Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has a personal story that is every bit as compelling as President Obama's, and he told it well at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Saturday (April 25, 2009) in Detroit.
Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Patrick, his mother, and his sister shared a set of bunk beds in the second bedroom of his grandparents' two-bedroom apartment. Every third night, one of the three slept on the floor.
Now his own daughter lives a well-off existence that includes having stayed in high-priced hotels so that when asked to describe "the four seasons" as a kindergartener, she described staying at the ritzy hotel of that name.
"One generation," Patrick said, is all that separates his daughter from the poverty he grew up in and which he escaped thanks to a scholarship to a Massachusetts boarding school and his own talent and efforts.
That has been the American story for many generations -- one generation doing better than the previous one.
We need a million more stories like Patrick's.
2 comments:
Interesting that this story was told at the Jeff-Jack dinner, held to honor:
A. A man who owned slaves and likely raped at least one of them; and
B. A man who committed virtual suicide by ignoring the Constitution and forcing Native Americans from their rightful lands in Georgia and North Carolina.
But that's okay...they were blacks and savages so they really didn't count. You Democrats sure look up to strange people.
Curious: Did this child go to school at a public or private school?
No comments? No defense of the slave-holder and Indian-killer?
Not even a shot at me for an obvious mistake? I wrote "suicide" when I intended to say "genocide."
Does your silence mean you have no response? You can't figure out why a slave-rapist and an Indian-hater are the two main heroes of the Democratic Party?
Well, at least you have FDR to look up to...oh, wait, there were those Americans whose property he stole and put into internment camps because they happened to be Japanese.
My gosh. The Democrats sure have a great record when it comes to minorities. I guess I wouldn't want to talk about that either.
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