Encouraging....

Derrick Murdock on NRO

"When black kids are told they’re ‘white’ to like school, often they stop trying as hard,” says Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Columbia University adjunct professor John McWhorter. “This is key because it’s much of the reason there are so few black American students who qualify for selective schools without racial-preference policies. It’s a quiet sense that being a nerd is somehow ‘not black.’

When you’re black and 14, often you have a choice between doing well in school and having black friends.”“The simple fact that a black ex-nerd is on TV and our laptops every single day will wash away that background feeling that studying hard isn’t really ‘black,’” McWhorter adds. “A riposte, I highly suspect, will be ‘So, is Barack Obama white?’”