October 1, 2015 - 23:06
I mispoke today when I said that "Save the Children" was an organization founded by Nicholas Kristoff; it serves, rather, as his exemplar organization. A Path Appears is the sequel to the highly-acclaimed PBS film Half the Sky; both are based on books written by Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. You might be particularly interested in the episode entitled "Breaking the Cycle of Poverty," which features West Virginia families participating in Save the Children's early education program.
I've also just found a haunting example of Cole's haunting phrase, "The singer may be innocent; never the song," in a short piece by Ta-Nahisi Coates, When Malcom X Met Robert Penn Warren:
Warren: Let us say a white child of three or four, something like that, who is outside of conscious decisions or valuations ... [can he be guiltless?]
Malcolm: The white child, although he has not committed any of … the deeds that have produced the plight that the Negro finds himself in? Is he guiltless? The only way you can determine that is to take the Negro child who is only four years old—Can he escape though he’s only four years old? Can he escape the stigma of discrimination and segregation? He's only four years old.
Coates comments: In this country, our country, where black four-year-olds are demonstrably not innocent, it is impossible for white four-year-olds to be innocent....The point is that the system of racism, one way or another, eats its young...