Barack Obama funded radical Afro-centric schools (Annenberg Challenge, Rev. Wright)

Just a couple days ago, both Politfact and FactCheck told us that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ("CAC") - as run by Barack Obama - was only involved in "mainstream" educational projects. Now, it turns out that CAC gave $200,000 to Chicago's Coalition for Improved Education in South Shore ("CIESS"). That ran the South Shore African Village Collaborative ("SSAVC"), which was a network of Afrocentric schools, based on various radical teachings.

Needless to say, BHO's hack apologists like the anti-American Jason Zengerle will try to downplay this (link).

However, it's clear that Barack Obama knew what the schools were about:

Given the precedent of his earlier responses on [Bill Ayers] and [Reverend Jeremiah Wright], Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected "the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation," a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See "No Liberation.")

And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC's Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard's or Carruthers's names, SSAVC's proposals are filled with references to "rites of passage" and "Ptahhotep," dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.

We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed "Collaborative" to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as "awful." (See "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years," p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.

UPDATE: There's more on the projects and groups funded by BHO - including ACORN - here.

Politics · Tue, 10/14/2008 - 10:39 · · Importance: 9