Today's quick thought is around what I view as a huge missed opportunity by Barack Obama. With all apologies to President Clinton, President Obama is truly America's first black President. As such, he was uniquely positioned to speak to the largest issues facing African American families and to inspire changes in their communities. In specific, the deterioration of the family unit among minority households has been statistically tied to dropout rates, crime, and eventual imprisonment. Children in a single parent home, particularly in the absence of a father figure, are far less likely to find success later in life. Maybe President Obama's on success, which does defy this paradigm, prevented him from having the internal conviction to pursue a pro family, pro fatherhood, agenda. As the real first black President, Obama had a unique pulpit to enact positive changes that could have helped break the cycle of crime and incarceration that has taken hostage generations of minority men and women. He could have been proactive on rebuilding the family unit, on improving public schools in impoverished neighborhoods, and on showing dedication to many of those who showed their dedication by voting him into office. He has nine months to go... but in his first seven years his level of engagement on these issues can only be termed disappointing.(Quick Thoughts are shorter posts on topics that generated an instant opinion by me. Because they tend to be more spontaneous, they will be less researched and structured than a complete post.)
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