Mary Mostert
May 6, 2008
Education, racism, Obama, Rev. Wright, genes, and commitment
By Mary Mostert

The fire storm that is now taking place based the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's comments to the NAACP about the difference in learning styles of "African-American children with European-American children" is a good example of the misinformation and outright deception the public is being subjected to in the 2008 presidential campaign.

What Wright said in that speech was: "Dr. (Janice E.) Hale's research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early '70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style."

To start with, the concept of "left brained" and "right brained" thinking is not exactly new and it did not originate with Dr. Hale. It has been one of the factors in the Myers-Briggs tests for more than 50 years and is actually based on the research of C.G. Jung', a Swiss psychiatrist who outlined his findings in 1921 in his book "Psychological Types."

One of the factors determined in the Myers-Brigg test is whether or not a person is a "thinking" person, i.e. one who makes decisions based primarily on logic and objective analysis of cause and effect, or a "feeling" person, i.e. one who makes decisions based primarily on values and on subjective evaluation of person-centered concerns. This has evolved into educational concepts about learning styles based on whether a child is left-brained or right brained.

Observant mothers who have more than one child already realize that children differ in their learning styles. One child at a very early age may be observant, an early reader and "thinking" and the next one may be social, imaginative and "feeling." That is not something necessarily determined by race, although there certainly are stereotypes that would support Wright's view on the subject, i.e blacks are more musical and athletic while whites are quicker in learning to read and write.

What Jeremiah Wright has attempted to do is to make those learning styles entirely race-based even when the child is clearly mixed race, as are Barack and Michelle Obama, Jeremiah Wright and Janice Hale. Obama and his wife Michelle, Wright and Hale all have post-graduate degrees from prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago.

Should they thank their European ancestors for the genes that allowed them to be sufficiently left-brained to earn those degrees in "European" style educational systems?

The problem with the statement Wright made is that not only do he, Dr. Hale and the Obamas but nearly all other so-called "African Americans" have both European and African ancestors. Obama not only inherited his white mother's and grandparents' genes, but was raised in their culture. In other words, his culture, until he decided to reject his white mother and grandparents and identify with the culture of the father who abandoned him at the age two, was in a European-American home.

Of course, unless someone has a severe brain injury to either their left or right brain, all of our brains handle both thinking and feeling, in varying degrees. This is why the Myers-Briggs test is used extensively in employment offices to place employees in the kind of job to which they are best suited.

The real issue here is rampant racism. In fact, in his book "Dreams of My Father" Obama describes the very deliberate and very racist decision he made to choose Africa rather than Europe as his racial identity. However, as a presidential candidate he has pretended to be the candidate of unity, not division while accusing others of "racism" who question his policies or his racial identity choice. .

What he has demonstrated in the past few months, with the aid of his wife Michelle and his pastor Jeremiah Wright , is a totally unaddressed problem that I first wrote about in 1950: the rampant racial prejudice in the black community against white people. As a young, white Southern writer and activist in the Race Relations movement I wrote about black prejudice 58 years ago. In my article, entitled "A White Southerner Talks Back," published in the now defunct "Negro Digest" I wrote: "You are prejudiced.

Yes, you are! You are the victims of prejudice and you are also guilty of prejudice. In your conversations and your publications your prejudice against white people, particularly Southern White people, is constantly popping up." I then outlined changes that were taking place in the post-World War II South.

While segregation laws were still on the books in post World War Memphis, Tennessee in 1950, I reported that there were "interracial religious, political, educational and professional groups" working to encourage black people to "vote, serve on juries" (before women were allowed to serve on juries in some areas), and "more and more Negroes and Whites are working at the same job, making the same salary." That also preceded women getting the same pay as men for the same job.

Six years later, long before Martin Luther King began the militant Civil Rights movement, the schools were de-segregated and seven years later Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act which, over Democrat objection, which created the Civil Rights Commission to investigate charges that citizens in any state of the Union had lost civil rights due to their race, color, religion or national origin. Fourteen years later, in 1964 the 1957 Civil Rights Act was strengthened by barring unequal application of registration procedures.

The goal of the Race Relations movement was to work for a time when race would not be a divisive issue. And here we are, 58 years later, with a presidential candidate who, in spite of being raised by his white mother and her parents, rejected the American melting pot identity, and CHOSE a church that claims to be for "African people" who "remain true to our native land, the mother continent." Members, almost none of whom were born in Africa, pledge a "non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA" not a "non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AMERICA, " which is their actual "native land."

These statements are blatantly racist. They are also blatantly deceptive and absurd, since there are MANY African cultures, just as there are many European cultures. People who have chosen to come to the United States from Europe chose to do so, and chose to adopt this nation as their native land, often at great sacrifice. Obama was born here and has chosen through his church to "remain true" to the native land of his father, who abandoned him at age two.

In 232 years we have NEVER chosen a president who promised to "remain true" and "be committed to Europe," rather than America. Why would we even CONSIDER a president committed to Africa?

© Mary Mostert

 

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Mary Mostert

Mary Mostert is a nationally-respected political writer. She was one of the first female political commentators to be published in a major metropolitan newspaper in the 1960s... (more)

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