2008 Presidential Candidate Who Happens To Be Black Says He, Too, Is a Poverty Fighter
While Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards was winding up a tour of America's most impoverished areas, Illinois Senator Barack Obama came to Anacostia to stake his own claim as a poverty warrior -- and to present a vision that directly challenges that of Edwards.
In a speech at the Town Hall Education, Arts & Recreation Campus, or THEARC, if nothing else --Obama had a lot to get off his chest.
WHAT DID OBAMA MEAN WHEN HE SAID HE WAS OKAY WITH SEX ED FOR KINDERGARTNERS?
"This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign. It is the cause that led me to a life of public service almost 25 years ago," he said.
Of course the Edwards campaign didn't miss a beat. "This is another example of Edwards leading on the issues and other candidates following," campaign spokesman Eric Schultz said.
Although Obama offered some of the same proposals as Edwards, such as a transitional jobs program and an expanded earned-income tax credit, he presented a sharply different overall objective: fixing inner-city areas.
As an example, he cited the Harlem Children's Zone, an initiative that seeks to improve one section of that New York neighborhood with an array of services, including prenatal counseling, early childhood education and free medical services.
Obama urged replicating the program in 20 cities, which he estimated would cost a few billion dollars a year. "If poverty is a disease that infects the entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation," he said. "We have to heal that entire community."
There are downsides to both approaches, experts say. A federal experiment called Moving to Opportunity found that families given vouchers to move out of inner-city public housing reported improved health but few gains in earnings, educational outcomes and the well-being of teenage boys.
Those studying the results say many families did not move far enough, possibly because of a lack of affordable housing in better areas. And for those who did move, the issue no one wants to talk about is that the problem moved with them, i.e. their knuckle-headed kids.
The other not-so-dirty little secret is many attempts to lift blighted areas have been unsuccessful, which is one reason Edwards has argued for a more radical approach. There are few examples of skill-development initiatives, beyond the Harlem one, that have succeeded on the scale Obama proposes. We have already seen billions spent on jobs and housing through grants over the years, only to be repeatedly disappointed by the failure of these areas to get it together.
Beside the obvious White versus Black (well, biracial) contrasts, the two candidates are also speaking from different regional perspectives. Edwards grew up in rural (code for trailer park Caucasians) North Carolina and often seems more comfortable in those settings, whereas Obama got his poverty education on Chicago's South Side and speaks more freely about the cultural underpinnings of urban ills (code for trifling African-American), such as absent fathers.
Lets keep it real folks. Barack is a brand and as much as we want him to win, there is still this issue of competence.
Original story by Alec MacGillis/SOURCE