It’s been difficult to find detailed information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but I have long suspected that it was the best source for insights into Sen. Obama’s policy ideas and expertise.
Recall, Barack Obama was the Chairman of the Board. The Board’s responsibilities included reviewing proposals from “external partners” and making decisions about whether to fund them or not.
There’s a lengthy new piece up today at NRO by Stanley Kurtz which examines some of the “external partners” that Sen. Obama and the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge voted to fund.
An excerpt:
In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.
The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.
I was pleased that Kurtz characterized the “rite of passage” ceremonies as “harmless.” I would be willing to go further and endorse creative attempts to foster a “rite of passage,” especially for adolescent males. This is not, by any means, an exclusively racial problem. It is specifically a male problem. Adolescent males are responsible for most of the disruptive and criminal behavior in our culture. There has been a breakdown in the cultural traditions which “tame” the wildness and irresponsibility of adolescent males.
Having said that, the South Shore African Village Collaborative seems to have latched onto theories of separatist black identity cultural politics as the source and trappings of their particular attempt to improve the schools in Chicago. It might have been well-intentioned, but the “black identity” politics of Jeffries, Hilliard, Wright, et al contain much that is objectionable. Their approach to cultural issues has appeal to their target audience but it is simplistic and demagogic. It amounts to the adoption of a single standard – all that is wrong in our culture is white and European. All that is admirable is African, black, and “kemetic.” Don’t get me started on “Kemet” and the wisdom of Ptah-hotep. It’s the X-files version of Egyptian history. Entertaining, yes. Scholarly, not.
I think Kurtz is right that this school initiative was at its core an attempt to forge an identity for school-children from the “black separatist” movements of the 1970s & 1980s. It helps explain Obama’s longstanding membership in Wright’s church. It also explains the alliance with and involvement of Prof. of Education Bill Ayers, whose main academic focus has been “white supremacy” in American education, which he views as a persistent and pervasive problem.
Perhaps Obama has altered his views on black separatism since the 1990’s. I confess I have the nagging suspicion that he has not completely disclosed or discussed his views on this topic during the campaign.
– Rob Shearer (aka RedHatRob)