertible proof of what she is saying, that success in life is possible with hard work and iron-willed determination.
"I know that there are hundreds of kids like you across the country, who some people underestimate," Obama is quoted in The News York Times as saying to students. "I ran into people in my life who told me, 'You can't do it; you're not as smart as that person.' Teachers who would tell you, 'Oh, you can't go to Princeton,' or, 'You're not smart enough to do this,' or 'You can't make the honor society.' That never stopped me. That always made me push harder."
Reaching out to the underprivileged is nothing new for American leadership, but it's always been from the outside looking in. Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, is venerated for her promotion of the causes of the downtrodden. But for those whom she championed, her life was a fairy tale: a rich lady married to a rich president. She is justly credited with having done unbelievable good. But she couldn't deny her background. Michelle Obama is right beside these students, looking out at a world that she paints for them of possibility.
What a powerful message she brings from a working-class girl who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the ghetto that is the Big Mama of American slums. Yes, she tells them, you can go to college if you will study hard and ignore the negative voices of counselors and teachers who might question your ability or of classmates who would tell you that you can't. Ignore the call of street gangs and stay in school, listen to your parents and do your best, she tells them, this is America and anything is possible for those who earn it.
There is a price to be paid for following this advice, and Michelle Obama is honest enough to acknowledge it. When she was growing up, she felt like an outsider, disconnected from her community. She never cut class and was proud of being smart even though it wasn't cool. She was teased about talking "like a white girl." Even at Princeton, she wrote in her senior thesis that she sometimes felt "like a visitor on campus, as if I don't really belong." But she stayed the course. And now the kids can't believe that she is there, with them. They ask her why she came.
"I think it's real important for young kids, particularly kids from communities without resources, to see me," she replies.
When I was growing up in New York City, well-meaning government leaders believed that all they had to do was knock down the slums and give the dwellers decent housing. Soon enough the "projects," as they were then called, became the new slums. In my earlier adult years, the leaders changed strategy to providing the disenfranchised with "a piece of the rock." The underclass was provided pathways to ownership of their housing. That was somewhat more successful but not hugely so.
Now the Obamas have changed the message, and not only for the poor minorities but for every child in this century: you have to stay in school and work hard to learn. That is how to be all that you can be.
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Copyright 2010
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