Gregory Kane: "A Black President Is Nice, Not Necessary"

The conservative Republican commentator in Baltimore, Md. opines that more doctors, engineers, mathematicians and scientists in black America is far more valuable than having a black occupant in the White House: "Dr. Freeman Hrabowski couldn’t disagree with me more. He shook his head vigorously, indicating a negative response. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'No, no, no, no, no.' Gee, was it something I said? Indeed, it was. Christmas came a little early this year for the black man with a Polish last name. (Long story short: white Alabama slave owner of Polish ancestry with last name of Hrabowski; slaves take master’s name.) Hrabowski is the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, not to be confused with its distinctly inferior cousin, the University of Maryland College Park, which is located some 40 miles south in Prince George’s County. For 17 years, Hrabowski has led UMBC. He is one of the few African-American presidents of a predominantly white university, but Hrabowski’s achievement far exceeds that. Time magazine recognized as much, and in November, its editors touted Hrabowski as one of the top 10 university or college presidents in the country. Of course, Time magazine editors didn’t tell anybody in these parts anything we didn’t already know. I’ve been saying for at least the past several years that UMBC, not UMCP, is Maryland’s flagship public university. The editors of Time magazine seem to agree, and Hrabowski’s achievements at UMBC prove it."

Mr. Kane continues his commentary: "During our interview, Hrabowski would pace his office, pointing to photos of black UMBC alumni of whom he was especially proud. There was the young sister, now a physician, who received a patent for an alternate use of Viagra (other than the more famous one). There’s the brother, a former UMBC star basketball player and math major, who now works for Constellation Energy, with his quote that Hrabowski simply adores: 'I’ve always loved math and making money.' That’s not a quote typically heard from a black student. But UMBC’s black students break the mold. There are as many black male students on its campus as black females; black students have the highest graduation rate of any group on campus, and Hrabowski said it’s not unusual to visit a hard-science class and discover that a black student has the highest score on an exam. As Hrabowski was recounting all this, that’s when I dropped my bomb on him: 'I think your being named one of the top 10 university presidents in the country, and the reason for it, is far more significant for black Americans than Obama’s being inaugurated as president of the United States.'"

More: "Hrabowski disagreed, as I suspect will most of Obama’s adoring devotees among black Americans. But I’ll stick to my position: black folks need more doctors, engineers, mathematicians and scientists. We don’t need a black president. He’s nice to have; we just don’t need the guy. Now, before some readers – you know who you are – go off on one of your 'there goes Kane being an Uncle Tom again' rants, let me point out that I have some interesting company. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has been saying the same thing for decades. Of course, we never listen to him when he says it. If he’s dissing Jews, we’re all ears. If he’s talking about Uncle Toms or evil white folks, we can’t get enough of it. If he’s running down that Willie Lynch nonsense, we sit in rapt attention, clinging to every false, misleading word. But let him say that more black folks need to focus on math and science, and we tune him out faster than Tiger Woods rushing to date the nearest white woman. Math? Science? Engineering? Aren’t those things for white folks and Asians? Hrabowski and a superb group of black students at UMBC are proving those things most certainly are not. Here’s a tip of my hat to a brother who’s determined to make math, science and engineering black things."