Hope (Despite the Times)

What would an Obama presidency mean to the ghetto poor? Would teenage dealers suddenly drop their weapons and apply en mass to Harvard Law? Would the lure of making serious money just outside your door be dumped in favor of serious deferred gratification?
I doubted it too. But in the Philadelphia neighborhood (black and Puerto Rican) where my cousin has taught, one thing at least happens.
Academic achievement, while never cool, may at least seen in a better light with Obama. We need to get to the point where scholastic efforts are respected by kids, and are not seen as "acting white."
It's difficult to ask Obama to carry history's burden. He might be seen as neglecting whites (Oh God help us). We've been looking at myriad problems of the ghetto since blacks moved from farm to factory in the 1940s-1980s. No one has come up with a magic wand to solve them.
But maybe one black man's presence at the top can mean a start, a start to the end of all that.