NPR’s Michel Martin, a former White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, calls out the Republicans for their double-speak regarding education and their attacks on Barack Obama for his supposed “elitist” attitude.
Education, as John McCain says, is the civil rights issue of our time, but … :
It is so interesting to me that at the same Republican Convention and in the days since then, we find a Republican determined to use Barack Obama’s education against him — that he’s being ridiculed as a lightweight snob by no less than Republican Convention keynote speaker Rudy Giuliani and vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. Giuliani pointed out that Obama had gotten a fine education before he sneeringly noted that Obama then went to work as a — horrors — community organizer.
Now, aren’t these the same people who have been telling poor people, in general, and black people, in particular, that their problem these past few decades is not discrimination — that it’s education, and closing the achievement gap is the key to solving their problems?
But now that there’s a black man who has actually done that, who’s not just survived but thrived, according to their rules, they want to trash his accomplishments. Why not just come out and say what so many surly, depressed, under-achieving kids in the cafeteria have been saying for years to break black kids who speak standard English and want to be somebody: you must think you’re white.
Elitism, according to many Republicans, is about a mindset, not the kind of education you have. After all, the current president went to Yale. Elitism, some would say, is the attitude that government, that the candidate, can solve all of your problems rather than a free market, and I wonder if McCain’s being an “elitist” by suggesting he would impose new unspecified rules on Wall Street to clean up financial institutions.
