Dr. Alvin Poussaint on The Obama Effect: The psychological boost on African-Americans generated by the election of the nation’s first Black president may be tempered by hard economic times ahead, says Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children’s Center and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
... Do you see Black children looking to Obama children Sasha and Malia and looking up to President-elect Obama?
It will fill them with pride. There’s an enormous psychological effect. If you wake up in the morning, you’re a two-year-old kid, the president is on TV and the president is a Black man, it begins to shape their image of the world and the image inside of what they think they can accomplish, and increases there own feelings of worth. ‘I am somebody. The president, this man, is running the country. I can run something. I can be in charge. I can get good grades.’ That will be an ingredient of their psyche.
I think what is important, too, is how Obama’s presidency shapes the attitude of Whites and others. In other words, maybe we’ll be treated better, maybe there will be less racial profiling, less overt racial discrimination and even more empathy with the plight Blacks find themselves in. For instance, if Obama’s being elected president changes the expectations of White teachers for Black students, they’ll see this Black student, [whom] before they thought could be a convict, [and think] maybe he can be the president of the United States. We know the expectations teachers have of Black students count a lot, in term of their success. In so far he may reshape racial attitude, it will benefit Blacks indirectly and directly.
